My book selection comes with two caveats. First, common sense: As the old Batman TV shows used to say, don’t try this at home. Not if you want to keep your internal organs intact – and keep your friends. Second, sensitivity: Some of these books contain what is now unacceptable treatment of race, while misogyny goes with the territory. Despite the best efforts of cartoon characters like Tank Girl and some Viz ladies, it’s usually the men who tick the obligatory hell-raising boxes: crazy binges on drink and drugs; addiction to hazards, often involving high-powered vehicles and tall culverts; fighting, walking and breaking other people’s property; throwing televisions into hotel pools and racing motorbikes around hotel corridors; the shabby abuse of WAGs and female colleagues, fans and groupies. Hellraising is largely a male activity.
Hellraisers books often focus on “creators” such as Robert Sellers’ Hollywood Hellraisers: the Life and inebriated times of [actors] Burton, Harris, Reid and O’Toole. Rock Stars: Stephen Davis’ Hammer of the Gods, for Led Zeppelin. Screenwriters: Dylan Thomas in John Malcolm Brinin’s America or Jeffrey Wolfe’s Black Sun, for Dorian Gray’s avatar from The Lost Generation.
In my own book several writers raised hell while students at the Hypocrites Club at Oxford, 1921-24. And then ditch the kid stuff and settle down to a life of sobriety. Up to a certain point.
I really find factual accounts like these disheartening to read at length (except for Olivia Lane’s) because one is always aware of the sometimes fatal loss of life and the breakdown of talent and the very large collateral damage. Therefore, my choices are mostly fictional; they all, I think, provide some context for their characters’ rude behavior.
1. The Personal Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg Published in 1824, this is a fierce, darkly funny attack on extremist Scottish Presbyterianism. The priest’s stepfather Robert Wringham is hinted by the Almighty that the boy is destined to be one of the Chosen. Since the “justified” by definition must have lived a life unstained by sin, then, according to Calvinist logic, Robert, no matter what he does, cannot commit sin. Now accompanied by a mysterious companion who spurs him on, he decides to use this lucky facility – leading to massive feats of debauchery, along with “cutting down” religious rivals.
2. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson Heavy on Manichean good versus evil and mind-body dualism, Stevenson’s famous 1886 tale is a metaphor for addiction, as the drugs Jekyll uses , to stand up, stop working and the diabolical ID, Hyde, begins to take over. As with Dorian Gray four years later, what exactly he does on his mysterious adventures in Soho and the East End, apart from violence, is not detailed. Leaving us to fill this tabula rasa by dreaming up our own guilty pleasures. An indulgence unattainable by more overt contemporary hell-raising narratives.
3. Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg. An extraordinary, strange and ingenious novel. Set in New York in the summer of 1959, it’s a cross between Dashiell Hammett and John Franklin Bardeen, with an added Aleister Crowley twist. The story gets weirder and weirder. And then even stranger. It’s not quite right – but it’s a hell of a ride. And anthem of the city.
Albert Finney as Arthur Seaton in the 1960 film version of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Photo: Ronald Grant
4. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe We meet “well-to-do worker” Arthur Seaton as he drinks 13 pints of beer before spewing out several other pub patrons. Arthur is well paid for his piecework at the factory, but it drains his soul. And so one Saturday evening “the effect of a week’s monotonous factory work was poured out of your system in a burst of goodwill.” On Monday, start again. Arthur has masculine charm, but he is selfish and stupid and loves other men’s wives. He hates unions as much as he hates his bosses. Loadsamoney Thatcherite in the making.
5. The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking by Olivia Laing “There are many books and articles that delight in describing just how grotesque and shameful the behavior of alcoholic writers can be.” This is not one of them. Laing’s book—which doubles as an atmospheric travelogue—is a sober and psychologically penetrating account of six hard-drinking American writers: Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Williams, Berryman, Cheever, and Carver. It mentions a helpless and crude hell-raising, but it’s essentially a harrowing tale of a Faustian pact—like the one between heroin and bebop. Alcohol stimulates your writing, then rewires your central nervous system and impairs or destroys your ability to write at all.
6. Junky by William Lee Published in 1953, subtitled Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict, this was the first book William Burroughs wrote using his mother’s maiden name. It’s a dispassionate accountant of his own life at this point, an addict who deals heroin and steals to earn enough money to feed his habit. At one point, trying to get clean, he nearly died of alcoholism. The life of an addict is not just gray and monotonous – waiting for the person, from fix to fix – it is dangerous. Created by drug addicts, run on pennies by dealers and other drug addicts, always in danger of overdose. And the horrors of going cold turkey – “like ants crawling under your skin” – when you end up in jail.
7. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson The two gonzo anti-heroes begin as they intend to carry on, loading the trunk of their convertible with enough drugs and booze to knock out the US Navy. It’s a grotesque fantasy, a wild, rage-fueled, at times wildly funny, 100-mile-per-hour rollercoaster Journey into the Dark Heart of the American Dream. And lamenting the failure of the mind-expanding hippie dream. What Ornette Coleman is to Dizzy Gillespie, this book is to Burroughs and the Beats.
8. Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans À rebours in the original French, this is “the strangest book” that poisoned Dorian Gray. (It was brought up at Wilde’s trial.) The wealthy aristocrat des Esseintes was once, as he tells us, “an exhausted sophisticate”; “he had kept lovers already notorious for their depravity.” Disillusioned with the hope that “the charming filth of the poor will stimulate his weakened senses,” he has become a neurasthenic, a would-be solipsist, building a world of narcissistic aesthetic excess. Exhibit One: A Jeweled Tortoiseshell. Evidence two: if you eat, you won’t want to know.
Violent, conceited… Robert Carlyle as Begbie in the 1996 film Trainspotting Photo: Polygram Filmed Entertainment/Sportsphoto/Allstar
9. Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh Most of the main characters – the Skagboys – use heroin. One who doesn’t stand out: the violent, conceited alcoholic Franco Begbie. Set in Edinburgh at the end of the Thatcher era, the anomie and despair of the central characters, though never preached, is clear. In a key scene, Begbie and protagonist Renton meet an “old drunk” at a now-defunct train station. “What’s up guys? Trainspottin huh? “Ah, I understand that old wine is Begbie’s creed.”
10. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Forman This is a fascinating account of a fascinating 18th century character. Blessed and cursed with much personal charisma, Georgiana was a patron and practitioner of the arts and sciences. Her main interest was politics; she was a brilliant impresario and spinner. And yet… Foreman’s book is strongly feminist; on every other page there is proof of the ridiculous power imbalance between men and women. But not in all-night dancing, drinking and gambling followed by an opiate chase, where Georgiana held her own among the Foxite Whig group. Her great anxiety was to produce a male heir. But miscarriages followed – and daughters. For Georgiana, raising hell was a performance – it was expected of her. In her case, the display was prompted by deep-seated feelings of inadequacy and a desperate need for approval. Important insight into the “hell-raising” game.
Hellfire: Evelyn Waugh and the Hypocrites Club by David Fleming is published by The History Press. To help the Guardian and Observer, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com. Shipping charges may apply.
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