30 More Days Book Challenge: Day 11

Day 11: Drunks!  Our favorite books involving the substances and their abuses.

Let's face it, drinking adds flavor to a story.  I'm shocked that the original 30 Day Book Challenge didn't involve this category.

Gianna:

Well I will try to stay away from the obvious picks like Bukowski , Hemingway, and Hunter Thompson. I will also spare you my own personal harrowing journey with alcohol in April of 1987 when I drank nine beers. [I was 10 years old in April, 1987.  Just saying.] The next day I spent apologizing to people, including two strangers that I apparently offended so badly during my drunken escapade, they felt the need to seek me out the next day. Awkward.

I don’t drink much these days because I hate apologizing. [True, and doubly true.  And Gianna doesn't need the liquid courage; she once jumped out of the car to scream at a woman and insult her lack of education in the middle of a street in Oklahoma City because the woman driving the other car honked at us.  The mall security officer in the golf cart nearby looked scared of Gianna too.]

Now, Dorothy Parker and Edna St. Vincent Millay were ladies who enjoyed a glass of wine every now and again from sun up to sun down, which obviously makes me wish I could have been their designated driver. And sure, while their writing about such things is wonderful, I do have the feeling that either one of those gals would beat the shit out of you if the mood struck them while they were hammered. [Yes.] While that is undeniably sexy…it's not safe.

My favorite book (books, really) are by Jim Carroll.

Carroll’s biographies are fantastic and I think reading them back to back is the way to go. Basketball Diaries and Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries: both books focus on Carroll's young adult life trying to kick drugs (Carroll started using heroin when he was 13…yikes). I think Carroll is a beautiful writer and much like Patti Smith’s book Just Kids, he is able to really paint a portrait of time and place. In Basketball Diaries you get a taste of how the country was changing in the 1960’s and he was clearly already drawn to the counter-culture movement. Carroll would eventually immerse himself in that movement just few years later, hanging out with Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground, which he writes about in Forced Entries. Not that it's impossible to figure out, but in the second book Carroll uses fake names so as to not appear to be name-dropping, but I think with a bit of research one can figure out the players. Personally, I am too lazy. One other thing, Basketball Diaries is made up of actual diary entries that Carroll kept from the ages of 12-16; Forced Entries is written from memory and Carroll freely admitted parts might not be accurate. How refreshing is that, a drug addict admitting that he isn’t a reliable narrator? I know that night in ’87 is pretty fuzzy….if only I could block it completely. Of course, many people I met that night probably wish they could forget it too….

My runner-up, by the way, is Caroline Knapp’s Drinking: A Love Story which should be read directly after reading Gail Caldwell’s Let’s Take the Long Walk Home. Please.

Liz:

If anyone in the publishing business drinks less than Gianna, it's probably me.  Nonetheless, there was a night in April of 1999 that involved rum, Diet Coke, and a declaration of love for my former boss.  I don't really regret it; everyone loved him.  Not everyone grabbed his butt...but I don't think he minded.

Two books full of regrets and what-might-have-beens are Stuart: A Life Backwards and one of the best titled books ever, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City.  These aren't uplifting books.  They are the stories of broken men, men so far down that they have no homes.  Stuart tells the story of an eccentric homeless man, a man who develops a friendship with the book's author, Alexander Masters.  Trying to understand the enigmatic Stuart, Masters unravels his story beginning in the present and winding back to a turning point in his childhood.  Another Bullshit Night, written by talented poet Nick Flynn, is an incredible memoir about Flynn's attempts to locate and assist his father, a damaged man who ends up homeless on the streets of Boston.

My favorite memoir about the bottle, though, is written by one of my favorite writers, Mary Karr.  The third book in Karr's series of memoirs, Lit, is a brilliant composition blending Karr's past as recounted in The Liars' Club and Cherry, her love of literature, and her struggles with marriage, the raising of her son, and her first book's success.  As I've mentioned before, I feel an extra affinity for Karr because she grew up and survived the area of East Texas where I was raised.  I also love that Karr turned to literature to guide her out of that home.  Lit describes how Karr's past catches up to her and she turns to alcohol for self-medication, and in a downward spiral she finally breaks down and finds her way to AA meetings and the church. 

