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Farther and Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of Charles Jackson
From the prizewinning biographer of Richard Yates and John Cheever, here is the fascinating biography of Charles Jackson, the author of The Lost Weekend —a writer whose life and work encapsulated what it meant to be an addict and a closeted gay man in mid-century America, and what one had to do with the other.
Charles Jackson’s novel The Lost Weekend —the story of five disastrous days in the life of alcoholic Don Birnam—was published in 1944 to triumphant success. Within five years it had sold nearly half a million copies in various editions, and was added to the prestigious Modern Library. The actor Ray Milland, who would win an Oscar for his portrayal of Birnam, was coached in the ways of drunkenness by the novel’s author—a balding, impeccably groomed middle-aged man who had been sober since 1936 and had no intention of going down in history as the author of a thinly veiled autobiography about a crypto-homosexual drunk. But The Lost Weekend was all but entirely based on Jackson’s own experiences, and Jackson’s valiant struggles fill these pages. He and his handsome gay brother, Fred (“Boom”), grew up in the scandal-plagued village of Newark, New York, and later lived in Europe as TB patients, consorting with aristocratic café society. Jackson went on to work in radio and Hollywood, was published widely, lived in the Hotel Chelsea in New York City, and knew everyone from Judy Garland and Billy Wilder to Thomas Mann and Mary McCarthy. A doting family man with two daughters, Jackson was often industrious and sober; he even became a celebrated spokesman for Alcoholics Anonymous. Yet he ultimately found it nearly impossible to write without the stimulus of pills or alcohol and felt his devotion to his work was worth the price. Rich with incident and character, Farther & Wilder is the moving story of an artist whose commitment to bringing forbidden subjects into the popular discourse was far ahead of his time.
Charles Jackson’s novel The Lost Weekend —the story of five disastrous days in the life of alcoholic Don Birnam—was published in 1944 to triumphant success. Within five years it had sold nearly half a million copies in various editions, and was added to the prestigious Modern Library. The actor Ray Milland, who would win an Oscar for his portrayal of Birnam, was coached in the ways of drunkenness by the novel’s author—a balding, impeccably groomed middle-aged man who had been sober since 1936 and had no intention of going down in history as the author of a thinly veiled autobiography about a crypto-homosexual drunk. But The Lost Weekend was all but entirely based on Jackson’s own experiences, and Jackson’s valiant struggles fill these pages. He and his handsome gay brother, Fred (“Boom”), grew up in the scandal-plagued village of Newark, New York, and later lived in Europe as TB patients, consorting with aristocratic café society. Jackson went on to work in radio and Hollywood, was published widely, lived in the Hotel Chelsea in New York City, and knew everyone from Judy Garland and Billy Wilder to Thomas Mann and Mary McCarthy. A doting family man with two daughters, Jackson was often industrious and sober; he even became a celebrated spokesman for Alcoholics Anonymous. Yet he ultimately found it nearly impossible to write without the stimulus of pills or alcohol and felt his devotion to his work was worth the price. Rich with incident and character, Farther & Wilder is the moving story of an artist whose commitment to bringing forbidden subjects into the popular discourse was far ahead of his time.
496 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
23 people are currently reading
207 people want to read
About the author
Blake Bailey
23 books88 followersBlake Bailey is the author of biographies of Philip Roth, John Cheever, Richard Yates, and Charles Jackson. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians, and a finalist for the Pulitzer and James Tait Black Prizes. His 2014 book, The Splendid Things We Planned, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography. He lives in Virginia with his wife and daughter.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
September 12, 2018
Okay, I'll admit it: I'm a HUGE Blake Bailey fan. His literary biographies of Richard Yates and John Cheever are wonderful, and so is this one devoted to Charles (LOST WEEKEND) Jackson. Bailey covers the whole of Jackson's productive life: the stories and the failed and successful literary attempts, of which the famous novel made into the famous Ray Milland movie are only a part. Jackson, like his creation Don Birnam, was a career alcoholic, and Bailey deals with that aspect of the author with understanding but not indulgence. All in all, a wonderful read.
April 10, 2013
Mention “The Lost Weekend” (1945) to a Hollywood-classic-film buff, and you may be treated to a recap of that memorable scene in which the alcoholic writer Don Birnam (played by Ray Milland), after struggling for years to write his masterpiece, has sunk so low that we see him trudging through the streets of Manhattan, typewriter in hand, looking for a pawnshop. His monumental literary ambitions dissolve as he searches for the cash that will buy him another drink.
