by Blake Bailey
“more than [she] could handle”: Quoted in Eva LeRoy to FSJ, April 20, 1953, Rauner.
“I knew on my birthday”: “Flew” to FSJ, Jan. 15, 1953, Rauner.
“the perversity of the Fates”: CJ to SJP, Aug. 2, 1964, JFC.
“MY WIFE IS A GOOD WOMAN”: CJ, “JAXON” notebook, Rauner.
“Since Charlie was gay”: Author int. Ron Sproat, March 25, 2009.
“with sixteen tenant houses”: CJ to SWJ, April 22 (1936), Rauner.
“My god, you can’t say that!”: CJ, “The Sleeping Brain,” unpublished ms., Rauner.
“He saw himself … everyman”: Mary McCarthy, The Lost Week, or The Caged Lion, unpublished ms., Vassar.
“We like your story, ‘Palm Sunday’ ”: Dwight Macdonald to CJ, May 8, 1939, Rauner.
“You probably think I’m crazy”: CJ to Macdonald, July 11, 1939, Rauner.
“Today the whole city is agog”: Philip Rahv to CJ, Aug. 22, 1939, Rauner.
“If PALM SUNDAY by any chance”: CJ to Macdonald, July 11, 1939, Rauner.
“If I had it then, why … got it now?”: CJ to DS, (c. July 1951), Rauner.
“a deliberate troublemaker”: CJ/AA-59.
“Used it all,” he’d declare: Mary Morris, “Mary Morris Goes to See the Author of ‘The Lost Weekend,’ ” PM, undated clipping (c. early 1944), Rauner.
“I knew,” he said, “I could pick it up”: Trudi McCullough, “Novel About a Drunkard Makes Alcoholics Wince,” Milwaukee Journal, March 29, 1944, 33.
“rather on the dull side”: CJ to Lewis Titterton, Oct. 16, 1941, Rauner.
“in a purely impersonal”: CJ to BW, Oct. 15, 1940, Rauner.
“a happy moment for me”: CJ to “Miss Nelson,” Oct. 2, 1945, Rauner.
“growing reluctance to bring a child”: EC, 77.
they “drove through lights”: Nila Mack to CJ, May 11 (1945?), Rauner.
“O, then my anxious prayer”: CJ, “A Sestina for Sarah,” The Conning Tower (column by F.P.A.), New York Post, May 12, 1941.
“It was as perfect as a seashell”: DS-Show, 79.
“indescribably charming to him”: F&W.
“like a love-sick fool”: CJ, “A Salute, A Blessing, and a Kind of Family Inventory for Alexandra,” unpublished ms., JFC.
“[I] was sorry when the final session came”: CJ to “Paul,” Sept. 7, 1941, Rauner.
“Herman Land is a discovery”: CJ to Davidson Taylor, Aug. 4, 1941, Rauner.
“amusing family situation”: CJ to Phillips H. Lord, May 19, 1941, Rauner.
“Incidentally, doesn’t that strike you”: CJ to Sam Slate, Aug. 25, 1941, Rauner.
“In the history of soap opera”: James Thurber, “Soapland,” The New Yorker, June 12, 1948, 51.
“I kept two people on a raft”: Alex Lindsay, “Charles Jackson’s Long, Lost Weekend: A Personal Memoir,” unpublished ms., courtesy of Rae Lindsay.
“the bright spot of his life”: CJ to Jim and Liz Hart, July 25, 1942, Rauner.
“I’m getting fonder of ‘Sweet River’ ”: CJ to Alan Wallace, Aug. 2, 1942, Rauner.
“I am sick unto death”: CJ to Liz Hart, Aug. 25, 1942, Rauner.
“and drinking too much on the side”: Ibid.
Only then—“drunk with excitement”: CJ to Jim and Liz Hart, July 25, 1942, Rauner.
“When you know why the scripts”: Wylie, “Charles Reginald Jackson,” 30.
“We both think”: Lambie Wylie to CJ, July 19, 1942, Rauner.
“like the spoiled child I am”: CJ to Jim and Liz Hart, July 25, 1942, Rauner.
“[This] is understood by the author”: Quoted in CJ to F. W. Dupee, July 18, 1942, Rauner.
