“Of America’s seven Nobel laureates [in literature], five were lushes.” And when alcoholism is about to kill a great writer – or his creativity (Fitzgerald, Tennessee Williams) – what then? “It may seem a little impertinent to gauge the literary merits of sobriety – you cannot write books of any discernible quality if you are dead – but clearly, sobering up is one of the more devastating acts of literary criticism an author can face.”