The season is nearly upon us. Here come the ads for spirits at bargain prices, and for liqueurs that will give the women never-again-I-swear hangovers. The brewers and distillers batten on us.
Especially, on the Celts.
J P Donleavy's notorious first book, ‘The Ginger Man’ is an example of the lethal drinking culture in Ireland. Donleavy, an American, took advantage of the GI Bill to get a free college education in late 1940s Dublin. In one edition, the back cover quotes Dorothy Parker:
Brilliant.. the picaresque novel to stop them all, lusty, violent, wildly funny.
That should be a warning bell: Parker would later look back ruefully on her own disorderly days, calling herself a ‘smartcracker.’
The book is not so much funny as horrifying. The protagonist is a raging sociopath called Sebastian Dangerfield, modelled on one Gainor Crist according to Ken O Donoghue (who himself is in part the model for Dangerfield's pal Kenneth O Keefe). Dangerfield chisels everyone for money, women are groomed and exploited with satanic skill and discarded ruthlessly, and forever there is drink.
O Donoghue, who also knew Brendan Behan, reflects:
I, at that time, still liked the pubs. So I would frequent them. But to avoid the poisonous drinking I would slowly consume a sandwich. If asked what I was having I'd always say, "A sandwich, please." Most wouldn't buy me one but now and then the odd one would. I never bought drinks in return for anyone. I would offer to return the compliment by offering the buyer a sandwich in return. But, as you may know in OZ, drinkers, especially those who are Irish or of Irish descent, care nothing for food while they are drinking. They then progress to the stage where they practically never eat, then into the box for good.
Today, like an old Puritan, I think Irish pubs are the most gloomy, uncomfortable, smoky, highly unpleasant places ever invented for the entertainment of man. Murderers of Irishmen I think of them now.
It was living on the continent that taught me drinking and eating go together. The Irish never drink while eating, except milk, or tea and sometimes even water. Drinking is something else; not to be contaminated by food. They go into the pub. Throw it back like crazy; go out with the poisonous alcohol in their blood eating away at their brain tissue, slowing down their reflexes, get into packed cars, career down the roads with the hope of killing themselves which many do. Or outside the pub get into a fight over some alcohol inflamed set of ideas. I've done it all and now wonder why I did.
Gainor Crist is dead, Paddy Kavanaugh, is dead. Brendan Behan is dead. Myles na gCopaleen is dead. John Ryan is dead. There are others. They committed suicide using the Irish pub as an instrument.
Today in Dublin, you can book a literary pub tour to follow in the footsteps of Flann O'Brien (‘Myles na gCopaleen’); another brilliant alcoholic, dead at the age of 54.
A fellow boarding house inmate, a wiry young man, told me about a period of labouring with an Irish road gang. At the end of the first day he was physically shattered and ready for bed; but as he was leaving his mates asked, ‘Where are you goin’?’ ‘Home.’ ‘No you’re not, come down the pub with us.’
That night, he drank seventeen pints of Guinness, a heavy, dark brew. And that was the pattern for every day after: start with a ‘t’ick head’, sweat out the toxins with hard toil all day, working up a thirst, then off to the pub for another session. No food - Guinness has 166 calories a pint; at most, occasionally, he had a cheese sandwich when he got back to his digs.
My wife used to be a registrar of births and deaths in Birmingham. She would register the deaths of many of these men over the years, who earned their wages with heavy labour, sent money home across the sea, drank most of the rest, lived in working men’s hostels and died owning little more than their clothes.
Perhaps there’s a general rule: if you really want more than food, shelter and companionship, maybe it’s a weakness that someone will exploit; those that most desire something are those who most need to be protected from it.
That said, maybe the worst temptation is the yen for self-righteousness. We are in an age of various kinds of Puritan: wokies, jihadis and so on.
Nevertheless, drink, drugs, addictions and obsessions - who is benefiting?
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This post is reworked from here. Sadly, the link for the O Donoghue extract no longer works. We write in water, as Shakespeare said.