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March 27, 2004

Dry

I've always been quick to say that a nice hard martini is my best friend. I unabashedly love alcohol, to the point of caressing the stem and talking dirty to the uneaten olives in the glass. Didn't George Washington Carver say something like he loved watermelons so much so that he would personally offer some to Queen Elizabeth? Something like that? Well if that's the case, gin and tonics are my watermelons... or something like that.

Yesterday I read Augusten Burroughs' 'Dry' from cover to cover. In the literary sea of memoirs and essays, 'Dry' stands out like a beacon. Memoir writing seems to be the trend of the moment. But who would argue? Writers have the ability to deftly combine nonfiction with unreal elements of fiction through the platform that is the memoir. By slightly stretching the truth (Sedaris comes to mind) a writer can transform an otherwise dull trip to the park into a Woody Allen movie. That wasn't a good analogy. But readers are sucking up these materials. Take a gander at Lily Burana, Margaret Cho, Arthur Golden, David Rakoff, and Cynthia Kaplan for some other fine works.

What makes 'Dry' stand out as a wonderful piece of work to me, other than the fact of our shared love for a martini, is how candidly funny Burroughs was able to remain even in the darkest of times. His life was anything but a trip to the park. It was, for a lack of a better word, quite sobering to experience through him his daily struggles with alcohol and drugs. Nor was he perfect. But he was real.

I haven't touched alcohol since finishing that book. Of course, it's only been two days. Although I haven't (yet) gotten to the stage of having 400 empty DeWar's bottles laying around my apartment, I don't intend on getting there. Next I see a vodka martini, instead of whispering lovely nothings into its ear, I'll just lightly jab it on the shoulder and say, "I like you very much."

Posted by Charlie at March 27, 2004 09:36 AM