Who reads Charles Jackson’s novel now? Jackson himself believed that Billy Wilder and his writing partner, Charles Brackett, actually improved on its prose when they transferred it to the screen — although they did not do justice to the ending, which, in Hollywood terms, had to suggest uplift.
In “Farther and Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of Charles Jackson,” Blake Bailey believes the novel deserves a revival, although he stops short of calling it a masterpiece.
Jackson wrote other novels, but nothing that received the praise lavished on “The Lost Weekend” by no less than Thomas Mann and several members of the New York intellectual/Partisan Review crowd. But, as Bailey notes, Mary McCarthy realized that Jackson had researched his own sensibility so exhaustively in “The Lost Weekend” that continuing on in that vein could result only in diminishing returns.
Jackson did strike out trying to write with candor and courage about homosexuality at a time when publishers were loath to touch the subject. Hollywood dared to deal with anti-Semitism in “Gentleman’s Agreement” (1947) and with racism in “Pinky” (1949), but a serious and sympathetic treatment of gay life was considered beyond the pale. As a result, Jackson had to treat the subject gingerly — indeed, abstractly — to get his work published.
That hamstrung him, and he relapsed into alcoholism, dreaming of making it big once again in Manhattan literary circles and in Hollywood. It was not to be, and he degenerated into a script doctor for television dramas.
If this biography seems a sad story, it is mitigated and enlivened by Bailey’s sensitive prose style in what amounts to a fascinating anatomy of failure. The biography also benefits from its likable subject, a man who was just as happy to pal around with Judy Garland as to engage in tête-à-têtes with Mann.
Jackson seems very much a writer of his period, unable to delve as deeply as he would have liked into his true métier. If only he could have stretched himself somewhere between Andre Gide on one end and Gore Vidal on the other. But he had a wife and family to support, as well as a desire to seem mainstream. Few writers can be daring and conventional — or as endearing and honorable as Charles Jackson.
Who reads Charles Jackson’s novel now? Jackson himself believed that Billy Wilder and his writing partner, Charles Brackett, actually improved on its prose when they transferred it to the screen — although they did not do justice to the ending, which, in Hollywood terms, had to suggest uplift.
In “Farther and Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of Charles Jackson,” Blake Bailey believes the novel deserves a revival, although he stops short of calling it a masterpiece.
Jackson wrote other novels, but nothing that received the praise lavished on “The Lost Weekend” by no less than Thomas Mann and several members of the New York intellectual/Partisan Review crowd. But, as Bailey notes, Mary McCarthy realized that Jackson had researched his own sensibility so exhaustively in “The Lost Weekend” that continuing on in that vein could result only in diminishing returns.
Jackson did strike out trying to write with candor and courage about homosexuality at a time when publishers were loath to touch the subject. Hollywood dared to deal with anti-Semitism in “Gentleman’s Agreement” (1947) and with racism in “Pinky” (1949), but a serious and sympathetic treatment of gay life was considered beyond the pale. As a result, Jackson had to treat the subject gingerly — indeed, abstractly — to get his work published.
That hamstrung him, and he relapsed into alcoholism, dreaming of making it big once again in Manhattan literary circles and in Hollywood. It was not to be, and he degenerated into a script doctor for television dramas.
If this biography seems a sad story, it is mitigated and enlivened by Bailey’s sensitive prose style in what amounts to a fascinating anatomy of failure. The biography also benefits from its likable subject, a man who was just as happy to pal around with Judy Garland as to engage in tête-à-têtes with Mann.
Jackson seems very much a writer of his period, unable to delve as deeply as he would have liked into his true métier. If only he could have stretched himself somewhere between Andre Gide on one end and Gore Vidal on the other. But he had a wife and family to support, as well as a desire to seem mainstream. Few writers can be daring and conventional — or as endearing and honorable as Charles Jackson.
July 8, 2014
A risky choice for Bailey for his third (I think) literary biography. He makes this forgotten man stand out in all his very human addictions, quest for fame, contradictions and deceptions. It's an important book because it reveals that there's always more to the official story... sometimes a lot more. Once again we see writing and the need to write through Bailey's eyes as a lifelong exercise in masochism. Bound up as it is with money and the desire for fame, the literary career is bound to end in disaster, I suppose. There were times when I was reading when I thought that Jackson was more drug addict than writer, a practiced con artist. Here is someone whose addiction to alcohol and pills both enabled and destroyed his art. It's a very sad story.
