Word: alcoholism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Father (Paul Scofield) is a cultivated patsy. Sister (Kate Reid) is a puffy rummy who sweeps about in caftans. Daughter (Lee Remick) keeps ricocheting home after unsuccessful marriages. They all congregate in the heavily furnished rooms of the house, congratulate or chastise each other for the considerable amount of alcohol consumed, and make glum speculations on their neurotic lives...
More acceptable alternatives are hinted at. There is St. Christopher's Hospice in London, where the dying are given "highs" on alcohol and heroin that kill pain and sometimes induce euphoria. There is the Maryland Psychiatric Center at Catonsville, where LSD is used as a kind of rites-of-passage drug, making death less alien while making the last chapter of life more tolerable-or so it is hoped...
...their landlords. In addition, the colonial government ate away at the remainder of peasant production with a stiff new set of taxes. In traditional Vietnam the Nguyen government had taken an estimated 6 per cent of the peasant's income in taxes. The French added stiff head and alcohol taxes and hiked this to 10 to 20 per cent. Widescale growing corruption among both French and Vietnamese officials in the colonial government added to the burden. The landlords were generally exempt from taxes...
...recognition of selfdelusion. He annihilates the pipedreams in which the patrons of Harry Hope's back room curl up like quaking children in the middle of a nightmare. Everyone in Harry Hope's place needs booze to nourish his dream, but it is the dream itself, not alcohol, that keeps them alive. Hickey, underneath his salesman's brass and chatter, needs rage, contempt and anguish to galvanize the entire play...
From The Ginger Man on, J.P. Donleavy's novels have been simultaneously cruel, sentimental, repetitive and sporadically funny. Donleavy heroes are ridiculous figures who wallow in self-pity behind their mannered fronts and anesthetize deep personal hurts with sex and alcohol. Like Cornelius Treacle Christian, the errant knight in tweed armor of A Fairy Tale of New York, Donleavy's people move around a lot-"Moving all the time," says Christian, "hoping for a master stroke of solace somewhere...