{"id":88345,"date":"2015-07-29T17:06:14","date_gmt":"2015-07-29T21:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=88345"},"modified":"2015-07-30T14:04:45","modified_gmt":"2015-07-30T18:04:45","slug":"alcoholism-what-a-hoot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/29\/alcoholism-what-a-hoot\/","title":{"rendered":"Alcoholism\u2014What a Hoot!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

A lobby card for Good Old Soak<\/i>, one of two films based on Marquis\u2019s character.<\/p><\/div>\n

Don Marquis, an early twentieth-century humorist, had an almost Disney-like knack for creating benign characters who thrived in the popular imagination. The most famous of these was Archy, a poet-cockroach who practiced his craft after-hours on an old typewriter in the offices of the New York Evening Sun<\/em>. Archy wrote in lowercase letters with no punctuation, because he was too small to reach the shift key. With his companion Mehitabel, a cat who professed to have been Cleopatra in a past life, Archy and his free verse appeared in some half a dozen books, all of which sold handsomely. He counted E. B. White among his fans. \u201cMr. Marquis\u2019s cockroach,\u201d White wrote in an introduction to The Life and Times of Archy and Mehitabel<\/em>,<\/p>\n

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was more than the natural issue of a creative and humorous mind. Archy was the child of compulsion, the stern compulsion of journalism. The compulsion is as great today as it ever was, but it is met in a different spirit. Archy used to come back from the golden companionship of the tavern with a poet\u2019s report of life as seen from the under side. Today\u2019s columnist returns from the platinum companionship of the nightclub with a dozen pieces of watered gossip and a few bottomless anecdotes. Archy returned carrying a heavy load of wine and dreams. These later cockroaches come sober from their taverns, carrying a basket of fluff. I think newspaper publishers in this decade ought to ask themselves why.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But Marquis was also responsible for a character called Clem Hawley, better known as the Old Soak: an endearing alcoholic who had the misfortune of living in America during Prohibition. <\/p>\n

The Old Soak liked to versify, too, and he did so at length\u2014in two books, a Broadway play, a silent film, and a talkie, both of these last starring, in one of cinema\u2019s richest ironies, an actor named Wallace Beery.<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a>The Old Soak\u2019s debut, The Old Soak and Hail and Farewell<\/a><\/em>, is in the public domain now. Delving into it you\u2019ll find a surprisingly callous approach to addiction, far from, say, the complex and often convivial descriptions of binge drinking in John O\u2019Hara\u2019s early novels. The Old Soak is a hauntingly one-note character, and one wonders exactly what about his alcoholism made him such a bankable franchise. Imagine the pitch meetings that followed: \u201cHe\u2019s a lush<\/em>, see? He wants to booze it up, but he can\u2019t<\/em>, because of that cursed eighteenth amendment!\u201d<\/p>\n

Yuks ensue, contracts are signed, and everyone has a glass of whiskey.<\/p>\n

Here, for instance, is how the Old Soak\u2014who sounds less like a drunk than a concussion victim\u2014plans on spending his holiday season:<\/p>\n

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\u201cCHRISTMAS,\u201d said the Old Soak, \u201cwill soon be here. But me, I ain\u2019t going to look at it. I ain\u2019t got the heart to face it. I\u2019m going to crawl off and make arrangements to go to sleep on the twenty-third of December and not wake up until the second of January.<\/p>\n

\u201cThem that is in favor of a denaturized Christmas won’t be interfered with by me. I got no grudge against them. But I won\u2019t intrude any on them, either. They can pass through the holidays in an orgy of sobriety, and I\u2019ll be all alone in my own little room, with my memories and a case of Bourbon to bear me up.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What a riot! Toss in a laugh track and put him in prime time.<\/p>\n

Even more questionable are such poems as \u201cChant Royal of the Dejected Dipsomaniac,\u201d \u201cAfter Several Highballs,\u201d and \u201cOn Swearing Off Again,\u201d all encomia to the blitzed life and the bygone bar-stools of simpler times. In \u201cTrue, But What of It?\u201d, the Old Soak acknowledges that boozehounds have caused a lot of suffering in the world, and that alcohol is a social scourge threatening the very well-being of the family unit\u2014but, dash it all, who can say no to a nice glass of rum?<\/p>\n

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Old Demon Rum, they say you ruined homes,
Bashing the piteous Wife betwixt her eyes.
Stabbing Aunt Tildy with her own hair-combs,
And teaching your young offspring stealth and lies:
Angel! they say that one night, lost to grace,
You filched the infant’s coral from her crib,
Hocked it, and blew the loot at Leery’s Place\u2014
Then strangled Baby Sister in her bib
Because it purchased only sixteen beers!
Demon! they say you used to cut up rough,
Sowing the earth with poverty and tears\u2014
And I believe it readily enough!
I do admit your crimes as charged above,
But, Angel! crime can never kill my love!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Evidence suggests that future renditions of the Old Soak were no more nuanced. A Don Marquis fan site<\/a> writes of the Broadway play, which ran for 421 performances before embarking on a national tour:<\/p>\n

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The play\u2019s most famous phrase was \u201cAl\u2019s here,\u201d alerting Clem that his favorite bootlegger was approaching with a fresh supply of whiskey. The parrot in the poster, a liquor-loving bird named Peter, nearly steals the show after gulping down a glass of homemade hooch.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Humor ages poorly, and a charitable reader could argue that many of the Old Soak\u2019s charms have been lost to the ages. Alcoholism wasn\u2019t recognized as a disease until 1973, and the village drunk had been a comic trope for centuries before our soused Clem came along. Even so, Marquis took the joke to strange, unsettling places, and his one-note drunkard was a protagonist, not a stock supporting character. As a window to another time, and to the mindset of Prohibition-era Americans, the Old Soak is invaluable.<\/p>\n

Anyway, you can read all of The Old Soak and Hail and Farewell <\/em>below. I know you won\u2019t. That\u2019s okay.<\/p>\n