“The terror is there all right”: Quoted in CJ to Jim and Liz Hart, July 25, 1942, Rauner.
“I can see every reviewer”: Ibid.
“a completely narcissistic character”: CJ to Stephen H. Sherman, Aug. 4, 1942, Rauner.
“extraordinarily revealing study”: Sherman to CJ, Aug. 8, 1942, Rauner.
“I ate it up too, read it 20 times”: CJ to James Gould Cozzens, Aug. 10, 1942, Rauner.
“I don’t see anything so wonderful”: Quoted in CJ to FSJ (c. 1946?), Rauner.
“You said I wouldn’t like … written” SWJ to CJ, Oct. 15, 1942, Rauner.
“In the long run, of course”: CJ to Mary McCarthy, July 13, 1945, Vassar.
Chapter Seven • THE LOST WEEKEND
“Only yesterday … playpen”: CJ to KWJ (c. Aug. 1957), JFC.
“probably the most talked-about”: CJ to James van Tour, Nov. 9, 1942, Rauner.
“The only doubt in our minds”: Tour to CJ, Nov. 27, 1942, Rauner.
“No, don’t tell me anything”: Quoted in CJ to BB, July 12, 1950, Rauner.
her verdict (“a fine job”): BB to CJ, June 22, 1943, Rauner.
“wouldn’t mind at all the passages”: CJ to BB, June 23, 1943, Rauner.
“I finished the manuscript”: Stanley M. Rinehart to BB, Aug. 2, 1943, Rauner.
“Everybody came in to meet me”: CJ to RBJ, Aug. 4, 1943, Rauner.
“the only logical title”: CJ to Rinehart, Aug. 28, 1943, Rauner.
“without throwing the book”: Ibid.
“I am doing so well … shameful”: CJ to Thorborg Ellison, Sept. 17, 1943, Rauner.
“Who’s that sweet little man”: CJ to FSJ, April 17, 1944, Rauner.
“on account of the reputation”: CJ to Marvin Harms, Aug. 3, 1943, Rauner.
“and I think it still stinks”: CJ to FSJ, Nov. 28, 1943, Rauner.
“scare the average reader”: CJ to Rinehart, Sept. 17, 1943, Rauner.
“I can think of few documents”: Stephen H. Sherman to Farrar & Rinehart, Sept. 21, 1943, Rauner.
“launch[ing] the book on a flood”: CJ to Rinehart, Sept. 22, 1943, Rauner.
thought it a “humdinger”: Rinehart to CJ, Sept. 24, 1943, Rauner.
“the very soul of the dipsomaniac”: Morris Fishbein to Rinehart, Dec. 28, 1943, Rauner.
“expert and wonderful”: Quoted in Anne Rothe, ed., Current Biography 1944 (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1945), 326.
“continuous subtle pleading”: Haven Emerson to Rinehart, Jan. 5, 1944, Rauner.
“the only unflinching story”: Lewis’s blurb appears on the jacket of the third hardback edition of LW.
“Here’s my honest reaction”: William Seabrook to Rinehart, Jan. 19, 1944, Rauner.
“Willie Tells All [in Asylum]”: CJ to James van Tour, Nov. 9, 1942, Rauner.
“another drastic attempt”: Jay A. Graybeal, “William Buehler Seabrook,” Carroll County Times, Oct. 28, 2001; posted at http://hscc.carr.org/research/yesteryears/cct2001/011028.htm.
“After reading the book”: Harvey Breit and Marjorie Bonner Lowry, eds., Selected Letters of Malcolm Lowry (New York and Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1965), 63.
he’d “beaten him to it”: CJ, “We Were Led to Hope for More,” New York Times Book Review, Dec. 12, 1965, 4.
“The mescal-inspired phantasmagoria”: Quoted in Breit and Lowry, eds., Selected Letters of Malcolm Lowry, 61.
“There they are … lumped”: Edna Ferber to Rinehart (c. early Jan. 1944), Rauner.
“I resent and protest … bitterly”: CJ to Ferber, Jan. 6, 1944, Rauner.
“most interested in Charles Jackson”: Quoted in CJ to Charles Brackett, Feb. 12, 1945, Rauner.
