- Paperback: 128 pages
- Publisher: Faber and Faber (20 Aug 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 057120855X
- ISBN-13: 978-0571208555
- Product Dimensions: 17.2 x 11.2 x 1 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
85,719 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #50 in Books > Health, Family & Lifestyle > Health Issues > Addictions > Alcoholism
- #63 in Books > Biography > Social & Health Issues > Alcohol & Drug Abuse
- #80 in Books > History > Social & Economic History > Health & Welfare
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More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
A self-confessed veteran of hard-drinking, John Sutherland's Last Drink to LA traces the hard facts and tragic figures of alcoholism, set against his own confessional tale seen darkly through the bottom of a never-empty glass. It makes for powerful, stirring reading. Sutherland, an academic and writer, was drunk for the equivalent of "five undergraduate degrees, three PhDs, four Californian marriages, and two life sentences". Such quantifying defines him as an imaginative writer, but equally as a calculating drinker. Acknowledging the strong link between his profession and the bottle, he cites the usual bleary-eyed suspects: Norman Mailer, Jack London, Kingsley Amis, Evelyn Waugh, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Chandler et al, as well as classic drinking texts, such as Pete Hamill's A Drinking Life, Jack Wiener's The Morning After, and even Beowulf. Alcohol is the taste that launched a thousand quips, and as many lonely, painful deaths. Startling statistics (one in 10, a ratio that used to refer to unemployment in the UK, now refers to those of us with alcohol problems) accompany caustic observations of a society where the Prime Minister's son has illustrated the spur-earning kudos of excessive drinking. He details the history, philosophy and methods of Alcoholics Anonymous, comparing it to a "terrorist network" in its lack of organisation, but acknowledging its success rate as group therapy with certain types of drinker, including, thankfully, himself. He called time on his own habit, which had resulted in domestic violence and adultery, in 1983, and went to meetings in Los Angeles, where the companionship of a succession of attendees helped him stay clean. He admits that the trickiest parts of "AA" are its moral prescriptions (and the coffee that tasted of battery acid), but acknowledges that it offers pragmatic tools. Abstemious ever since (though he movingly details his son's struggle with similar demons), he knows his limits: "I'll die an alcoholic, I know. But, hopefully, a sober one". So no "Cheers!" but three quiet cheers, perhaps, for a persuasive piece of uncompromising writing. --David Vincent
Product Description
Since its launch 70 years ago, Alcoholics Anonymous has sparked hot debate. IN AA to LA, John Sutherland examines the exotic mutation of the movement in the hothouse atmosphere of southern California. This book is part-reportage, part-confession - a study of AA as it has evolved alongside the Dream Factory of Hollywood, laced with personal testimony from two generations of Sutherlands who have passed through it. When it comes to cleaning up, West is best - or at least more fun...
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Dr John Sutherland, now Lord Northcliffe Professor at University College London and a distinguished literary critic, was one of my tutors back in 70s. He was unfailingly witty, generous with his time and an excellent lecturer. On only one occasion did I see him in the condition which he describes in this frank and useful monograph on AA and his own experience as an alcoholic, and on that occasion, I assumed it to be a 'one off', the kind of temporary lapse of which we are all capable. It seems to me an astonishing act of bravery on Professor Sutherland's part to write about these things.
Last Drink to LA is an enlightening and courageous book, and quite different from the wallowing, breast beating, confessional splurge one might be offered from a media celebrity. This, in contrast, offers analysis and hope, and should be required reading in all surgeries, branches of AA etc.
Last Drink to LA is an enlightening and courageous book, and quite different from the wallowing, breast beating, confessional splurge one might be offered from a media celebrity. This, in contrast, offers analysis and hope, and should be required reading in all surgeries, branches of AA etc.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I don't know much about literature. I'm just a working class builder who struggles with drink.
It's a superb book. It's full of insight and the sort of stuff that sticks around and bubbles up out your sub-conscious when you need it to. Stuff like, " 'Keep It Simple' is truly the drunk's motto. Nothing simpler than disaster. Smash the crockery and you never have to wash up again", and
"'Why do you drink' asked the young prince.? 'I drink because I am sad.', replied the drunkard. 'And why are you sad.?' asked the prince. 'Because I drink.' ",
"You take refuge in smart replies because straight answers are so hard to come up with",
"After a while every drunk drinks to forget what he has done and will do again. And, of course, there is the sheer nastiness of the Edward Hyde everyone has inside them. Edward thrives on booze.", and, perhaps most importantly,
"I'll die an alcoholic, I know. But, hopefully, a sober one".
It's a superb book. It's full of insight and the sort of stuff that sticks around and bubbles up out your sub-conscious when you need it to. Stuff like, " 'Keep It Simple' is truly the drunk's motto. Nothing simpler than disaster. Smash the crockery and you never have to wash up again", and
"'Why do you drink' asked the young prince.? 'I drink because I am sad.', replied the drunkard. 'And why are you sad.?' asked the prince. 'Because I drink.' ",
"You take refuge in smart replies because straight answers are so hard to come up with",
"After a while every drunk drinks to forget what he has done and will do again. And, of course, there is the sheer nastiness of the Edward Hyde everyone has inside them. Edward thrives on booze.", and, perhaps most importantly,
"I'll die an alcoholic, I know. But, hopefully, a sober one".
9 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The title and blurb to the contrary, this book is not about A.A., or even A.A. in L.A., although its second half does make a few vivid observations of the latter. This book isn't quite sure what it's about, perhaps because its author combines the encyclopediac tendency of the graduate student with the rambling narrative of the drinker.
So he begins by listing famous writer drunks, and famous writing about drunks (an enjoyable sort of annotated bibliography), then veers into AA as a path to his own autobiography. Nothing so strange about this -- AA is, as Sutherland notes, a story-telling cure -- but it is striking that he requires two frames, one literary, one sociological, to tell his personal story.
Alcoholics feel excluded and "other," and crave connection, and this may explain Sutherland's need to provide a double context for his narrative. It might also shed light on his excessive use of quotation, reference and allusion (often with a further, unnecessary "as they say" tagged on). He welcomes even cliches, which provide, apparently, a sense of being "with it" or "in the know."
Belonging, then, is everything. The lousy AA coffee is referred to at least four times, and there is no thought of over-repetition; what is important is to share in the dicton. Quotes are oddly transformed (e.g. Chaucer's rains become "soote shoures"). Outright contradictions are made: AA both is and is not an effective treatment for alcoholics. Exactness does not seem to be the point; it is rather the drive to show familiarity with all has been said on the subject (and a good many others).
If you have the patience for this kind of discourse, you are probably, like the author himself, a connoisseur of AA stories, and will enjoy this curious tripartite little book.
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