Writing Under the Influence

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

   PDF

2. The Foundations of Alcoholic Thinking and the Role of Fantasy, Alienation, and Rebellion

   • Matts G. Djos

   Pages 1-12

3. Alcoholism in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises: A Wine and Roses Perspective of the Lost Generation

   • Matts G. Djos

   Pages 13-27

4. Addiction and Spirituality in Contemporary American Poetry: Frustration and Paradox

   • Matts G. Djos

   Pages 29-41

5. John Berryman’s “Phase Four” and His Precarious Attempt to Find a Compromise between Drunkenness, Sobriety, and the A.A. Twelve Step Program of Recovery

   • Matts G. Djos

   Pages 43-51

6. The Grand Illusion: Evasion, Survival, and Self-Hate

   • Matts G. Djos

   Pages 53-60

7. The Alcoholic Isolation and Fall to Self-Destruction in Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “Mr. Flood’s Party”

   • Matts G. Djos

   Pages 61-67

8. Sex and Promiscuity: Conjugal Detachment and the Fear of Intimacy

   • Matts G. Djos

   Pages 69-78

9. Alcoholic Guilt and Emotional Paralysis: Bathos, Incongruity, and Frustration

   • Matts G. Djos

   Pages 79-86

10. The Contaminated Vision: The Alcoholic Perspective in Hart Crane’s “The Wine Menagerie”

    • Matts G. Djos

    Pages 87-93

11. Clowns and Bedlam: The Dark Side of Alcoholic Humor

    • Matts G. Djos

    Pages 95-104

12. Through a Glass Darkly: Death and Dissolution

    • Matts G. Djos

    Pages 105-113

13. Afterword

    • Matts G. Djos

    Pages 115-117

14. Back Matter

    Pages 119-174

    PDF

The book offers a socio-critical analysis of the alcoholic perception in the poetry and fiction of modern American alcoholic writers. Matts Djos focuses on primary indicators of alcohol addiction (fear, manipulation, anger, loneliness, and antic-social behavior) and their expression in modern American literature. After providing a general foundation for analysis of the psychological effects of the disease, this volume scrutinizes the work of Ernest Hemingway, John Berryman, E.A. Robinson, Hart Crane, Theodore Roetheke, Robert Lowell, John Steinbeck, and William Faulkner. The detail provides critical and in-depth perspective on the workings of the alcoholic mind.

• America
• poem
• poetry

"Every ten or twenty years, it seems, there comes a literary critic whose work throws open a window and you suddenly see sharper images, clearer details, deeper shadows. And now comes Djos s Writing Under the Influence, probing the dusky corners of literary alcoholism. This is sociological literary criticism doing exactly what it should do: inconcise and important discussions, Professor Djos confronts his selected authors - Roethke, Hart Crane, Faulkner, E.E. Cummings, Ginsberg and more than a dozen others - and fearlessly focuses on the ways in which the 'alcoholic perspective' informs their work. I know I shall never again teach 'Mister Flood s Party' the same way after reading Djos, and the same goes for Tennessee Williams, Robert Lowell and the others. Writing Under the Influenceshould be on the reading list of every graduate program in American literature." - Dr. James C. Work, Professor Emeritus, Colorado State University

"Djos has written a compelling work that fulfills its promise by applying a systematic psychological focus to alcoholic literature. . . to explore some of the more puzzling facets of the addictive mind as set as reflected in the poems and stories of modern American writers. The result is an extraordinary work of literary criticism that illuminates the alcoholic personality, stripping away any romantic notions that both readers and his subjects may have about alcoholism." - Felicia Florine Campbell, Professor of English, University of Nevada, Las Vegas and Editor, Popular Culture Review

MATTS G. DJOS, Professor of English at Mesa State University, USA.

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