The flaws for me were that I never could quite tell how sexually experienced Jackson was with men. There seems to have been a section cut out about Jackson's relationship with an older lover called Thor, because Bailey suddenly refers to Thor's marriage, says "more on this anon," and then never goes back to it. So his relationships with men seem extremely tenuous right up to the end of his life, when clearly he was having gay sex and even had a sort-of lover. I'm sure it was hard to track down the details of his liaisons, but I feel there might have been more to glean. As it is, so much exhaustive focus is put on his long-suffering wife, Rhoda, and his daughters, who were in a way a lifelong cover for him...although he clearly adored his daughters, at least.
I suppose I shouldn't say this, but I am really curious as to how the Philip Roth bio is going to go, given that all of Bailey's subjects up to now have been complicated, deceptive men with addictions.
The flaws for me were that I never could quite tell how sexually experienced Jackson was with men. There seems to have been a section cut out about Jackson's relationship with an older lover called Thor, because Bailey suddenly refers to Thor's marriage, says "more on this anon," and then never goes back to it. So his relationships with men seem extremely tenuous right up to the end of his life, when clearly he was having gay sex and even had a sort-of lover. I'm sure it was hard to track down the details of his liaisons, but I feel there might have been more to glean. As it is, so much exhaustive focus is put on his long-suffering wife, Rhoda, and his daughters, who were in a way a lifelong cover for him...although he clearly adored his daughters, at least.
I suppose I shouldn't say this, but I am really curious as to how the Philip Roth bio is going to go, given that all of Bailey's subjects up to now have been complicated, deceptive men with addictions.
July 11, 2013
When I saw the title of this book, I was intrigued; when I saw the cover, I knew I had to read it. A 400+ page book on the life of a writer with one still-known book seems like an unlikely choice to read, but when that book is "The Lost Weekend," a work that gave us not only a famous, Oscar-winning movie, but a new awareness of alcoholism--and a new slang phrase--that's a different matter.
Charles Jackson emerges as one of the tragic figures he was always struggling to set down on paper: a narcissistic, closeted-and-married, desperately needy man who was loved by many and understood by none. I absolutely recommend this book for a glimpse inside the life of a tormented but loving soul.
Charles Jackson emerges as one of the tragic figures he was always struggling to set down on paper: a narcissistic, closeted-and-married, desperately needy man who was loved by many and understood by none. I absolutely recommend this book for a glimpse inside the life of a tormented but loving soul.
April 11, 2021
This is Blake Bailey’s third biography and third portrait of the artist as a premier-league pisshead. Unlike Bailey’s previous subjects, Jackson was a one-book boy who wrote himself out with his debut, and Bailey’s best intentions do not adequately paper over this fact. Hopefully the upcoming biography of Philip Roth will be better.
February 7, 2015
I came to Blake Bailey's "Farther and Wilder" by way of rereading "The Lost Weekend" after a 40-year hiatus. I was surprised at how contemporary the book seemed, and I realized that I knew next to nothing about its nearly forgotten author. This exhaustive, detailed-oriented, highly readable biography fills that void with a vengeance. We learn that Charles Jackson wrote five books in addition to his classic study of alcoholism, and that he spent most of his life planning a huge, unpublished Proustian epic entitled "What Happened." We also learn that Jackson's attempts to write were hampered by his harrowing personal life, including his own alcoholism and his struggles with his sexuality, which he only hinted at in his own work. Bailey obviously has great affection for his subject--even referring to Jackson as "Charlie"--but he doesn't allow his enthusiasm to cloud his objectivity. I highly recommend this fascinating story of a very talented but ultimately tragic writer.
September 6, 2021
I'm a fan of Blake Bailey. Read both Cheever and Yates biographies. Bailey pulls you along with his masterful research and his respectful and benevolent treatment of his subjects. Charles Jackson and Richard Yates were one hit wonders, as novelists, though Yates wrote some fine short stories.
Cheevers had a more prolific output. All were outstandingly flawed human beings. I had a hard time reading about Jackson, after a while I just didn't care about him. Cheevers and Yates were dedicated to their crafts. Jackson didn't seem to know he had one. In bailey's notes he says Jackson was a good father, according to his daughters. I wish we had seen more of it in the biography. Bailey did a passable job of pulling the man out of this narsicitic alcoholic drugged being.
Cheevers had a more prolific output. All were outstandingly flawed human beings. I had a hard time reading about Jackson, after a while I just didn't care about him. Cheevers and Yates were dedicated to their crafts. Jackson didn't seem to know he had one. In bailey's notes he says Jackson was a good father, according to his daughters. I wish we had seen more of it in the biography. Bailey did a passable job of pulling the man out of this narsicitic alcoholic drugged being.
