The Alcoholic Novelist

William Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, and F. Scott Fitzgerald are probably three of the most notorious fall-down drunks in the literary history of Twentieth Century America. They are followed by Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, and John Cheever. Many literary critics believe that all this drinking among male novelists stemmed from the fact that, in American culture, creative writing was not considered masculine. In other words, real men don't write. Perhaps these literary booze-hounds were simply alcoholics who happened to take pen to paper.