“I have seen many small allusions”: CJ to Ferber, Feb. 1, 1945, Rauner.
good friend and “severest critic”: so CJ noted for Rinehart’s benefit at the bottom of a letter from Elling Aannestad to CJ, Dec. 19, 1943, Rauner.
cautioned Jackson … “simple style”: Aannestad to CJ, n.d., Rauner.
“most prized single letter”: CJ to Ted Robinson, July 12, 1945, Rauner.
“one of the most brilliant performances”: Robinson to CJ, Jan. 1, 1944, PSU.
“Five days out of a man’s life”: Quoted in Mark Connelly, Deadly Closets: The Fiction of Charles Jackson (Lanh
am, MD: University Press of America, 2001), 1.
“Gobs of celebs”: CJ to FSJ, Jan. 18, 1944, Rauner.
“Isn’t it wonderful it is the party”: SWJ to CJ (c. late Jan. 1944), Rauner.
“that special Wylie excitement”: CJ to Rinehart, Sept. 22, 1943, Rauner.
by means of “expert advice”: Philip Wylie, “Philip Wylie Jabs a Little Needle into Complacency,” AA Grapevine, Sept. 1944; posted at http://silkworth.net/grapevine/wylie_jabs.html.
Reviews of The Lost Weekend: Philip Wylie, in New York Times Book Review, Jan. 30, 1944, 7; John Chamberlain, in New York Times, Jan. 29, 1944, 11; Herbert Kupferberg, in New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review, Jan. 30, 1944, 4; Harrison Smith, in Saturday Review of Literature, Jan. 29, 1944, 5; “Damnation,” Time, Feb. 28, 1944, 102; Edmund Wilson, in The New Yorker, Feb. 5, 1944, 78; Robert Gorham Davis, in Partisan Review, Spring 1944, 199.
“The irrational newspaper reviews”: CJ to Aannestad, July 12, 1945, Rauner.
“the book conveys … isolation”: Philip Rahv to CJ, Feb. 1, 1944, Rauner.
“Jackson’s purpose is to describe”: Granville Hicks’s reader’s report on LW, Syracuse.
“I have never once resorted”: CJ to Bennett Cerf, Jan. 26, 1946, Rauner.
“Oh, I’m not as broke”: “Trade Winds,” Saturday Review, Sept. 2, 1967, 7.
“I lead off and am No. 1”: CJ to RBJ, July 3, 1944, Rauner.
“a fine photograph of me”: CJ to FSJ and SWJ, March 6, 1945, Rauner.
“the nearest American equivalent”: CJ to Rinehart, June 28, 1945, Rauner.
“Cerf and I know each other”: CJ to Maurice Friedman, Aug. 5, 1964, Rauner.
Charlie “is pretty well disturbed”: Carl Brandt to BB, Sept. 8, 1950, Rauner.
“It was a character study”: EC, xi.
“It was absolutely honest”: CJ to Warren Ambrose, March 1, 1954, Rauner.
“writing in the dark”: CJ, “The Sleeping Brain,” unpublished ms., Rauner.
“Not a single telegram”: CJ to family, July 24, 1963, JFC.
“The important thing is your work”: Mary Morris, “Mary Morris Goes to See the Author of ‘The Lost Weekend,’ ” PM, undated clipping (c. early 1944), Rauner.
he’d been “greatly concerned”: “Newark Author of Best Seller Gets Script Job in Hollywood,” Newark Courier-Gazette, March 23, 1944.
“of all the old gang”: Katherine Saverhill Beales to CJ, n.d., Rauner.
Miss Munson “looked the book over”: R.A.S. Bloomer to CJ, Dec. 28, 1943, Rauner.
“We are very flattered”: Louise E. Van Duser to CJ, April 23, 1944, Rauner.
“That’s what appealed to me”: CBJ to CJ, Jan. 15, 1944, Rauner.
“Certainly you—or Don”: HJ to CJ, Jan. 6, 1944, Rauner.
“She seemed pleased to be telling me”: CJ to FSJ, Jan. 18, 1944, Rauner.
“Oh that terrible book”: CJ’s notes for The Royalist, dated March 17, 1950, Rauner.
