Reflections on neurosis, well deserved praise, and Caroline Knapp’s
Drinking: A Love Story
by Jena Salon
Caroline Knapp
I don’t write fan letters to authors; not because they don’t deserve them, but because I am too obsessive. Every time I am inspired to write to an author, my inspiration is squashed by nervousness. What if my letter is boring? What if my interpretation of the book is all wrong? What if my letter ends up in the hands of interns at the publishing company who read what I wrote and laugh and laugh and then share some faux pas of mine with each other again and again. And then there is the fact that I am a bad gusher—as anyone who has asked me to write them a letter of recommendation knows—and I have a hard time piling on praise. It’s not that I don’t love things. I do. I love tons of things—literature and people and places—but I have a hard time explaining why without feeling clichéd. I want to say “exquisite” but it comes out “competent.” I worry that my poor gushing skills will lead to a mediocre fan letter and the author will mumble, “Okay, thanks,” and toss the letter into the garbage can.
I imagine, in other words, that the author I write to, the author I adore, is completely inaccessible. It doesn’t matter that I personally know many authors, some of whom are quite widely read, and all of whom love any bit of praise they can scrounge up. We all like to be liked. But these writers I don’t know; they are intimidating.
This morning I finished Caroline Knapp’s Drinking: A Love Story, her memoir about her life as a high-functioning alcoholic and her subsequent recovery, and I decided I was going to write to her. The book’s resonance had snuck up on me. At the beginning, I enjoyed the book and found it interesting, and intellectually stimulating. The way she presents alcoholism is so intimate. Knapp shares not only her own experiences, but a broad spectrum of voices, people she’s known coupled with scientific research. (Sadly) that’s not usually enough to force me to suck up my pride and write to an author. Really, I didn’t even notice how attached I’d become to the book until the scene when Michael, her boyfriend of a few years, discovers her stash of liquor on his porch:
Michael was livid. “I can’t fucking believe this,’ he said, pouring both bottles down the kitchen sink. ‘What the fuck are you doing?”
She tells him that she can’t help it, she has a drinking problem, and although he is furious, she writes, “he put his arms around me and held me while I cried and in the morning, over coffee, he pulled me onto his lap and said, “You really scare me. We have to do something about this.’”
I rarely cry reading books, but this passage had me teary. I sat on the couch at six in the morning and wanted to write Caroline Knapp personal and inappropriate things I had no business telling her. I wanted to tell her that she should hold onto Michael forever and that I knew what it was like to be with that kind of man—a man who would support you and carry your weight even as you beat him up (emotionally), terrify him, scream at him. I wanted to tell her that I didn’t think her portrayal of him in the book, “too angelic,” too much of a martyr. I knew the truth—her truth; at least, as I assumed it was. I knew personally what it was like to be with that man. I felt connected to her. I felt like I knew her. I didn’t feel like she would judge me because although it was her writing that had ultimately moved me, I wasn’t trying to write to her to say she was a good writer.
It turns out Caroline Knapp died nine years ago of lung cancer (at age 42), so I cannot write her this letter. Discovering this was different than reading a book by Hemingway or Sylvia Plath or Proust, people I know, are long dead. The whole time I was reading this book, I assumed she was alive. Her childhood in the sixties, after all, meant that she was a bit younger than my (still alive) parents. I assumed that in the pantheon of potentially inaccessible writers, there was actually a chance of her becoming accessible. Not removed entirely from the scene.
It’s a strange feeling be moved to contact someone you’ve never met and who turns out to be gone. It felt like it shouldn’t matter, but it did. Now I cannot tell her that she moved me, that she connected to me, that she meant something to me. I cannot tell her anything at all. But I wanted to say something so badly, so instead, I’m telling you.
—Jena Salon is Books Editor of The Literary Review