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Gilbert Alter-Gilbert

Gilbert Alter-Gilbert is a critic, translator, and literary historian whose work has appeared in numerous magazines and journals.
  • Gilbert Alter-Gilbert

    Nicotine Chic: Writers as Smokers

    Colette, Sartre & de Beauvoir (facsimiles), Mayakovsky “Smoking I find the most ridiculous of all the varieties of human behavior and practically the only one that is entirely against nature. Can you imagine a cow or any animal taking a…

  • Gilbert Alter-Gilbert

    A Tipsy Tribute to the Leading Literary Lush of the Emerald Isle: Brendan Behan

    At least as well known for his boozing as for his books, iconic Irish author Brendan Behan (1923 – 1964) was a rollicking, larger-than-life Gaelic knockabout—a foul-mouthed, furry-chested stereotype of the drunken Paddy. In fact, the polemical playwright and legendary…

  • Gilbert Alter-Gilbert

    Why Don Pedro Drinks

    “Why Don Pedro Drinks” by José Marín Cañas Translated by Gilbert Alter-Gilbert “Why Don Pedro Drinks” is from José Marín Cañas’ 1929 collection of crepuscular tales about alcoholics, The Rum Bums (Los bigardos del ron). Nobody had any idea, until…

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    Gilbert Alter-Gilbert

    A Candy Box of History’s Sappiest Literary Lovers

    Familiar figures among upper echelon literary lovelorn include Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, Robert Louis Stevenson and Fannie Osbourne, Gerard de Nerval and Jenny Colon, to name but a few. Their stories have all the poignancy, drama, humor and pathos of…