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| The Lost Weekend (New York Classics) | 
| Author: Charles Jackson
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $11.99
You Save: $7.96 (40%)
New (21) Collectible (4) from $11.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 370470
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 244
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.5 x 0.6
ISBN: 081560419X
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780815604198
ASIN: 081560419X
Publication Date: August 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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Product Description
This is the story of a man in the grip of alcohol; it moves forward with speed, force, and heartbreaking truth. Don Birnam is someone you know and care about. His loneliness, his need to drink, his dangerous hangovers, his daydreams of himself as a genius and actual nightmares are unforgettable experiences. No matter how it shocks or upsets you, you will find, after reading The Lost Weekend, that you have acquired a knowledge you can never forget.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 The inside of the bottle May 27, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Having seen the film I decided to read the book. The Hollywood ending of the film spured me on to find out how the book really ended. I found the book had much more depth than the film. Jackson's way of writing is so intimate that you can feel, hear and perhaps even smell Mr. Don Birman, who is the central character in the book. Jackon takes you inside his main character and slowly brings you down, down, down into the murcky depths of a troubled human being. It is obvious that the drinking is 'only' the manifestation of much deeper problems which Don Birman has. However the mental constructions which Don generates to explain, know (absolutely!), manipulate, justify, etc. his state of being, shows how an alcoholic survives as he swims in his sea of alcohol. It is a harrowing tale. This is a story about alcoholism written from the inside out. Read the book and learn how many alcoholism stories really end up. A true masterpiece.
"The barometer of his emotional nature was set for a spell of riot" November 3, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is definitely an instance of the book being better than the film, mainly because there is a wealth of inner dwelling in the book that cannot be captured on a screen. Jackson's prose starts out seeming a bit overblown, but quickly develops into a selfish, self-absorbed, and often offhandedly comical muse of the befuddled brain.
Charming gallantry, lies and fictions, excursions seeking pawn money, reminiscing of days past, each one poetically narrated by Jackson. His protagonist, Don Birnam, never once denies who or what he is. He's an alcoholic, and he serves only himself.
This book captures not just the degrading life of the alcoholic but the romanticism the addict infuses upon it. Even bungled up from a bad fall on the stairs, Don emphasizes his independence and self worth, at least internally, and leaves the hospital without treatment. He doesn't need anyone but himself, except when it comes to money to buy the booze.
Don knows he is charming, and knows he can hurt people by charming them, but he does it anyway because of the need for his own personal release. His mental escapades are astounding, his tales larger than life, his delusions more than reality: his highs are extraordinarily high and his lows are extraordinarily low. What we know now that we didn't know back when this book was written is how many addicts are bi-polar, but Jackson managed to capture this aspect of addiction long before science did.
'The Lost Weekend' isn't necessarily a fast-paced read, but rather something to nibble on when one is reflecting on what life has to dish out for us. For some, the monumental hurdles are mortgage and job promotions, for others, its finding those few bucks to get the next high.
'The Lost Weekend' is a must-have for your addiction collection, exploring the inner-space of addiction rather than the outer-space, or consequences, of it. The complacency, the drama, the edginess, the fulfillment, the tides: it's all here in the quick, inside look at a singular weekend. Enjoy!
A movie so stark, it might cause liver disease April 26, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In more than 60 years, I don't believe any book or film has so vividly captured the madness of alcoholism like "The Lost Weekend." The movie with Ray Milland is a chilling adaptation of Jackson's masterful novel. One weekend in an alcoholic's life, as he begs, lies and steals in order to begin a bender that will end in a funhouse horror descent into insanity.
Jackson's novel was brilliantly written, a voyeuristic look inside the mind and desperation of a drunk, who ping pongs between delusion and outright disgust about his habit. There are delirium tremens, falls down stairs, begging at the bars, the pawning of beloved items and absolute shame through it all. Jackson never tries to romanticize the disease or to add elements to it that are not already there. Alcoholism does not need a professional writer or movie maker to enhance its ugliness.
Ray Milland takes on the movie role with animation, anger and pathos that is so genuine, you will think him authentically drunk throughout the film. The viewer is alternately sad and sympathetic, disgusted and frustrated as the drunk weaves, stumbles and staggers into his spree.
Alcoholics cringe when they read this book or watch the movie. The circumstances are too recognizable, too real. The novel ends on a stark and gloomy note. The movie, which also drops the subtle homosexual undercurrent, chooses to end more optimistically.
Either way, both are as clear and chaotic as any portrayal of a chronic alcoholic can be. For this reason, "The Lost Weekend" will always stand as powerful and unflinching, much like the disease it depicts.
Addictive Reading Material April 12, 2006
When I purchased this book, many, many years ago, I opened it to a random page and read a paragraph. I was drawn in immediately, which was an indication of its long-term appeal to me. Even though I have read it through twice over the years, I can pick it up, open it to any page, find it engaging, and experience the same eagerness to see how Jackson weaves the tale.
I won't repeat the theme or plot here, you can find those in the other reviews on this page. That Don Birnam, the protagonist is an alcoholic is incidental to me, although some people will buy it for that reason primarily, having read how it changed people's views toward alcoholism. Some may buy it to compare it with the movie version. I have tried to analyze why Jackson's prose is so addictive for me. Perhaps it is because recent books strive too hard to be cool and suggest a world out there that the reader can only hope to experience vicarously, while Jackson describes everyday, mundane events and feelings with brilliance, with descriptions that make me say, "Hey, that happened to me!"
One of the very best American novels April 18, 2005
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
I read "The Lost Weekend" after seeing the fine movie starring Ray Milland. The movie gripped me, and hit close to home, but I felt that there was a quality to the writing that made me seek out the book (which was out of print at the time). Boy, am I glad I did. "The Lost Weekend" is an absolute literary masterpiece, capturing a 5-day drunk from an inveterate alcoholic with such chilling accuracy that it actually becomes a suspense novel: there's a scene where the protagonist, Don Birnam, is struggling up 6th avenue to pawn his girlfriend's coat, so he can buy more booze, that is so nail-bitingly horrific that I had to put the book down several times and catch my breath.
Charles Jackson has perfectly captured the madness, compulsion, fear, degradation of addiction and yet this book is unlike any other I've read about alcoholism--the only one that really rivals it is "A Fan's Notes" by Fred Exley, which is the *other* great masterpiece about drinking.
For those of you who might be interested in seeing the flip side of this book, ie, "the horror of sobriety," you might want to check out HALF EMPTY by Tim Hall, which chronicles the madness, fear, and antagonism of early sobriety in much the way this captured the horror of hardcore alcoholism.
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