John Linklater
Death Writes
The Drinker
By Hans Fallada (Translated by Charlotte & A L Lloyd)
Libris 282pp £14.95 order from our bookshop
The Legend of the Holy Drinker
By Joseph Roth
Chatto & Windus 49pp £7.95 order from our bookshop
The authors of these two posthumously-published works both died alcoholic. Roth’s book was written during the first four months of 1939 in a Paris bar where he was dying. Fallada’s semi-autobiographical novel was written during a fortnight of the Autumn of 1944 in an asylum for the criminally insane, where he was held pending charges for the attempted murder of his estranged wife.
Both stories deal with protagonists who hit bottom, who have slumped beyond hope. Both, as Fallada’s hero terms himself, are great sufferers. They may be saved only by the intervention of a series of mercies, or little miracles, leading to death
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Things began to go wrong between Mr and Mrs Eliot almost immediately. Ostensibly the problem was Vivien’s mysteriously fluctuating health. It would be easy to reduce the Eliot marriage simply to a catalogue of Viv’s medical crises.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/marriage-made-in-hell
'The trouble seems to be that we are not asked to read this author, reading being a thing of the past. We are asked to decode him.'
From the archive, Derek Mahon peruses the early short fiction of Thomas Pynchon.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/rock-n-roll-is-here-to-stay
'There are at least two dozen members of the House of Commons today whose names I cannot read without laughing because I know what poseurs and place-seekers they are.'
From the archive, Christopher Hitchens on the Oxford Union.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/mother-of-unions