My review of The Lost Weekend, by Charles Jackson

The Lost Weekend

by Charles Jackson

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This had me glued from the outset. I had seen the 1945 Billy Wilder movie, starring Ray Milland and Jane Wyman, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four.

Charles R. Jackson's first novel published in 1944, was a best-seller, receiving rave reviews. This breakthrough account, for its era, depicts the downward spiral of an alcoholic binge. Set in the rundown Manhattan of 1936, we follow a few days in the life of Don Birnam, an alcoholic wannabe author.

Increasingly desperate for booze funds he tries stealing a woman's purse in a bar and is humiliatingly ejected. After much further ado over pawning his typewriter, he has an accident, resurfacing in a detox ward. Perhaps the only thing between Birnam and death is his girlfriend Helen, who tolerates his behaviour out of loyalty and love. Recovering from his 'Lost Weekend' Birnam contemplates killing Helen's maid for her liquor cabinet key. After his inevitable hair of the dog, he crawls back into bed wondering, 'Why did they make such a fuss?'

Sometimes seen as American literature's seminal addiction memoir, the novel also infers Birnam is latently gay, tormented by a homoerotic college incident. This taboo element of those times was, naturally, omitted from Wilder's screen adaptation.

There is no redemption at the outcome, but for me this is a good thing, the voice of deterrence, the warning bell to avoid this path in life if you can.

Another reviewer cites among her comparisons Jean Rhys's Good Morning Midnight, one of my favourite reads by my all-time favourite writer. I'm naturally biased in opining that The Lost Weekend comes nowhere close to Good Morning Midnight in literary terms, but agree that the plot is close. Both books were penned around the same part of the twentieth century. Rhys's almost poetic work is all encompassing in its depth, with far subtler dramatic scope. Hers is less a warning signal than a work of fine art, a depiction more moving in its wryness and indifference, of the same downward spiral. But for fast, gritty paperback fiction this is one of the best of its genre. Bang this out in, literally, a lost weekend.

I perceived strong descriptive parallels between this and Lillian Roth's hard-hitting memoir I'll Cry Tomorrow with its incisive look at the practising alcoholic's horrors. Roth's cosier, more optimistic conclusion and message of hope is absent from The Lost Weekend's noirish last word.

A gritty read whose message will never date: beware the lurking quagmire of this horrendous condition so many fall foul to as they approach it with eyes wide shut.