500 Years of Drunk
How many different words are there for “intoxicated”? Quite a lot, as it turns out—writers have been inventing new words to describe inebriation for just about as long as they’ve…
Posts by tag
alcohol
137 posts
Baijiu on the Rocks
Baijiu is a distilled firewater somewhat like vodka crossed with a non-apple Calvados, with a distinctive nose. Have you tried baijiu, the world’s most consumed liquor? Chances are high that…
Ladies Drink Free
Whether glamorized or pitied, the figure of the alcoholic writer has long been a subject of cultural fascination. Having written a book on the usual suspects—Hemingway, Fitzgerald, et al.—Olivia Laing asks…
Weekend Rumpus Roundup
In “Hunting For The Little Prince,” Sigal Samuel invites us to tag along as she pursues the real-life inspiration for the blonde-haired protagonist of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s famous children’s book.…
No One Hears the Wars in Your Head. Except You.
I worked the same way with alcohol and drugs, and my whiskey elves, my beasts, never disappointed. I mean, they didn’t always write the prettiest prose — cocaine isn’t known…
Addiction, Alcohol, and Authors
You didn’t ask directly about gender, but I’ll answer anyway: I stuck with men for a more personal reason, which is that my experience as a child was with a…
Instead of Crossing
I believe it started with a slug and three hundred pellets leaving my uncle’s yard and ending their journey two trailers down.
Under the Table
The headaches, my difficulty focusing, my specimen-daze, that floating island, my spastic, nervous heart—which are side effects from drinking, and which were inevitable?
Writing and Drinking and Writing about Drinking
Alcohol and authors. It’s a subject so old and rich and fraught you could write a book on it—which is exactly what Olivia Laing did. That book is called The Trip…
Booze and the Brain
According to a new study, “beer makes men smarter,” or more scientifically stated, drinking alcohol “may enhance creativity problem solving by reducing the mind’s working memory capacity, which is the…
My Little Brother Ruined My Life
"Are you a masochist?" It's the first thing Bosco asks me. He's fourteen years old now, almost my height, 5' 8", creamy white skin, and a small, German nose from my stepmother's side of the family.