Now, I am not a religious person and normally I steer clear of books on Christianity because the majority of them lack the level of depth I think is warranted when discussing philosophical topics.  Love Jesus, be rich.  Love Jesus, be happy.  It's all too simplistic and two-dimensional.  I struggled with Karr's book in part because of my own prejudices, but her views on spirituality are anything but two-dimensional.  This is a thinking person's memoir of abuse and recovery; it's not phony or slick or full of soft-focused sunrise imagery. 

The Long Way Home

From Gianna:

It is a question booksellers and book lovers ask each other often, “What book has changed your life?” The answer, of course, changes with age, with what we’ve read, and with life experience. Occasionally, or maybe not even that often, there is a book that you want to push from your mind and can’t seem to move from your nightstand at the same time. For me that book has been Gail Caldwell’s Let’s Take the Long Way Home. It is subtitled “A Memoir of Friendship” which is pretty innocuous at first glance. A memoir of friendship to be sure, but the level of this friendship is spiritual and as committed as the best of marriages. It is the gorgeous story of Gail’s friendship with fellow writer Caroline Knapp (author of the two classics: Drinking A Love Story and Pack of Two ). The book begins with these lines: “It’s an old , old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that , too.” As women we are bombarded with false reports and bullshit polls that women don’t get along, and of course the media loves to portray us with our “claws” out – after each others' men or jobs...or are we simply jealous of each others' boobs? It is such a lie, such a crappy lie, but worrisome that some of us are buying into it. Women do have lifelong, meaningful, important friendships; we always have. Gail and Carol’s story is just one of many, as is mine.

I’ve lived with this book for the better part of two years now; I can not shake it, but it has weighed most heavily on my mind this past month.

I have a very close friend; she in fact was my first girlfriend. I was 18 years old when I met her; she told me I wasn’t funny and of course…I was smitten. About four years ago she was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer. And as that diagnosis does – it takes your breath away – but we live in a time where this is often called a manageable disease. And it is.  It’s not fun, but it is a constant battle. And then like metastasized breast cancer does…that little fucker spreads. Sometimes to the liver, lungs, bones, or the brain among a zillion other nooks and crannies, and for us we got bones. My friend took it in stride, fought on, chemo and radiation ,and just carried on. Recently tumors were found in her brain. So then came radiation on her entire brain, and more chemo of course. Things looked good, the doctors were still talking managed care, so we started planning a road trip from her home in Florida to Las Vegas, stopping here in Austin for a few days to rest. My friend has a small gambling issue – she won’t admit it – but, you know, it’s all she loves to do anymore.  She’s no good at it and I’ve never actually known her to win…but that’s another story. Anyway, we began planning. Then, just a few weeks ago, her Johnny-on-the-spot doctor didn’t like the way she was walking, ordered a CAT scan, and there you have it …more tumors.

I flew out again as soon as I could – our mutual best friend had to leave for a work trip so I would be in charge of caring for her. My friend is a lot to be in charge of without cancer by the way – she is a bit of trouble; add cancer to the mix and I had my hands full. We had scheduled an MRI and I have never been as nervous sitting in that doctor's office with her and our mutual friend (who had come back from her business trip) waiting for the results. We were positive, however; we thought from the CAT scan that we were dealing with one very treatable tumor. Turns out, CAT scans are so inferior to MRI’s that it shocked us when the sheer number of actual brain tumors was revealed. Numerous very small tumors all over her brain, and a few larger (but still small) tumors were also in the mix and these would be our focus. So we march on.

Today my friend is headed in for her fourth day in a row of Gamma Knife radiation – it's what it sounds like, extremely precise – you have a mask made of your face and are pinned down while you get zapped. I was with her when her mask was made and I at that moment thought How does she doe this – day in – day out? How? Anyway, so day four is today and she is in Florida and I am back in Texas and all I can think about every moment is how to get back to Florida – to get back to being useful. I miss making her meals (I am a terrible cook but she’s kind about it), bitching at her to drink more water, reminding her to take her pills (okay so once I forgot to remind her and claimed I did tell her but her chemo brain made her forget – not proud but it’s the truth), and it turns out….she thinks I am pretty funny.  So I miss not only making her laugh, because I can do that on the phone, but making her laugh in person because sometimes she comes really close to peeing her pants and that stuff is best in person.

So this is friendship, the entire thing. It’s about how we spend our time, and I am sorry for being corny but it is about taking the long way home.