by Blake Bailey
“remember her? the lovely girl”: CJ to RBJ, June 9, 1944, Rauner.
“Romance, hell”: CJ to RBJ, May 18, 1944, Rauner.
“like a ton of bricks”: CJ to Mrs. John Retzer, Feb. 14, 1945, Rauner.
“I all but fell in love”: CJ to RBJ, June 3, 1944, Rauner.
“like the girl and boy next door”: Charles Kaiser, The Gay Metropolis: 1940–1996 (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997), 192.
seemed “all but lifeless”: CJ to Judy Garland, April 18, 1945, Rauner.
“ … Once, within a wood”: CJ to RBJ, June 10, 1944, Rauner.
“no man in his right mind”: CJ to RBJ, June 14, 1944, Rauner.
akin to a “Nazi demonstration”: CJ to RBJ, June 20, 1944, Rauner.
“the slightest twinge of jealousy”: CJ to RBJ, June 29, 1944, Rauner.
“Alas, how are the mighty fallen”: CJ to Pritchard, June 26, 1944, Rauner.
a bad case of “stage-fright”: CJ to RBJ, June 15, 1944, Rauner.
“Then you must talk with him”: CJ, “Strictly Personal,” in The Stature of Thomas Mann, ed. Charles Neider (New York: New Directions, 1947), 49.
“I know of no book”: CJ to DS, Aug. 17, 1953, Rauner.
“I was really delighted”: Mann to CJ, Aug. 18, 1945, Rauner.
“generous and gratifying impulse”: Mann to CJ, Nov. 4, 1948, Rauner.
“the most entertainingly articulate”: Barnett, “The Happiest Couple in Hollywood,” 112.
“It’s genuinely tragic”: CJ to RBJ, July 17, 1944, Rauner.
His “nicest day in Hollywood”: CJ to RBJ, July 3, 1944, Rauner.
“out of all the people”: CJ to Charles Brackett, Aug. 6, 1960, Rauner.
he was “hot and bothered”: CJ to P. Wylie, June 12, 1944, Rauner.
“Damn it to hell”: CJ to RBJ, May 23, 1944, Rauner.
“the unhappiest man alive”: CJ to RBJ, June 12, 1944, Rauner.
“the other writers say”: CJ to RBJ, June 8, 1944, Rauner.
“I proposed that my fall option”: CJ to Brandt, July 18, 1944, Rauner.
“I have been taken in and how”: CJ to RBJ, July 10, 1944, Rauner.
“I think he remembered”: CJ to Lily Messinger, Nov. 22, 1944, Rauner.
Chapter Nine • SIX CHIMNEY FARM
“the most beautiful town in America”: Quoted in CJ, “Noted Author Delivers Some Caustic Comments on His Wealthy Neighbors,” Manchester Union Leader, Aug. 1, 1946.
“absolute peak of fulfillment”: CJ to RBJ, May 14, 1944, Rauner.
“When I’m rich … mine!”: DS-Show, 79.
“one of the most beautiful houses”: Quoted in CJ to Alan Wallace, June 22, 1944, Rauner.
“He also did the Capitol”: CJ to FSJ, Nov. 28, 1943, Rauner.
“paid for twice over”: CJ to Nila Mack, July 10, 1944, Rauner.
“but won’t it be wonderful”: CJ to RBJ, June 10, 1944, Rauner.
“study-and-retreat-and-bedroom”: CJ to RBJ, June 7, 1944, Rauner.
“the colors more beautiful”: CJ to Mrs. John Retzer, Feb. 14, 1945, Rauner.
“ne’er-do-well husband”: F&W (in which Fred Brock appears as “George Marr”).
“To Kittuh, written in the poet’s Heart’s Blood”: CJ, “JAXON” notebook, Rauner.
“at whatever rental or cost”: CJ to RBJ, June 13, 1944, Rauner.
“I read your manuscript”: Isabelle Booth to CJ (c. early Aug. 1943), JFC.
“Boom, you can’t realize”: CJ to FSJ, Dec. 5, 1944, Rauner.
“That Dreadful Book”: CJ to Stanley M. Rinehart, March 8, 1945, Rauner.
“I know you write”: Leonard Lyons, “The Lyons Den” (syndicated column), Sept. 26, 1968.
“Why do you suppose Mr. Jackson”: CJ, “What’s So Funny about a Drunk?,” Cosmopolitan, May 1946, 135.
“Ned loved everybody”: Author int. Ann Davis, July 18, 2009.
“Mr. Jackson to Hanover”: My deepest gratitude to Julia Fifield (age 104 in 2009) for letting me see her stepfather’s hilarious diary.
“defensive before this impulsiveness”: Daniel Doan, “Random Thoughts in Memory of Charles Jackson,” unpublished ms., Rauner.
“Those kids aren’t worth educating”: Author int. Robert Richmond, Aug. 7, 2009.
“to encourage [Sarah and Kate]”: CJ to Buck Lilienthal, Feb. 28, 1945, Rauner.
“I’ve never seen Rhoda”: CJ to Jesse Lilienthal, April 16, 1945, Rauner.
“He was in a dark suit”: Author int. Julia Fifield, July 18, 2009.
“Anti-Semitism … awful here”: CJ to Mrs. John Retzer, Feb. 14, 1945, Rauner.
“white girl” had married a Jew: Author int. KWJ, June 10, 2009.
“You’ve got to write not one”: Mary Morris, “Mary Morris Goes to See the Author of ‘The Lost Weekend,’ ” PM, undated clipping (c. early 1944), Rauner.
“merely a chapter, so to speak”: CJ to Rinehart, Sept. 17, 1943, Rauner.
“how you [sic] got out of it”: John J. Lloyd to CJ, Jan. 17, 1944, Rauner.
“to solve psychiatric problems”: Marion May R., “CJ Speaks at Hartford AA,” AA Grapevine, Jan. 1945.
“in a more leisurely and novelistic style”: “Newark Author of Best Seller Gets Script Job in Hollywood,” Newark Courier-Gazette, March 23, 1944.
“It will be a story about the reaction”: CJ to RBJ, May 3, 1944, Rauner.
“Well, the Ulrichs poem”: CJ to RBJ, May 11, 1944, Rauner.
“The stars have not dealt me”: A. E. Housman, Additional Poems, XVII; posted at http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~martinh/poems/complete_housman.html.
“there is nothing so important”: BB to CJ, May 18, 1944, Rauner.
“the two parts of [his] famous novel”: Philip Wylie to CJ, May 18, 1944, Rauner.
“I feel confident”: CJ to RBJ, May 23, 1944, Rauner.
“a kind of half-hearted finger-exercise”: CJ to P. Wylie (et al.), May 24, 1944, Rauner.
“I am very sorry but I never discuss”: CJ to James Neill Northe, March 27, 1945, Rauner.
“The story will be heavy”: CJ to P. Wylie (et al.), May 24, 1944, Rauner.
“is your first responsibility”: P. Wylie to CJ, July 25, 1944, Rauner.
“them’s my sentiments also”: Ted Amussen to CJ, May 29, 1944, Rauner.
“decadence and death”: CJ to Rinehart, June 2, 1944, Rauner.
“There are a great many things”: BB to CJ, June 6, 1944, Rauner.
“I am a little tired of writing”: CJ to F. W. Dupee, Jan. 8, 1945, Rauner.
“if examined properly”: CJ to Rinehart, June 2, 1944, Rauner.
“We talked solid from 7 pm to 1 am”: CJ to RBJ, June 14, 1944, Rauner.
“account of a war neurosis”: CJ to George Davis, June 22, 1944, Rauner.
“the domination of the uniform”: CJ to Anton J. Carlson, July 12, 1945, Rauner.
“trying to steer a safe and sane”: CJ to Jim and Liz Hart, Nov. 21, 1944, Rauner.
“POSSIBLE COPY FOR CATALOGUE”: CJ to Helen Rinehart, March 19, 1945, Rauner.
“So you are a shipyard worker”: CJ to Fritz Requardt, Feb. 15, 1945, Rauner.
“a delusion and a snore”: CJ to Robert Nathan, July 15, 1945, Rauner.
“to [his] eternal credit”: CJ to RBJ, Aug. 7, 1944, Rauner.
“Remember how we used to read him”: CJ to Marion Fabry, Nov. 3, 1944, Rauner.
“You have left a good many friends”: Gregory Peck to CJ, Oct. 21, 1944, Rauner.
“I like to show off”: CJ to Peck, Oct. 30, 1944, Rauner.
“I subscribe to ’em all”: CJ to Judy Garland, April 18, 1945, Rauner.
“What will people think?”: Quoted in CJ to FSJ, Sept. 12, 1944, Rauner.
a “stunning picture” of Garland: CJ to Nathan, Oct. 13, 1944, Rauner.
“Like the adorer I was”: CJ to Nathan, Feb. 19, 1945, Rauner.
“For Judy, who is one”: CJ to FSJ, Dec. 5, 1944, Rauner.
“CHARLIE
DEAR, DUE TO CHANGES”: Quoted in CJ to FSJ, April 19, 1945, Rauner.
“all tingly in the legs”: CJ to Garland, April 18, 1945, Rauner.
“The sins of MGM were never”: CJ to Katharine Hepburn, Nov. 22, 1944, Rauner.
“faint qualms” about the union: CJ to Minnellis, June 29, 1945, Rauner.
Jackson blamed such “violent rumors”: CJ to Mrs. John Retzer, Feb. 14, 1945, Rauner.
“Wait till Orford hears of our guests”: CJ to Fabry, Nov. 3, 1944, Rauner.
“almost an anxiety to see me”: CJ to RBJ, Aug. 7, 1944, Rauner.
“How nice, how very nice”: CJ to Hepburn, Dec. 4, 1944, Rauner.
“too busy a gal”: CJ to Hepburn, June 28, 1945, Rauner.
“I don’t know who I am”: Robert Benchley to CJ, Oct. 12, 1944, Rauner.
she’d “gone ‘off’ again”: CJ to Benchley, Oct. 16, 1944, Rauner.
“wonderful talk all day”: CJ to Fabry, Nov. 3, 1944, Rauner.
“She still keeps on the wagon”: CJ to Benchley, March 9, 1945, Rauner.
“I’m going to need you in my life”: CJ to Dorothy Parker, Dec. 5, 1944, Rauner.
bringing in “badly needed cash”: CJ to Stanley M. Rinehart, Aug. 27, 1945, Rauner.
“Sweet Kate, bonnie Kate”: CJ to Hepburn, Aug. 30, 1945, Rauner.
“free, modernized, American”: CJ, The Seagull, unpublished film treatment, Rauner.
“You ask about Garbo”: CJ to BB, Nov. 20, 1944, Rauner.
“truly dramatic action”: CJ to Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, Dec. 6, 1944, Rauner.
“somewhat hastily,” he confessed: CJ, The Seagull, Rauner.
“I know you will simply fall in love”: CJ to Leland Hayward, July 15, 1945, Rauner.
insisted it “belong[ed] to her”: CJ to RBJ, May 19, 1944, Rauner.
“I’ve never been in on such a brilliant”: CJ to RBJ, July 24, 1944, Rauner.
“Such wonderful company”: CJ to Nathan, Oct. 13, 1944, Rauner.
“The New Yorker has just bought five”: CJ to Fabry, Nov. 3, 1944, Rauner.
“thought lovingly of Horace”: CJ, “Funny Dream,” The New Yorker, March 17, 1945, 62.
“I think Sally [Benson]”: William Maxwell to CJ, n.d., Rauner.
“ ‘Dreams Are Funny’ sounds to me”: CJ to Maxwell, Jan. 31, 1945, Rauner.
“I want to send one to Judy”: CJ to Maxwell, March 23, 1945, Rauner.
“I won’t begin to tell you”: CJ to Amussen, Jan. 2, 1945, Rauner.
“Their main reaction”: Maxwell to CJ, April 23, 1945, Rauner.
“I was frankly log-rolling”: CJ to Liz Hart, June 6, 1945, Rauner.
“nobody cares about them”: Maxwell to Carl Brandt, Sept. 20, 1950, Rauner.
“to hell with The New Yorker”: CJ to BB, July 18, 1951, Rauner.
“are artful, full of evasions”: CJ to DS, June 6, 1951, Rauner.
“it’s one story for a change”: CJ to BB, Jan. 28, 1952, Rauner.
a little too patly “clinical”: Maxwell to BB, Feb. 11, 1952, Rauner.
“I could punch him in the nose”: CJ to BB, Aug. 22, 1952, Rauner.
Chapter Ten • WILL AND ERROR
“I took it to bed with me that night”: Ray Milland, Wide-Eyed in Babylon (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1974), 211.
“I just want to tell you”: Oliver Jensen, “ ‘Lost Weekend’ Hangover: Milland is haunted by alcoholic he portrayed,” Life, March 11, 1946, 23.
“the Hitchcock signature”: CJ to Robert Nathan, Oct. 13, 1944, Rauner.
“Hello, Charlie,” he muttered: Alton Cook, “Movies: Author of ‘Lost Weekend’ Is Sick of Alcohol Topic”; undated clipping (source unknown), Rauner.
“FOR COMMENT SEE CELIA’S SPEECH”: Quoted in LN.
“far better than they were”: CJ to Charles Brackett, Nov. 22, 1944, Rauner.
“To please the Hays office”: Louella Parsons, “ ‘Lost Weekend,’ Psychological Story of a Drunk, to Be Filmed,” unpaginated clipping (source unknown) dated June 2, 1944, Rauner.
“trusting to luck”: CJ to Nathan, Feb. 19, 1945, Rauner.
“Now, naturally I resent”: CJ to Brackett and Billy Wilder, Jan. 2, 1945, Rauner.
“Since the night I first read”: CJ to Brackett and Wilder, Jan. 8, 1945, Rauner.
“I am beginning to loathe”: CJ to Nathan, Feburary 19, 1945, Rauner.
“Charlie, I’ve got a fine present”: Quoted in CJ to Philip Rahv, March 5, 1945, Rauner.
he was “flattered enormously”: CJ to FSJ and SWJ, March 6, 1945, Rauner.
“Words, words, words”: CJ’s rewritten ending of LW movie included with his letter to Brackett, March 27, 1945, Rauner.
“derive a small (but very small)”: CJ to Brackett, Aug. 21, 1945, Rauner.
“ … there are wanderers in the middle mist”: Quoted in CJ to FSJ, Sept. 9, 1944, Rauner.
that kind of “lavender taint”: CJ to Sam Hershfeld, Dec. 6, 1944, Rauner.
“You’d be surprised what a difference”: CJ to Ted Amussen, Nov. 21, 1944, Rauner.
“I read it over and think, ‘my god’ ”: CJ to Hume Cronyn, Nov. 22, 1944, Rauner.
“when the story begins”: CJ to Rahv, Jan. 12, 1944 (actually 1945), Rauner.
“every single syllable”: CJ to Stanley M. Rinehart, Jan. 29, 1945, Rauner.
“Elling was simply unable”: CJ to BB, Feb. 12, 1945, Rauner.
seemed “mightily impressed”: CJ to Elling Aannestad, Feb. 13, 1945, Rauner.
“one of the most interesting” CJ to Rinehart, March 8, 1945, Rauner.
pruning “all the passages”: CJ to Arthur Kober, Feb. 12, 1945, Rauner.
“homosexual to start with”: CJ to Jesse Lilienthal, Feb. 13, 1945, Rauner.
“[Anyone] who dares to write”: CJ to Rinehart, April 25, 1945, Rauner.
“the ‘fatigue’ of marriage”: CJ to Amussen, March 27, 1945, Rauner.
“The books of Dreiser”: “Lost Weekend Author Speaks to English Classes,” The Dartmouth, May 10, 1946.
“agents, publishers, Metro”: CJ to FSJ, Dec. 6, 1944, Rauner.
“He pretty much knew”: Author int. Pat Hammond, July 18, 2009.
“working harder and harder”: CJ to Hume Cronyn, Dec. 6, 1944, Rauner.
“I don’t sleep at all”: CJ to Cronyns, Nov. 22, 1944, Rauner.
“This drug [Seconal]”: Patient Notes, March 10, 1945, D-HH.
“man-eating public or publisher”: HFG.
“He can’t deny that he has done”: RBJ to FSJ (c. early 1951), Rauner.
“favorite little hospital”: CJ/AA-59.
because of “overwork”: CJ to HJ, March 23, 1945, Rauner.
“On a scale of one to ten”: G. F. Cahill, Jr., “Memorial: Sven Martin Gun- dersen 1904–1998”; posted at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articlesPMC2194408/.
“I haven’t a nickle [sic]”: CJ to Brackett, Nov. 22, 1944, Rauner.
“Charlie was a very high liver”: Columbia University oral history interview (c. 1976) with RS.
“the coal bill has been”: CJ to FSJ and SWJ, March 6, 1945, Rauner.
“dies a thousand deaths”: CJ to William L’Engle, July 17, 1945, Rauner.
“God knows I’m not doing it”: CJ to BB, Aug. 27, 1945, Rauner.
“a little on the gloomy side”: CJ to RBJ, June 10, 1944, Rauner.
“I love Bob dearly”: CJ to Rinehart, July 12, 1945, Rauner.
“for the really interesting people”: Mary McCarthy, The Lost Week, or The Caged Lion, unpublished ms., Vassar.
“Mr. Jackson does not like to meet”: Quoted in Reuel K. Wilson, To the Life of the Silver Harbor: Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy on Cape Cod (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2008), 117.
“quite a whirl”: CJ to Rinehart, July 12, 1945, Rauner.
“a kind of lotus-land”: CJ to Amussen, July 11, 1945, Rauner.
“Bob will only be happiest”: CJ to Brackett, July 12, 1945, Rauner.
“I
seem, to myself, a very old man”: Nathan to CJ (c. mid-July 1945), Rauner.
“a warm human something”: CJ to BB, Oct. 11, 1950, Rauner.
“high point of the week”: CJ to BB, July 11, 1945, Rauner.
“Mary and Clem all but tore me to shreds”: CJ to Rahv, July 12, 1945, Rauner.
“I liked you so much”: CJ to McCarthy (c. July 9, 1945), Vassar.
“A satire, it was to be”: Mary McCarthy, “The Novels That Got Away,” New York Times Book Review, Nov. 25, 1979, 3.
“You and your visit here” McCarthy to CJ (c. July 11, 1945), Rauner.
“wouldn’t leave [him] a shred”: CJ to BB, July 10, 1952, Rauner.
“My life is in your hands”: CJ to McCarthy, July 13, 1945, Vassar.
“Dear Minx”: CJ to McCarthy, Aug. 8, 1945, Vassar.
“very very John Marquand”: Quoted in Reuel K. Wilson, To the Life of the Silver Harbor, 118.
“touch so much as a comma”: CJ to Liz Hart, June 6, 1945, Rauner.
“Does the war cause the deterioration”: Quoted in CJ to Amussen, June 25, 1945, Rauner.
“So help me God I finally know”: CJ to Amussen (et al.), June 25, 1945, Rauner.
“because Farrar & Rinehart wouldn’t”: CJ to KWJ, Aug. 1, 1964, JFC.
“She thinks that I only get confused”: CJ to Rahv, July 12, 1945, Rauner.
“100% in favor”: Amussen to CJ, July 8, 1945, Rauner.
“so far superior to The Lost Weekend”: CJ to BB, July 11, 1945, Rauner.
“I am, as you know”: Philip Wylie to CJ, June 8, 1944, Rauner.
“penchant for using difficult words”: CJ to P. Wylie, Sept. 4, 1944, Princeton.
“Nuts to you”: P. Wylie to CJ, Sept. 13, 1944, Princeton.
his “literary conscience”: CJ to P. Wylie, Feb. 12, 1945, Rauner.
“Dear Charlie, old kid”: P. Wylie to CJ, July 16, 1945, Princeton.
“the gist of which was”: CJ to Russel Crouse, Jan. 26, 1946, Rauner.
“much in need”: CJ to SJP, Sept. 23, 1958, JFC.
Barr expressed his “very serious concern”: Kevin Lally, Wilder Times: The Life of Billy Wilder (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1996), 144.
“She was so thrilled”: CJ to Brackett, March 27, 1945, Rauner.
“If they would have given me”: Lally, Wilder Times, 150.
“positively limp” by the end: CJ to BB, Feb. 12, 1945, Rauner.
“Paramount has succeeded”: Quoted in “Production Notes,” Turner Classic Movies DVD edition of The Lost Weekend.
