| View Larger Image | A Drinking Life: A Memoir | Paperbackby Pete Hamill (Author)
| List Price: | $13.95 | | Price: | $5.58 | | You Save: | $8.37 (60%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Back Bay Books | | Page Count: | 280 Pages | | Publication Date: | April 01, 1995 | | Sales Rank: | 44,616th |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
An acclaimed author offers an honest self-portrait of coming of age in a culture that considers drinking an essential part of becoming a man and reveals how it nearly destroyed his ability to write. Reprint. 60,000 first printing. Tour. NYT. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 48 reviews)
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A (Sort of) Drinking Life by K. Carlson (NYC)  2 Stars
November 21, 2009
Pete Hamill may be a good newspaper reporter, but he "buried the lead" with the title of this memoir. It has actually very little to do with drinking--at least the kind of egregious, alcoholic drinking that Fitzgerald did--and unless the author is not telling the whole story, it's not about alcoholism. Maybe it wasn't meant to be, but then, he shouldn't have called it "A Drinking Life".
Aside from the fact that I found neither the story nor its style to be particularly compelling, the main problem is the author's lack of self-reflection. There is no agonizing over his problem, no soul-searching, no cataclysmic event in which a moment of clarity leads him to sobriety. It's as if he decides one day that he's allergic to peanuts and decides to give them up. In which case, there really isn't any story here worth mentioning, at least about drinking.
Carolyn Knapp's "Drinking: A Love Story" is a much better first person account about alcoholism, and "Angela's Ashes" is one of the best books ever written on the insidiousness of alcoholism as a family illness.
However, if you're looking for a memoir about an NY Irish kid who grows up to be a reporter, this might be the book for you.
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An Alcoholic's Memoir, Minus The "War Stories" by Meaghan Ringwelski (Michigan)  5 Stars
September 30, 2009
I've seen a few people who have already reviewed this book bemoan the fact that Pete Hamill doesn't spend very much time going into great detail about the problems he dealt with as an alcoholic. How could he name his memoir "A Drinking Life" when it's not riddled with lurid tales of alcohol-induced drama? It's titled "A Drinking Life," I think, because it chronicles the portion of his life that happened while he was a drinker and surrounded by drinkers. The ending is dramatic because suddenly - poof! - he doesn't drink any more. Drinking problems usually creep up on people and are hard to shake; in Hamill's case, his drinking was inevitable, and the abrupt way he dropped the habit is remarkable and commendable.
Oh, and the guy knows how to string words together.
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The story of a drinking culture (to see all my book reviews go to beansbookblog.wordpress.com) by E. Kinney Klusendorf (St. Joseph, MI)  4 Stars
September 07, 2009
Pete Hamill's memoir/autobiography eloquently tells the story of a drinking culture. It is set in New York, in a poor Irish immigrant neighborhood in the 1940's. Much of the story is similar to his bestselling novel Snow in August in that a boy comes of age in an environment that values ignorant thugs over curious students, corner bars over libraries, fighting over communicating. With few sober, involved fathers, most boys grow up in a household led by a mother with too many children who ends up working a menial job just to put food on the table while the fathers spend their wages in the bar. While I assumed that Snow in August was largely based on his own neighborhood and upbringing, after reading this memoir, it's amazing just how closely one mirrors the other. So the story moves through Hamill's life from boyhood through adulthood and marriage; the constants in his life seem to be running away from who he is (or seeking sho he is?) and drinking in order to deal with it. Though well educated and clearly bright, his use of alcohol as novacaine for life is not much different than his father's. Hamill wanders the world wherever his writing career will take him whereas his father only wanders the neighborhood. Still, they're both wanderers who use alcohol to forget, pretend, hide. As a young boy, he's wildly into comics, and he has this fabulous line: "Comics taught me, and millions of other kids, that even the weakest human being could take a drink and be magically transformed into someone smarter, bigger, braver. All you needed was the right drink" (10). Wow. What a commentary on the culture of alcohol or escapism or altered reality. This is a great book.
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Pete Hamill does it again by Maggie San Miguel (Austin, TX) 5 Stars
August 10, 2009
I love this man's books. I felt like I was there growing up in New York with him. So engrossing. So lovely.
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A drinking life by D. Bessette 5 Stars
November 23, 2008
It hit closer to home than I expected. How blessed Peter Hamill is to have an "a ha " moment and release himself from this awfull curse.
Also loved the history of happennings that he experienced and shared with us.
Great read................D Bessette
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