Edmund Wilson (1895-1972)
According to the biographer Lewis M. Dabney, “Wilson was the only well-known literary alcoholic of his generation whose work was not compromised by his drinking.” And Wilson could certainly drink. The literary critic and essayist readily imbibed whatever was on offer, including bathtub gin and even pure alcohol, although he preferred Molson beer and Johnnie Walker Red Label. The poet Stephen Spender recalled that “at the Princeton Club he would order six martinis and drink them one after another.” Nevertheless, Wilson rarely had a hangover, and he could get by on little sleep. He always resumed work at 9:00 in the morning and continued, pausing only to eat lunch at his desk, until 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon. “You have to set a goal for each day and stick to it,” he said. “I usually try to do six pages.” (These were legal-sized sheets written in pencil, and he later upped the quota to seven pages.)
The heavy drinking came later in the evening, but Wilson was not against taking an occasional slug of whiskey to help him start or finish a troublesome piece. On top of his daily six or seven pages, he found time to reply to letters and write in his journal, where, in addition to working out ideas for his fiction and essays, he recorded, in clinical detail, blow-by-blow accounts of his sexual relations with the women in his life. (Wilson had four wives and countless affairs, and managed to exert a strong appeal to women despite his pudgy physical unattractiveness.) He refused to spend time writing about things he did not care about–and although he struggled to stay afloat financially for his entire life, Wilson was proud that he could make a living writing only about that which genuinely interested him. “To write what you are interested in writing and to succeed in getting editors to pay for it,” he noted, “is a feat that may require pretty close calculation and a good deal of ingenuity.”
* Source: Daily Rituals by Mason Currey