Pour, He said. Talk If You Must But Certainly Pour

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My old Chronicle chum Jerry Ozarks sent me a link to an Economist story about the mystery of how alcohol fuels literary accomplishment and how taking it away sometimes means a hand that no longer shakes but neither does it create. The conclusion is somewhat discouraging to one of my style and ilk about what happens when you shed the grape:

Minimalists tend to do better than maximalists. Flinty and workmanlike seem to win the day. (Elmore Leonard said that attending AA meetings had made him a “better listener”.) It is the self-proclaimed geniuses who suffer. Writers of long sentences seem to do worse than the writers of short ones—Faulkner’s and Hemingway’s endless clauses being the epitome of the drunken style. Comparing yourself to Tolstoy is a bad sign. (If it has to be a Russian, Chekhov is a much better bet.) Americans do much better than Brits (a recent biography of Kingsley Amis lists drinking under “Activities and Interests”). Americans from the north seem to do better than Americans from the South. Prose-writers fare better than poets. If you are an American poet from the South, you might as well walk into a bar right now.