Robert M. (shotokanchef) reviewed John Barleycorn: or, Alcoholic Memoirs (A Signet classic) on + 813 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
This is an autobiographical treatise on the evils of alcohol recounted by a man who was first inebriated at the age of five and again at seven; who drank over thirty-five years, often until totally plastered, but categorically states that he never liked the taste of beer, hated wine and had no truck for whiskey; he only drank socially. The book was written in support of prohibition at the time of the vote for womens suffrage in California. He boasts that he voted for suffrage as women would lead the way to passage of prohibition. As he threads through his bouts with John Barleycorn anyone familiar with his works can pick them out as he wanders from job to job, place to place. He is the commensurate tinker and maybe what we now call an intermittent alcoholic (I said that; the author adamantly insists that he was never alcoholic; he says this repeatedly.)
