Word: berryman
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...What Berryman, i.e. Severance, does is to hide his emotions behind a powerful intellect (a charge often levelled against Berryman in his poems). Severance is cold and aloof, ever-curious to communicate, a witty though egotistical entertainer. But he is unable to relate to others on a basic human level. Only therapy forces him to confront his emotions. And you watch him turn to rigorous exercises in pedantic self-analysis. The same superiority that sets him off from his fellow patients makes him something of a father figure. When one of his symbolic children threatens to leave treatment, only...
...John Berryman had so many friends in the literary world that he refused to write any criticism, despite many offers. He lived so deeply inside his writing, and sacrificed so much of his own being to it that it is hard to separate the man from his work. His suicide is the last unwritten chapter of Recovery; the book and memory of the man together will remain as testimonies to the fame that so bedevilled...
RECOVERY is divided into a series of Steps used by Alcoholics Anonymous as a guideline for its members. Only five of the twelve steps are here, although some recovered notes printed in the back of the book indicated that Berryman had planned two more sections. Of what is written, Alan Severance remains the key figure. Other characters are roughly sketched. A series of epiphanies of the more dramatic moments on the ward, of the personal breakthroughs and all too frequent relapses, lend a sense of the real powerlessness of the alcoholic...
...disease. It has no known cure. Once an alcoholic goes dry, he can never have another drink in his life, or he'll be back on the bandwagon again. So it is understandable that Alcoholics Anonymous has chosen God to help its incurables against this mysterious disease. Berryman, baptized Catholic, became a non-believer at age 12 when his rather committed suicide. But he returned to the flock recently. In an interview shortly before his death, he said...
...Berryman's final book of poems, Delusions, etc. points to this funny twist of Irony in his Belief. The book is mainly a series of daily prayers, some overwhelmingly joyous, many serious addresses to God. Only a few of these last poems are sad. But then there is the title, and a picture of a smug Berryman staring out--is he laughing to himself or finally at ease...