December 21, 2017
What an insight
What one learns through Charles Jackson, is truly harrowing and sad. This book was as much introspection as it was it was revealing. Although a biography, Blake Bailey does a great job chronologically and simply--almost seemly taking us through a quite extraordinary man. Dealing with alcoholism and homosexuality no doubt creates room for a mixed protagonist that your heart breaks for. When its learned he had bipolar, its enlightening. But overall I loved the book. What an interesting time it had to be, and the unfortunate part being he needed all those supplements to succeed. But I think for alcoholic history as well as homosexuality in writing and culture, that clearly Jackson paved the way for many.
What one learns through Charles Jackson, is truly harrowing and sad. This book was as much introspection as it was it was revealing. Although a biography, Blake Bailey does a great job chronologically and simply--almost seemly taking us through a quite extraordinary man. Dealing with alcoholism and homosexuality no doubt creates room for a mixed protagonist that your heart breaks for. When its learned he had bipolar, its enlightening. But overall I loved the book. What an interesting time it had to be, and the unfortunate part being he needed all those supplements to succeed. But I think for alcoholic history as well as homosexuality in writing and culture, that clearly Jackson paved the way for many.
April 19, 2013
Good bio of a man who wanted to be a world-class writer but never quite made it. A cautionary tale of early success (He wrote the huge best-seller, "The Lost Weekend") and addiction. Jackson never conquered his addictions and tortured personal life and ended up leaving us only one very good novel and some choice short stories.
February 16, 2014
Interesting and well-written biography of the forgotten gay author Charles Jackson who shot to fame after writing The Lost Weekend, but was not able to sustain a lengthy career, even though he did publish a handful of books and even hit the best-seller lists one more time. A sad story of ambition stymied by repressed sexuality, alcoholism and drug addiction.
November 20, 2013
An exhaustive work -- full of detail. A fun read for me as I grew up with Kate and Sarah in Orford. They all suffered.
September 25, 2016
Fascinating. Well-written, in-depth story of the man who wrote "The Lost Weekend".
April 4, 2019
“………………..Well, in fact, Papa had a story, but he did his best to shield us from his demons and just be a loving father.” Sarah, Charles Jackson’s daughter speaking to Blake Bailey.
My first read from Blake Bailey, but it won't be my last, a biography of the writer – and for long periods, non-writer – Charles Jackson, author of The Lost Weekend, a famous and iconic novel from the 1940's about a troubled alcoholic. I'll have a rest from Mr Bailey for now as this was a full-on book for me; 435 pages, with dipping into a dictionary (my word knowledge has increased no end) and referencing the vast range of writers (Mary McCarthy, for example, who I hadn’t heard of and will have a look), Hollywood stars and directors, editors and publishers, and other high-profile characters and celebrities of the 1940’s and 50’s that Jackson’s path crossed, along which he was sometimes driving a steamroller.
Excellently researched and written, occasionally I had to re-read some sentences as I was not used to the style, but this reduced as I grew accustomed; this was a tiny niggle.
I knew nothing of Charles Jackson. Suffice to say his was a troubled life, plagued with alcohol and drug addiction, troubled (an understatement) by his sexuality, most likely an undiagnosed, and probably very poorly self-medicated, bi-polar condition, with both highs and lows almost following the seasons. Manipulative, narcissistic and almost always putting his needs first; even when he appeared not to be, he seemed to be exercising his abject need to be liked and loved. He also seemed unable to bear being ordinary, and imagined himself on a par with literary greats such as Fitzgerald and Tolstoy. This sounds bleak, but he was a fascinating character, and Blake Bailey’s writing carries all this so well for a really enjoyable read. His long-suffering wife had this to write to their daughters when they separated:
'We've all been brain-washed.... Papa had convinced us all that I had nothing in my life that he didn't give me - that all interests, all activity, all relationships, stemmed from him and that without him I'd have nothing. That was true, in a way, because he so completely dominates everyone within his relationships.'
Yet, there were many redeeming features. The Lost Weekend is apparently a strong piece of work, and there were some other notable writings. He could be very kind, giving, incredibly popular. And most important, his relationship with his children. None of this though could counterbalance a sad life.
So, now onto reading The Lost Weekend.
