Hans Fallada, a nom de plume used by Rudolf Ditzen, is an author I've only just found out about. Mainly a novelist, he was a rough contemporary of Berthold Brecht and the Austrian-born Hermann Broch. Unlike them, he stayed in Germany all through the Third Reich and World War II. Despite his left-wing politics, he was never officially declared an enemy of the state. The politics of the era weren't good for him, though, and all sorts of self-destructive tendencies came to the fore.
There seems to at least be an element of autobiography in Fallada's novel The Drinker. A wholesaler who hardly even touches beer has a few reversals in his business life, deals with them through drinking, and soon cares for nothing else. While I don't know if Ray Davies ever read the book, the plot roughly parallels this song.
What's implied in the Kinks' song is fairly obvious in the book: that neither the wife nor the "floozy" can really be blamed. In fact while Sommer, the protagonist, quickly descends into alcoholism, drink seems more a symptom than anything else. His real problem seems to be a sense of worthlessness and impending failure, fears that he needs to hide from and deaden any way he can.
Add in encounters with unsavory characters he's not prepared to deal with and stays in both prison and an asylum and you've got pretty rough going. It's probably a good thing this is a fairly short book, between 250-300 pages.
There seems to at least be an element of autobiography in Fallada's novel The Drinker. A wholesaler who hardly even touches beer has a few reversals in his business life, deals with them through drinking, and soon cares for nothing else. While I don't know if Ray Davies ever read the book, the plot roughly parallels this song.
What's implied in the Kinks' song is fairly obvious in the book: that neither the wife nor the "floozy" can really be blamed. In fact while Sommer, the protagonist, quickly descends into alcoholism, drink seems more a symptom than anything else. His real problem seems to be a sense of worthlessness and impending failure, fears that he needs to hide from and deaden any way he can.
Add in encounters with unsavory characters he's not prepared to deal with and stays in both prison and an asylum and you've got pretty rough going. It's probably a good thing this is a fairly short book, between 250-300 pages.
2 comments:
Hans Fallada isn't an author whose name I'd heard previously. Now I've read his very concise biography on wikipedia it's easy to see how he fell into regular depressive states and substance abuse. Considering just how sad his own life was it's no wonder he wrote about tragedies. That his unpublished manuscripts were lost after his death isall the more melancholy. I have solid reasons to hope there is a heaven.
As for Demon Alcohol it's odd that it's such a cheerful song about a serious addiction. Most of us have known people who have taken drinking too far and I'm sure the Kinks knew their share of them.
As I mentioned, I hadn't known about him before either. I did a Google search for books published around mid-century, this one came up, and it looked interesting to me. It was published posthumously, which kind of caps a sad story. One of many, as he was put under many kinds of pressure. Yes, a lot of people don't get what's due to them in this lifetime.
The song does have a lilt to it that makes it go down easier. I think people with a career in music get exposed to all sorts of excess, so if you're not an addict you're likely to know someone who is. This is a consciously old-fashioned take on the subject.
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