Alcoholite at the Altar: The Writer and Addiction: The Writings of Roger Forseth - Softcover

Forseth, Roger; Csencsitz, Cassandra

9780692993156: Alcoholite at the Altar: The Writer and Addiction: The Writings of Roger Forseth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0692993150 ISBN 13: 9780692993156

Publisher: IntoWords Press, 2018

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From a pioneer in the field of addiction and literature, Roger Forseth, comes a singular collection of essays on the complex role that alcohol has played in the lives of our literary heroes and their characters. With a focus on Prohibition-era writers, Forseth’s humanistic scholarship speaks to a breadth of professional fields as well as literary enthusiasts of all kinds. From poignant epigraphs to footnotes filled with supporting literary and scientific data (to say nothing of an epic index), Alcoholite At The Altar is a Great Books–style education and feast for the mind on the pleasures of comparative literature and unpretentious prose that is both entertaining and economical. Essential reading for anyone interested in the humanities, the social sciences or the matter of addiction, Forseth’s body of work will take his audience on a rich literary ride as it explores the human condition in all its thirst.

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About the Author

A pioneer in the field of addiction and literature, Roger Forseth (1927-2016) created a new language for a sensitive topic that is both buzz-kill and vicarious thrill. His language merged concrete experience and science to replace moral judgment with empathy and objectivism. A recovering alcoholic who lived to tell, he survived delirium tremens, an episode after which doctors said he would never regain more than half his brain. But rather than lose his mind, he went on to enjoy the first sober and most productive chapter of his career, most notably founding Dionysos: The Literature and Intoxication Triquarterly, which was published from 1990 to 2000. The eldest of three boys and with one older sister, Roger’s first love was books, a fact that controversially led him to an academic career instead of the family business. After graduating from Central High School in Aberdeen, he went away to Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where he met his future wife and fellow English major, Grace Bahr, the child of another first-generation American success story. The couple married and conceived a baby before senior year, making college history when he accepted Grace’s diploma because she was too pregnant to cross the stage. Prior to Carleton, he served as an electrician in the Navy from 1945 to 1946 at bases in Chicago and Corpus Christi. After graduating from Carleton in 1950, he completed his Ph.D. in English at Northwestern University in 1956 with his dissertation on “The Function Of Imagery In The Lyric: Pope To Wordsworth.” Roger's first teaching post was at Louisiana State University of Baton Rouge (1955-57), where at the time he was the youngest professor in that university’s history. Following posts at Southern Illinois University (’57-’61) and LSU New Orleans (’61-’64), in 1964 he accepted an offer from the University of Wisconsin-Superior and moved to the Northland with his wife and children. It was there in the cold country of Sinclair Lewis, on whose writing and drinking he would later concentrate, that his alcoholism would reach its peak and its end. Roger retired from full-time teaching in 1991 but continued part-time online for twenty-three more years, completing his last course in 2014.

Review

"Forseth was not only an uncommonly good writer, he was an enthusiastic researcher and his passion for research is both palpable and contagious."
--Frank Wilson for The Catholic World Report

"Forseth's strongest feeling of spiritual connection was with Sinclair Lewis... His analysis of Lewis's novels is consistently thoughtful and often revealing. It is also persuasive in arguing that one cannot understand his work without knowing of his drinking problems, which have been greatly underestimated in recent times. So, one might say, has Forseth's own transparent and intelligent writing."
--Jonathan Leaf for The New Criterion

"A worthy and touching remembrance. The collection is a worthy addition to the literature. If there's a heaven, Prof. Forseth is feeling very proud of his granddaughter."
--Richard Lingeman, author of Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street

"Roger Forseth's writing is so lively and absorbing that one wishes there were more."
--C.B Dodson

"When I learned that Roger, on alternative nights, read one of Shakespeare's sonnets or a letter by Keats, my first reaction was: how sensible. This is a man who knows how to enjoy himself and understands what's important, an impression confirmed when we exchanged thoughts on such mutual enthusiasms as Coleridge, Auden, and Raymond Chandler. His scholarly work on alcoholism and American writers will prove invaluable to future scholars and readers, but I will always think of Roger as the man who knew what to read before turning out the light."
--Patrick Kurp of Anecdotal Evidence

"The pioneering work in the field was done by an Americanist, Roger Forseth, whose careful and provocative studies of such writers as Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway use close textual analysis of novels in context of the medical model of addiction. His analyses interweave the writers' alcoholism with that of the characters in their novels. This pattern Forseth established is emulated by other major analytic works... [that] adhere to the medical model, and interweave textual and biographical analyses."
--Excerpt from Reading Alcoholisms by Jane Lilienfeld