Quick. Think of a really famous American writer. OK, is this person an alcoholic? Probably! The profession is filled with souses!

Writers – and other artists – are known as booze hounds. No surprise there. But I still find it really fascinating. I am hard-pressed to make a list of great writers that isn’t at least half, if not more, full of dipsomaniacs. (I’m running out of kicky names for alcoholics here …)

Of the Americans (as in American-born) who won Nobel Prizes in literature, there are only two who aren’t alcoholics (as far as I know). And they’re the women. Way to go, Pearl S. Buck and Toni Morrison!

1930 – Sinclair Lewis
1936 – Eugene O’Neill
1949 – William Faulkner
1954 – Ernest Hemingway (This post’s title is supposedly something he said to another famous drunk writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald.)
1962 – John Steinbeck

I don’t know what conclusions to draw. I discourage you all from becoming alcoholics. However, to end on an up note, here are some pirate-themed cocktail recipes. Cheers!

-Marcia

Artillery
2 oz. Gin
1/2 oz. Sweet Vermouth
2 Dashes Bitters
In a mixing glass filled with ice, add the gin, sweet vermouth and bitters and stir well. Strain into a chilled martini glass.

Devil’s Poison
1 oz. Jack Daniels
1 oz. 151 Bacardi Rum
Fill a shaker with ice, pour the Jack Daniels and 151 Bacardi Rum into shaker and shake. Strain into a shot glass.

Grog
2 oz. Dark Rum
3 oz. Water
Pour the rum and water into an old fashion glass and stir well.

OK, so the “adorable baby” part may have been a ploy to get your attention. But there is a campaign to save book reviews, led by the National Book Critics Circle.

Over the past five years, one by one, newspapers have begun to forsake books and their readers. … Not long ago, the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, which has readership levels in excess of fifty percent, was folded into another part of the paper. The community protested, it was restored, but just recently the section was cut in half in order to make space for an advertisement.

Elsewhere at the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Newsday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Dallas Morning News, the Sun Sentinel, the New Mexican, the Village Voice, Boston Phoenix, the Atlanta Journal Constitution and dozens upon dozens of other papers book coverage has been cut back or slashed all together, moved, winnowed, filled with more wire copy, or generally been treated as expendable.

And we’re getting tired of it. We’re tired of watching individual voices from local communities passed over for wire copy. … We’re tired of hearing newspapers fret and worry over the future of print while they dismantle the section of the paper which deals most closely with the two things which have kept them alive since the dawn of printing presses: the public’s hunger for knowledge and the written word.

The blog posts by concerned writers, opinion pieces and petitions the organization is publicizing are a great effort that I hope makes a difference. However, I am not too optimistic.

-Marcia