Word: musings
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...emotion into heavy-handed lines like, "Can it be possible I have to die so suddenly? So young to go under the obscure, cold, rotting, wormy ground! To be nailed down into a narrow place; to see no more sweet sunshine; hear no more blithe voice of living thing; muse not again upon familiar thoughts, sad, yet thus lost--How fearful! to be nothing...
...outsider to recall each of his seven visits to the White House (the most recent: in March, to watch a screening of New York Stories with George Bush). But ever since Ronald Reagan stepped forward as Clancy's First Reader, the author has had more reason than most to muse about the what-ifs of being officially on the inside...
Many of the great authors drank--were alcoholics in fact--but drinking did not make them great. Or so Tom Dardis argues in The Thirsty Muse, a fairly engrossing study of alcohol and authorship. He maintains that drink made them shooting stars, living fast and peaking young. Alcohol inhibited their performance and dulled their perceptions...
...reading The Thirsty Muse, the reader never doubts that the writers became powerless in the face of alcohol. Dardis writes that only O'Neill escaped its trap. But O'Neill merely traded addictions--he died a drug addict. Dardis does not even begin to explain what caused the author to fall prey to another addiction...
...Thirsty Muse is primarily a compilation of biographies--only 19 pages are dedicated to outlining the thesis, and those 19 pages comprise the introduction. In the body of the work, Dardis dedicates a portion to each author. Conspicuous in its absence is a conclusion or summary...