Could you talk a little more about the drinking? So many writers, even if they’re not alcoholics, drink so much.
Probably not a whole lot more than any other group of professionals. You’d be surprised. Of course there’s a mythology that goes along with the drinking, but I was never into that. I was into the drinking itself. I suppose I began to drink heavily after I’d realized that the things I’d wanted most in life for myself and my writing, and my wife and children, were simply not going to happen. It’s strange. You never start out in life with the intention of becoming a bankrupt or an alcoholic or a cheat and a thief. Or a liar.
And you were all those things?
I was. I’m not any longer. Oh, I lie a little from time to time, like everyone else.
