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Charles R. Jackson (April 6, 1903- September 21, 1968)
Charles Reginald Jackson (April 6, 1903- September 21, 1968) was an American author, best known for his 1944 novel The Lost Weekend.Jackson's first published story, "Palm Sunday", appeared in the Partisan Review in 1939. It focused on the debauched organist of a church the narrators attended as children.
In the 1940s Jackson wrote a trio of novels, beginning with The Lost Weekend published by Farrar & Rinehart in 1944. This autobiographical novel chronicled a struggling writer's five day drinking binge. It earned Charles R. Jackson lasting recognition.
The following year Paramount Pictures paid $35,000 for the rights to adapt the novel into the a film version of the same name. The Academy Award winning film was directed by Billy Wilder and starred Ray Milland in the lead role of Don Birnam.
Jackson's second published novel of the 1940s, titled The Fall of Valor, was released in 1946 and takes its name from a passage in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. Set in 1943, it detailed a professor's obsession with a young, handsome Marine. The Fall of Valor received mixed reviews, and, though sales were respectable, was considerably less successful than Jackson's famous first novel.
Jackson's The Outer Edges was released in 1948 and dealt with the gruesome rape and murder of two girls in Westchester County, New York. The Outer Edges also received mixed reviews, and sales were poor relative to his previous novels.Jackson's later works included two collections of short stories, The Sunnier Side: Twelve Arcadian Tales (1950) and Earthly Creatures (1953), as well as a novel, A Second-Hand Life (1967).
Vintage Cover by George Mayers
Charles R. Jackson was born in Summit, New Jersey in 1903. He moved to Newark, New York in 1907, and nine years later his older sister, Thelma, and younger brother, Richard, were killed while riding in a car that was struck by an express train. He graduated from Newark High School in 1921.
As a young man he worked as an editor for local newspapers and in various bookstores in Chicago and New York prior to falling ill with tuberculosis. Jackson spent the years 1927-1931 in sanatoriums and eventually recovered in Davos, Switzerland. His successful battle cost him a lung and served as a catalyst for his alcoholism. He returned to New York at the height of the Great Depression and his difficulty in finding work spurred on his binge drinking. His battle to stop drinking started in late 1936 and was largely won by 1938, the year in which he married. During this time he was a free-lance writer and wrote radio scripts.
The 1944 publication of The Lost Weekend catapulted his career toward success. He moved briefly to Hollywood in the Summer of 1944 and shortly thereafter to New Hampshire with his growing family, including his two young girls. He lived on and off at his home in New Hampshire for ten years. At the height of his career, Charles R. Jackson lectured at various colleges. In the mid-1950s he began struggling with finances and moved with his family to Connecticut.
Jackson spoke about alcoholism to large groups, sharing his experience, strength and hope. A recording of his talk in Cleveland, OH in May 1959 is available (vide infra xa-speakers). He was the first speaker in Alcoholics Anonymous to openly address drug dependence (Barbiturates and Paraldehyde) as part of his story.
After relapsing into alcoholism Jackson became estranged from his family and rented an apartment in New York City that was shared with his lover in 1965. Jackson suffered from Chronic Lung Disease and committed suicide via an overdose of sleeping pills in his room at the Hotel Chelsea in New York City on September 21, 1968.
Whether he was gay or bisexual is unclear; Anthony Slide, a modern scholar, asserts "Charles R. Jackson [was] identified as bisexual late in life."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_R._Jackson
A self-proclaimed alcoholic, Jackson's novel, The Lost Weekend, is a heart breaker about Don Biman, a gay man on a five-day binge who is constitutionally incapable of honesty and succumbs to the deadly disease. (Disclosure: my second novel, “A Comfortable Corner”, is about a gay man living with an active alcoholic who successfully enters a recovery program at the end.) Jackson's scorching, unforgettable novel was praised deservedly to the sky when it was published in 1944 and was made into an Oscar-winning movie in 1945--when Oscar was no laughing matter--by Billy Wilder with Ray Milland and the divine Jane Wyman playing Helen, Don's patient friend in the book transformed into his love-object in a fine movie stripped of Don's gay soul. I just reread this masterpiece recently and was moved to tears yet again at its terrifying end when Don crawls into bed wondering, "Why did they make such a fuss?" Oy! --Vincent VirgaFurther Readings:
Deadly Closets: The Fiction of Charles Jackson by Mark ConnellyHardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: University Press Of America (December 30, 2001)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0761819126
ISBN-13: 978-0761819127
Amazon: Deadly Closets: The Fiction of Charles Jackson
Charles Jackson (1903-1968) is best known for his novel, The Lost Weekend. Published less than a decade after the founding of AA, the novel's intense psychological portrait of an alcoholic captivated both the public and critics. But Jackson's success was short-lived. His second novel probed a subject far more daring than chemical dependency. In 1946 he published The Fall of Valor, a novel about a married professor's homosexual attachment to a young Marine captain. The critics who applauded his frank approach to alcoholism were disturbed that he would write about a subject many deemed unsuitable for fiction. This book examines the life and fiction of Charles Jackson, a pioneer gay writer who addressed taboo issues with insight and sensitivity. The closets of addiction, repressed sexuality, and violence he explored were not merely "untidy" but deadly. His stories about "outing," gay-bashing, molestation, thrill killers, and media sensationalism are more relevant today than when they appeared fifty years ago.
Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps by Michael BronskiPaperback: 384 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; 1st edition (January 14, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312252676
ISBN-13: 978-0312252670
Amazon: Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps
Long before the rise of the modern gay movement, an unnoticed literary revolution was occurring, mostly between the covers of the cheaply produced pulp paperbacks of the post-World War II era. Cultural critic Michael Bronski collects a sampling of these now little-known gay erotic writings—some by writers long forgotten, some never known and a few now famous. Through them, Bronski challenges many long-held views of American postwar fiction and the rise of gay literature, as well as of the culture at large.
Lost Gay Novels: A Reference Guide to Fifty Works Ffrom the First Half of the Twentieth Century by Anthony SlidePaperback: 218 pages
Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (February 20, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1560234148
ISBN-13: 978-1560234142
Amazon: Lost Gay Novels: A Reference Guide to Fifty Works Ffrom the First Half of the Twentieth Century
Searching for an introduction to the shadowy, intriguing world of early 20th century gay-themed fiction?
In Lost Gay Novels, respected pop culture historian Anthony Slide resurrects fifty early 20th century American novels with gay themes or characters and discusses them in carefully researched, engaging prose. Each entry offers you a detailed discussion of plot and characters, a summary of contemporary critical reception, and biographical information on the often-obscure writer. In Lost Gay Novels, another aspect of gay life and society is, in the words the author, “uncloseted,” providing you with an absorbing glimpse into the world of these nearly forgotten books.
Lost Gay Novels gives you an introduction to:
authors who aren't usually associated with homosexuality, including John Buchan, James M. Cain, and Rex Stout
the history of gay publishing in the US and abroad
gay themes in novels published between 1917 and 1950—with entries from nearly every year!
the ways in which the popular culture of the time shaped the authors' attitudes toward homosexuality
the difficulty of finding detailed biographical information on little-known authors
If you're interested in gay studies or history, or even if you're just looking for a comprehensive guide to titles you've probably never heard of before, Lost Gay Novels will be a welcome addition to your collection. The introduction from author Slide—called by the Los Angeles Times “a one-man publishing phenomenon”—provides you with an overview to the basics of this landmark collection. Themes found in many of the titles include death, secrecy, and living a double life, and in reading the entries you will discover just why these themes are so common.
As Slide says in his introduction: “The approach of the novelist toward homosexuality may not always be a positive one… but the works are important to an understanding of contemporary attitudes toward gay men and gay society.” Lost Gay Novels will help you further your own understanding of the dynamic relationship between literature and culture, and you will finish the book with a greater appreciation of modern American gay fiction.
The Golden Age of Gay Fiction by Drewey Wayne GunnPaperback: 280 pages
Publisher: MLR Press (September 16, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1608200485
ISBN-13: 978-1608200481
Amazon: The Golden Age of Gay Fiction
It was the first great explosion of gay writing in history. These books were about gay characters. They were written mostly by gay writers. Above all, they were for gay readers. And, as this entertaining chronicle of the emergence of gay literary pride makes clear, it was a revolution that occurred several years before Stonewall! Their characters were mostly out or struggling to get out. The books were definitely out -- out on the revolving paperback bookracks in grocery stores, dime stores, drugstores, magazine agencies, and transportation terminals across the nation for youths and senior citizens, in the cities and the rural areas alike, to find and to devour. Here 19 writers take you on a tour of this Golden Age of Gay Fiction -- roughly the period between the first Kinsey Report and the first collection of Tales of the City -- paying attention to touchstone novels from the period but, even more, highlighting works of fiction that have been left unjustly to gather dust on literary shelves. Written by authors, scholars, collectors, and one of the publishers, their essays will inform you. They will sometimes amuse you. They will take you into literary corridors you only suspected were there. And the some 200 illustrations, chosen for their historical as well as their artistic interest, provide a visual record of why this was the golden age. It is guaranteed that you will emerge from reading this book with a long list of good reads to request from your favorite booksellers!
Charles Jackson
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