FROM DEAD DRUNK TO DEAD SOBER –
August 27, 2021 – The novelist Frederick Busch wrote in The New York Times Book Review that “The Drunks” was “a convulsion of ghastly laughs and gorgeous writing.” The New Yorker hailed “Sweet Adversity,” about conjoined twin jazz musicians who are alcoholics, as “probably the most cleareyed and moving — and certainly one of the most honest — books ever written about alcoholics.” (The novel incorporated material from “The Drunks” and a previous novel, “Leo & Theodore,” published in 1972.) Equally praised was “The Drinking Days: Myself and Other Writers,” a 1981 book that is part memoir, part discussion of alcohol’s influence on the writing life.
Despite all the acclaim, however, many of Mr. Newlove’s books fell out of print. It has only been in the last several years that a number of them have been republished, by Tough Poets Press.
