- Charles R. Jackson
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For other people named Charles Jackson, see Charles Jackson (disambiguation).
Charles R. Jackson Born April 6, 1903
Summit, New Jersey, U.S.Died September 21, 1968 (aged 65)
New York, New York, U.S.Occupation Novelist Nationality American Genres fictional prose Charles Reginald Jackson (April 6, 1903 – September 21, 1968) was an American author, best known for his 1944 novel The Lost Weekend.
Contents
Career
Jackson's first published story, "Palm Sunday", appeared in the Partisan Review in 1939. It focused on the debauched organist of a church the narrators attended as children.[1]
In the 1940s Jackson wrote a trio of novels, beginning with The Lost Weekend published by Farrar & Rinehart in 1944. This autobiographical novel chronicled a struggling writer's five day drinking binge. It earned Charles R. Jackson lasting recognition.[2]
The following year Paramount Pictures paid $35,000 for the rights to adapt the novel into the a film version of the same name. The Academy Award winning film was directed by Billy Wilder and starred Ray Milland in the lead role of Don Birnam.[3]
Jackson's second published novel of the 1940s, titled The Fall of Valor, was released in 1946 and takes its name from a passage in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. Set in 1943, it detailed a professor's obsession with a young, handsome Marine. The Fall of Valor received mixed reviews, and, though sales were respectable, was considerably less successful than Jackson's famous first novel.
Jackson's The Outer Edges was released in 1948 and dealt with the gruesome rape and murder of two girls in Westchester County, New York. The Outer Edges also received mixed reviews, and sales were poor relative to his previous novels.
Jackson's later works included two collections of short stories, The Sunnier Side: Twelve Arcadian Tales (1950) and Earthly Creatures (1953), as well as a novel, A Second-Hand Life (1967).
Life
Charles R. Jackson was born in Summit, New Jersey in 1903. He moved to Newark, New York in 1907, and nine years later his older sister, Thelma, and younger brother, Richard, were killed while riding in a car that was struck by an express train.[4] He graduated from Newark High School in 1921.
As a young man he worked as an editor for local newspapers and in various bookstores in Chicago and New York prior to falling ill with tuberculosis. Jackson spent the years 1927-1931 in sanatoriums and eventually recovered in Davos, Switzerland. His successful battle cost him a lung and served as a catalyst for his alcoholism. He returned to New York at the height of the Great Depression and his difficulty in finding work spurred on his binge drinking. His battle to stop drinking started in late 1936 and was largely won by 1938, the year in which he married. During this time he was a free-lance writer and wrote radio scripts.
The 1944 publication of The Lost Weekend catapulted his career toward success. He moved briefly to Hollywood in the Summer of 1944 and shortly thereafter to New Hampshire with his growing family, including his two young girls. He lived on and off at his home in New Hampshire for ten years. At the height of his career, Charles R. Jackson lectured at various colleges. In the mid-1950s he began struggling with finances and moved with his family to Connecticut.
Jackson spoke about alcoholism to large groups, sharing his experience, strength and hope. A recording of his talk in Cleveland, OH in May 1959 is available (vide infra xa-speakers). He was the first speaker in Alcoholics Anonymous to openly address drug dependence (Barbiturates and Paraldehyde) as part of his story.
After relapsing into alcoholism Jackson became estranged from his family and rented an apartment in New York City that was shared with his lover in 1965.[5] Jackson suffered from Chronic Lung Disease and committed suicide via an overdose of sleeping pills in his room at the Hotel Chelsea in New York City on September 21, 1968.[6]
Whether he was gay or bisexual is unclear; Anthony Slide, a modern scholar, asserts "Charles R. Jackson [was] identified as bisexual late in life."[7]
Bibliography
- The Lost Weekend (1944)
- The Fall of Valor (1946)
- The Outer Edges (1948)
- The Sunnier Side: Twelve Arcadian Tales (1950)
- Earthly Creatures (1953)
- A Second-Hand Life (1967)
References
- Notes
- ^ Austen, Roger. Playing the Game: The Homosexual Novel in America, (New York, NY: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc), 103
- ^ Stryker, Susan. Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback, (San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books), 14
- ^ Slide, Anthony. Lost Gay Novels: A Reference Guide to Fifty Works from the First Half of the Twentieth Century, (Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press), 101
- ^ Guide to the Papers of Charles R. Jackson, circa 1920 - circa 1970, Dartmouth College. Accessed February 20, 2011. "Charles Reginald Jackson was born in Summit, New Jersey, on April 6, 1903, the third of five children of Frederick George and Sarah Williams Jackson."
- ^ Slide, Anthony. Lost Gay Novels: A Reference Guide to Fifty Works from the First Half of the Twentieth Century, (Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press), page 106.
- ^ "Guide to the Papers of Charles R. Jackson, circa 1920 - circa 1970". Dartmouth College. http://ead.dartmouth.edu/html/ms1070.html. Retrieved 1 May 2009.
- ^ Slide, Anthony. Lost Gay Novels: A Reference Guide to Fifty Works from the First Half of the Twentieth Century, (Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press), page 3.
- Bibliography
- Austen, Roger (1977). Playing the Game: The Homosexual Novel in America (1st ed.). Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company. ISBN 978-067252287X.
- Bronski, Michael (2003). Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps (1st ed.). New York, NY: St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 978-0312252676.
- Connelly, Mark (2001). Deadly Closets: The Fiction of Charles Jackson (1st ed.). University Press of America. ISBN 978-0761819127.
- Gunn, Drewey (2009). The Golden Age of Gay Fiction (1st ed.). Albion, NY: MLR Press. ISBN 978-1608200481.
- Slide, Anthony (2003). Lost Gay Novels: A Reference Guide to Fifty Works from the First Half of the Twentieth Century (1st ed.). Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press. ISBN 978-156023413X.
- Stryker, Susan (2001). Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback (1st ed.). San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books. ISBN 978-0811830209.
External links
Categories:- 1903 births
- 1968 deaths
- American novelists
- People from Summit, New Jersey
- People from Wayne County, New York
- People self-identifying as alcoholics
- Suicides in New York
- Writers from New Jersey
- Writers from New York City
- Writers who committed suicide
- Bisexual writers
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