My first read from Blake Bailey, but it won't be my last, a biography of the writer – and for long periods, non-writer – Charles Jackson, author of The Lost Weekend, a famous and iconic novel from the 1940's about a troubled alcoholic. I'll have a rest from Mr Bailey for now as this was a full-on book for me; 435 pages, with dipping into a dictionary (my word knowledge has increased no end) and referencing the vast range of writers (Mary McCarthy, for example, who I hadn’t heard of and will have a look), Hollywood stars and directors, editors and publishers, and other high-profile characters and celebrities of the 1940’s and 50’s that Jackson’s path crossed, along which he was sometimes driving a steamroller.
Excellently researched and written, occasionally I had to re-read some sentences as I was not used to the style, but this reduced as I grew accustomed; this was a tiny niggle.
I knew nothing of Charles Jackson. Suffice to say his was a troubled life, plagued with alcohol and drug addiction, troubled (an understatement) by his sexuality, most likely an undiagnosed, and probably very poorly self-medicated, bi-polar condition, with both highs and lows almost following the seasons. Manipulative, narcissistic and almost always putting his needs first; even when he appeared not to be, he seemed to be exercising his abject need to be liked and loved. He also seemed unable to bear being ordinary, and imagined himself on a par with literary greats such as Fitzgerald and Tolstoy. This sounds bleak, but he was a fascinating character, and Blake Bailey’s writing carries all this so well for a really enjoyable read. His long-suffering wife had this to write to their daughters when they separated:
'We've all been brain-washed.... Papa had convinced us all that I had nothing in my life that he didn't give me - that all interests, all activity, all relationships, stemmed from him and that without him I'd have nothing. That was true, in a way, because he so completely dominates everyone within his relationships.'
Yet, there were many redeeming features. The Lost Weekend is apparently a strong piece of work, and there were some other notable writings. He could be very kind, giving, incredibly popular. And most important, his relationship with his children. None of this though could counterbalance a sad life.
So, now onto reading The Lost Weekend.
June 5, 2021
Comparable to Blake Bailey's biography of Richard Yates--also an excellent read--Farther and Wilder is a detailed portrait of an important American writer, and it's not clear that anyone would have completed these books if Bailey hadn't written them. Recommended to anyone interested in 20th century literature, Hollywood, alcohoholism, AA, pre-Stonewall LGBTQ+ lives, America in general, and more.
March 1, 2018
Excellent character study, deeply researched
Beautifully written, meticulously researched. The fascinating life and works of Charles Jackson, best remembered as the author of The Lost Weekend.
Beautifully written, meticulously researched. The fascinating life and works of Charles Jackson, best remembered as the author of The Lost Weekend.
July 20, 2013
This is a very thorough, meticulously researched literary biography which is also wonderfully written, not a given with such books these days. Jackson's self-destructive tendencies could make him a nightmare to live with, but he was also a devoted family man and dedicated to his craft. After finishing this book I'm very much looking forward to reading the collection of Jackson's stories that has just been reissued. I wish Jackson had managed to get beyond the many years of seconal and booze-damaged false starts to actually write his proposed follow up to The Lost Weekend, but at least he did manage to finish that book and see it adapted into the tremendous Billy Wilder movie starring Ray Milland as Don Birnam. And he also managed to come out as a gay man in the early 1960s, which couldn't have been easy.
July 24, 2023
This biography is perfect. To borrow Kingsley Amis's quote about The Lost Weekend, this bio too is "marvelous and horrifying"--it hurt but I enjoyed it, it's excellent. I love Charles Jackson's weird life, his books, his letters, his problems, and how no one seemed capable of holding those problems against him for long because he was just too lovable, too easy to forgive. I feel the same way about him now! The writing of the bio takes on that familiar, small-town gossip sort of ease, affectionate but critical at the same time, so fitting. I ended up crying by the end but then laughing as I cried, it was a whole ordeal. I'll probably always want to read it over someday but then never have the heart to put myself through it again, it's that intense and moving. Wow.
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March 24, 2014"This almost obsessively detailed biography is based upon more than 20 boxes of Jackson’s correspondence and other papers housed in the Dartmouth library, interviews with Jackson’s daughters, a niece and a grandnephew, and visits to Jackson’s childhood home of Newark in upstate New York."
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February 3, 2017Blake Bailey is the best.
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May 4, 2013Biog J125b 2013
August 25, 2013
Interesting subject for a biography. So far, I'm liking the author's writing style- one that makes the story flow well.
December 24, 2013
I love Blake Bailey's style of literary biography, but I wasn't as interested in Jackson as I was in Yates and Cheever.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews