A nice variety of perspectives on the pleasures and perils of excess.
Diverse reflections on substance abuse and society in 23 sharply fashioned testimonies.
“What once was viewed as a shocking moral deficiency is now increasingly seen as a tragic vulnerability,” comments editor Shannonhouse (Out of Her Mind, 2000), who supports this assertion by selecting texts from both the addict’s point of view and that of society. Excerpts from Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) was one of the first accounts of Western drug use, and Sigmund Freud’s earnest inquiry, The Cocaine Papers, remind us that 19th-century society was fairly tolerant of controlled substance use. By contrast, in his 1891 essay on “The Ethics of Wine-Drinking and Tobacco-Smoking,” Leo Tolstoy argues persuasively (if verbosely) that “the universal habit of consuming hashish, opium, wine, and tobacco . . . is, beyond all doubt, highly pernicious [and] fraught with terrible evils.” Early-20th-century entries, including “How Children are Made Drunkards” and “The Enemy” (a 1909 tale of a woman’s morphine addiction), take an even more moralistic tone. Their lugubrious air is lightened by O. Henry’s barbed “Let Me Feel Your Pulse,” which transforms the cynical narrator’s alcoholism into hallucinatory prose, and by the mordant insider’s perspective offered in “A Bartender Tells What Man Did to Booze and Booze to Man.” Familiar pieces by literary figures include Dorothy Parker’s “Big Blonde,” John Cheever’s “The Sorrows of Gin,” and excerpts from Naked Lunch, by William Burroughs, and The Doors of Perception, by Aldous Huxley. Not all the addictive behavior explored is chemical: in a selection from Double Down, Stephen and Frederick Barthelme ruefully chronicle runaway gambling, while a jagged excerpt of Sue Silverman’s memoir Love Sick dissects the sexual addict’s compulsion to sleep with strangers. In the final piece, “Confessions of a Middle-Aged Ecstasy Eater,” a lonely father reconnects with his delinquent son via the drug and rails against current punitive restrictions on adult pursuit of sensation and enlightenment.
A nice variety of perspectives on the pleasures and perils of excess.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-75716-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Modern Library
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
A dull examination of the idea that a certain set of symptoms commonly afflicts ambitious, talented young women growing up in societies that value males over females. Authors Silverstein (Psychology/CCNY; Fed Up, not reviewed) and Perlick (Psychology/Cornell Medical College) assert that they find evidence of this syndrome—which they dub ``anxious somatic depression''—in medical writings going back to the fourth century b.c.; in recent writings of anthropologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists; and in the biographies, correspondence, and diaries of some 40 prominent women (e.g., Queen Elizabeth I, Charlotte Brontâ, Indira Gandhi). In addition, they distributed questionnaires and psychological tests to some 2,000 young women whose responses confirmed their findings. They cite evidence that women seeking to achieve in areas traditionally reserved for men pay a heavy price: depression, anxiety, disordered eating, headaches, and other somatic and psychological symptoms. These first appear in adolescent girls who chafe under the societal limits placed on them as females and who are ambivalent toward their femininity, especially those growing up in a period of great change in women's roles and those with traditional mothers. In other times, the disorder was recognized as hysteria or neurasthenia, but today, the authors assert, it frequently goes undetected by physicians and therapists. Silverstein and Perlick's aim is to make the syndrome known so that it will be recognized and treated. Preventing it, they note, would require changing society so that women's ambitions are given equal opportunity and their roles equal respect. Although the authors have consigned some of their research data and discussions of methodology to appendixes in an attempt to make their writing accessible to the general reader, the effort largely fails. Professional colleagues may persevere, but the stilted, redundant prose may well discourage those less dedicated. (charts and diagrams)
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-506986-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
A psychologist attempts to answer some basic questions: Why do certain memories stay with us while others fade? Why do our recollections of events change over time? And why does memory seem to play tricks on us? A river of memory flows through our lives, according to Kotre (Univ. of Michigan; Seasons of Life, 1990), and its purpose is the creation of meaning about the self. He describes memory as a hierarchical system. At the bottom are vivid recollections of specific events; above them are general impressions, or generic memories; as one ascends the hierarchy these become more thematic, more laden with meaning. At the apex of Kotre's scheme is the self, which he says is both the product of the hierarchy and the creator of its meaning. He traces the ways in which the remembering self and the remembered self—the ``I'' and the ``me''—develop from birth to adulthood, and he speculates that memories may become more mythic in old age as individual events take on special significance in shaping the story of one's life. Kotre liberally illustrates his ideas with his own memories (the white gloves of the title belonged to his grandfather), numerous case histories from psychological literature, and recent events (John Dean, Ronald Reagan, and Anita Hill all appear in these pages). He sidesteps the controversial issue of recovered memory, saying merely that as a juror he wouldn't convict if such a memory were the sole evidence, but that as a therapist he would take these memories on their own terms and trust what he encountered. There is little hard science here but lots of behavioral data, conjecture, and theory. The construct of memory that Kotre offers seems flimsy once it's stripped of the padding provided by his own memories and numerous stories. Readable and often entertaining, but hardly compelling.
Pub Date: June 21, 1995
ISBN: 0-02-918464-9
Page Count: 268
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
