Literary Devices: Booze

Lunch!

In some of my writing, I have characters who use guns a lot, and every now and then I get some detail about guns wrong and I get flooded with notes from helpful people explaining my mistake. Which is fine and good. So, let’s turn the tables a little. I may not be an expert on firearms, but I am an expert in firewater (see what I did there? Me good professional word person).

I am in many ways, a walking cliché: The writer who enjoys his liquor a little too much. It’s certainly not my fault that my ancestors made alcohol both delicious, all-natural, vaguely healthy if you believe European doctors, and man’s best friend. I am the victim here, is what I’m saying. And my books often reflect this lifelong love affair with The Drink: In the Avery Cates books, in Lifers and Chum and We Are Not Good People my characters all drink heavily and while you might argue this also explains why the stories they find themselves in are so dark and awful (and yet, hilarious!) because getting shitfaced is itself dark and awful (but hilarious!) it remains a literary device I use a lot. Admittedly, I use the Booze Device mainly so my characters have something to do with their hands (see also: Cigarettes).

Still, if you’re imagining that I myself get all ginned up and plow through fifty pages of golden prose while my eyes are crossed (method writing, in other words), you’re wrong. I remember once Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane being interviewed and he was asked about playing live shows while high, and he dismissed it out of hand, saying something about how you can’t do that because the guitar strings would suddenly seem like they were as thick as firehoses and everything would go to hell (I’m paraphrasing). While a glass of the brown stuff has often been my companion when writing, it’s not like you can guzzle a fifth of bourbon and then write fifteen pages of really coherent prose.

Of course, characters actually in the book? Why not. From what I can tell no one wants verisimilitude when it comes to liquor in our stories.

Shots! Shots! Shots!

In the controversial film American Sniper no one is talking about the true controversy: Sienna Miller, who appears to weigh 60 pounds in the film, consuming half a bottle of whiskey in about ten minutes. While there is a nod to reality with a subsequent scene of Ms. Miller puking her guts out, the facts is, many films and novels like to depict binge drinking as something anyone can engage in at any time.

Are there people who can drink a bottle of Rye and stagger on? Sure. Are they functional members of society? I doubt it. While many fictional characters (including a few I’ve invented myself) treat liquor like Popeye treats spinach, in reality not only does no one actually drink like that, no one would actually want to. With the possible exception of me when I was 18.

Yet in novels and films (yes, including some of my own novels) people drink a dozen shots of corn liquor and continue to remain upright, coherent, and totally reasonable. In real life if I drink a dozen shots I go through a superhuman phase where I can tear my clothes off and dance on top of police cars, followed by a lengthy period of drowsiness followed by a lengthy period of incarceration and regret and shame. Whenever I see a scene in a TV show or film showing the characters casually doing shots of hard liquor without getting even the slightest bit drunk, it makes me a little annoyed, to be honest.

To quote Blazing Saddles: A man drink like that and he don’t eat, he is going to die.

Hangover Shmangover

Now, if you did drink an entire bottle of Rye in one sitting and survived without choking on your own vomit overnight, your morning would be hell on earth. Unless you’re a fictional character in a plot that has no time for you to spend 36 hours throwing up, shivering, and begging people to kill you.

Back in college I once attended an off-campus party and proceeded to drink what I estimate was an entire keg of beer. This was a wonderful decision until it became a terrible decision, and then the decision kept getting worse and worse until it had outpaced my previous Worst Decision of My Life (which was to become a fan of the New York Mets) by several orders of magnitude. Borderline alcohol poisoning is no fun. And the hangover was epic. I wasn’t right for two days, and the first 24 hours were some of the worst of my whole life.

In movies and books? Hangovers are handwaved: People sit up, wince, touch their heads, maybe have a bit of a puke, but are then mobile and ready to go. This is often punctuated by an empty bottle of liquor in bed with them. Then, they have a shower and are at work an hour later, looking perfectly healthy. This is so far from reality you have to start imagining that these characters are secretly aliens who have consumed the endrunkened humans and taken their place. It’s literally fantasy. If I went to work the day after drinking an entire bottle of something, I would spend the day discretely throwing up in the bathroom.

Of course, you can attain the superpower of being able to drink entire bottle of liquor and walk away, but this requires a serious disease and usually a lack of interest in continuing to live. I’m talking about Weekend Warriors, especially when the character in a book or film is presented as not being the sort who regularly drinks entire bottles of booze. Yet they somehow jump on the Crazy Train and can jump off, nimbly, any time they want. And I call bullshit.