where the writer ends & the drugs begin...

[pynchonoid]

Get drunk!'' Charles Baudelaire exhorted in one of his
best-known poems, but given what a mess he made of his
own life, he's hardly the man to turn to for advice. A
new biography, ''Baudelaire in Chains,'' insists that
intoxication, far from being the wellspring of the
poet's spirit, was ''the root of all his problems.''
And that's a lot of problems, observes the author,
Frank Hilton, including Baudelaire's ''inability to
manage his financial affairs, his unsatisfactory
relationships, his bad health, his guignon'' -- the
demonic misfortune he believed plagued him -- and,
most important, his ''chronic difficulty in getting
down to any prolonged creative work.'' All of this
Hilton attributes to Baudelaire's opium addiction,
which, he argues, other biographers have
underestimated. Instead, they have blamed syphilis (a
diagnosis that Hilton doubts) and other illnesses for
his physical sufferings, the heartlessness of his
intimates and the stupidity of the public for the
rest.  [...] 

...continues:

April 4, 2004
THE LAST WORD
High Times
By LAURA MILLER
<http://nytimes.com/2004/04/04/books/review/04MILLERT.html>


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