“You’ve staged such a wonderful come back”: BW to CJ, Aug. 24 (1943), Rauner.
“the happiest evening of my life”: CJ to “Miss Nelson,” Oct. 2, 1945, Rauner.
“I hate to think it’s finished”: CJ to RBJ, July 17, 1944, Rauner.
“oddly significant, no?”: CJ to Alan Wallace, June 22, 1944, Rauner.
Chapter Eight • THE MGM LION
“the Uncle Tom’s Cabin” of alcoholism: “Charles Jackson, Famous Author of ‘Lost Weekend,’ Is Opposed to Prohibition in Every Form,” The Beverage Times, Oct. 30, 1944, 1.
“Almost everybody has somebody”: Mary Morris, “Mary Morris Goes to See the Author of ‘The Lost Weekend,’ ” PM, undated clipping (c. early 1944), Rauner.
“Since the publication”: Francis Sill Wickware, “Liquor: Current studies in medicine and psychiatry are bringing enlightenment to the 30,000-year-old problem of drinking,” Life, May 27, 1946.
“turned completely upside down”: CJ, “The More Social Disease,” unpublished ms., Rauner.
“It was Don Birnam!” he’d retort: LN.
one third “pure invention”: “Editors’ Preface,” Time Reading Program Special Edition of The Lost Weekend (New York: Time Inc., 1963), x.
“I wish … that you’d say”: “Lost Weekend’s author loves the movie,” PM’s Sunday Picture News, Nov. 25, 1945, 3.
“I have yet to receive a fan letter”: CJ to CBJ, Jan. 13, 1954, Rauner.
“I do not see how you can go on”: CJ to Rohanna Lee, Jan. 29, 1945, Rauner.
“I’m one of the ‘Helens’ … ”: Lee to CJ, May 21, 1944, Rauner.
“in black and white”: Mrs. G. F. Lyle to CJ, Feb. 14, 1944, Rauner.
his “great sense of responsibility”: CJ to Charles Brackett, Jan. 2, 1945, Rauner.
“It was a dirty trick to play”: CJ to Lyle, Jan. 31, 1945, Rauner.
“Others shouldn’t be deprived”: “Charles Jackson … Opposed to Prohibition in Every Form,” 1.
“I’m a novelist, not a public speaker”: CJ to Russel Holman, Sept. 25, 1945, Rauner.
“simple souls” and “weaklings”: Joseph Kessel, The Road Back: A Report on Alcoholics Anonymous (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), 150; CJ is referred to as “N” in the book.
“a curious combination of organizing propaganda”: Sally and David R. Brown, A Biography of Mrs. Marty Mann: The First Lady of Alcoholics Anonymous (Center City, MN: Hazelden, 2001), 118.
“Every member should read”: Carlton Hoste to CJ, Feb. 15, 1944, Rauner.
failed to offer “any real substitute”: CJ to Carl Brandt, Jan. 26, 1946, Rauner.
“I am a writer first of all”: CJ to “Mr. Tyler,” Oct. 30, 1944, Rauner.
“Just a word now about Charles Jackson”: Marion May R., “CJ Speaks at Hartford AA,” AA Grapevine, Jan. 1945.
“Strike me dead if this sounds corny”: CJ to Dorothy Parker, Dec. 5, 1944, Rauner.
“I’m awfully tired of all this”: “In Our Midst,” Where, Dec. 7–15, 1945, 5.
“Dr. Gorrell and—and that fellow”: CJ to Anton J. Carson, July 12, 1945, Rauner.
“I wanted to stand up”: CJ, “What’s So Funny about a Drunk?,” Cosmopolitan, May 1946, 134.
“I’m god damned sick of the subject”: CJ to Carl Brandt, Jan. 26, 1946, Rauner.
“a bloody bore”: CJ/AA-59.
“Will I have the courage”: CJ to FSJ and SWJ, Dec. 16, 1943, Rauner.
“One best seller did it”: Hedda Hopper, “Screen News Here and in H-wood,” New York Times, March 22, 1944, Amusements 17.
“modest in spite of his mushrooming”: “Newark Author of Best Seller Gets Script Job in Hollywood,” Newark Courier-Gazette, March 23, 1944.
“Shower baths, barber shop, super-de-luxe”: CJ to SWJ, April 16, 1944, Rauner.
“I hope she connects the author”: CJ to FSJ, April 17, 1944, Rauner.
her “Lost-Weekend number”: CJ to RBJ, June 9, 1944, Rauner.
“I think you’re a great writer”: CJ to RBJ, April 26, 1944, Rauner.
“as though the friendship”: Mary McCarthy, The Lost Week, or The Caged Lion, unpublished ms., Vassar.
“Why I am wanted by these people”: CJ to RBJ, Aug. 3, 1944, Rauner.
Tracy “hounded [him] for days”: CJ to McCarthy, July 13, 1945, Vassar.
“hung onto [Jackson] for dear life”: CJ to Marion Fabry, Nov. 3, 1944, Rauner.
“Well, it’s all fun”: CJ to FSJ, May 6, 1944, Rauner.
“This fantastic town!”: CJ to RBJ, July 2, 1944, Rauner.
“I still can’t get over it”: CJ to Max and Lambie Wylie, June 13, 1944, Rauner.
“They tell the story about”: CJ to FSJ, April 20, 1944, Rauner.
“Arsur is hard to work with”: CJ to RBJ, July 11, 1944, Rauner.
“Story by Harry Ruskin”: CJ to RBJ, May 2, 1944, Rauner.
“Already ballyhooed”: “Virtually All M-G-M Players In ‘Nor All Your Tears,’ ” Box Office, June 3, 1944, 51.
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��absorb some of the atmosphere”: CJ to FSJ, May 3, 1944, Rauner.
“paved [his] way with social”: CJ to RBJ, May 29, 1944, Rauner.
“You must remember bad Bick”: CJ to Whitfield Cook, Nov. 21, 1944, Rauner.
“We have many many laughs”: CJ to RBJ, May 4, 1944, Rauner.
a “sharp letter” from his mother: CJ to RBJ, July 3, 1944, Rauner.
keep them “as a kind of diary”: CJ to RBJ, May 11, 1944, Rauner.
“we never know what to say”: CJ to RBJ, May 12, 1944, Rauner.
“Lately I have longed for you”: CJ to RBJ, June 12, 1944, Rauner.
still “a so-called ‘celeb’ ”: CJ to RBJ, June 13, 1944, Rauner.
“it’s the 20th Century neurosis”: CJ to RBJ, June 22, 1944, Rauner.
“prestige and independence”: Lincoln Barnett, “The Happiest Couple in Hollywood,” Life, Dec. 11, 1944, 101.
“a triumph, nothing less”: CJ to FSJ, May 6, 1944, Rauner.
“more sense of horror”: “Editors’ Preface,” Time Reading Program Edition of LW, xii.
“Next picture coming up”: CJ to RBJ, May 10, 1944, Rauner.
“luckiest guy in the world”: CJ to RBJ, July 11, 1944, Rauner.
“Yesterday I read that four”: CJ to Philip Wylie, May 24, 1944, Rauner.
“and certainly for not less”: CJ to RBJ, May 24, 1944, Rauner.
“I feel, and will always feel”: CJ to Carl Brandt, July 15, 1946, Rauner.
“I wish this did me some good”: CJ to Thomas Mann, Jan. 26, 1946, Rauner.
“a pretty penny—up in six figures”: Louella Parsons, “ ‘Lost Weekend,’ Psychological Story of a Drunk, to Be Filmed,” unpaginated clipping (source unknown) dated June 2, 1944, Rauner.
“DO NOT DISTURB”: CJ to Alma Pritchard, June 13, 1944, Rauner.
“If they bring it off”: Barnett, “The Happiest Couple in Hollywood,” 103.
“the easiest script we wrote”: Bernard F. Dick, Billy Wilder (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1996), 68.
“Simply won’t permit such a thing”: CJ to RBJ, June 3, 1944, Rauner.
“original & effective”: CJ to RBJ, June 27, 1944, Rauner.
“knowledge of ‘psychopathia’ ”: CJ to Leonard Shannon, March 26, 1945, Rauner.
“careful delineation”: “Radio: The Week in Review,” Time, Feb. 21, 1955.
