Reviews for John Barleycorn

The average rating for John Barleycorn based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-03-07 00:00:00 Rob Lachance A disturbing memorial against the indelible trivialization and glorification of a widely used drug London concludes that it essential to be a proponent of suffragettes and emancipation to start a social change towards prohibition and a not drug-poisoned youth and no millions of suffering relatives, which is noble and worthy of imitation. The idea fails because of the addictive affinity of man. The path is described impressively as the decline of a human being in a world characterized by tolerance and glorification of drunkenness. Beginning with the downplaying of the dangerous first encounters with alcohol in childhood, which are perceived as funny anecdotes by the adults involved ("You know, i nearly died of alcohol poising when I was just 8, what a fun that was for both me and the adults who forced me to drink.". Further to peer pressure and the need to seem mature and experienced, the bow spans to fatal regular consumption. London balances in its wild youth years with excessive, but fortunately regularly interrupted, alcohol consumption on a razor blade. As he grows older, he falls into an increasingly debauching and uncontrollable urge for the poison, which´s taste he even doesn´t like. Ironically, at the height of his creative career, he systematically destroys himself. As a made-up and respected man who is unable to write without methanol replenishment. The conditioning of his childhood and youth, marked by poverty and hard work, laid the foundation for later self-destruction. The metamorphose associated with the addiction is described in a close-to-life manner. Lightning-fast mood swings in which friendship turns to bloodlust; Ecstasy, which turns into life-threatening poisoning; deceptive eloquence and charm switching to deep depression and suicidal intent. Also, above all, there is always the banner of group dynamic motivated glorification of consumption. Although it is fair to say that being a drunkard is a profoundly male problem. Without leaning too far out of the window or drifting into the precarious realms of political impropriety or gender discrimination. Starting with peer pressure, group stupidity, meeting expectations and cultural conditioning, men tend to be addicted due to their tendency to wolf-like pack behavior and the associated brain outages. In contrast to women who are, not only in this respect, socially more competent. The sad irony is that the more cautious women are the primary victims of the part of the male population that is incapable of reasonable consumption. Women prefer their common sense before total and senseless illumination. Calling London a thinker of another type of drug policy is too simple because of the understandably extreme position of prohibition. Rather, he has put his finger in the wound of a probably unsolvable dilemma, which varies between rigid ban along with draconian punishments and liberal legalization, even of hard substances. Finding a consensus will be difficult, because of the psychological key stimuli around prohibition and social constraints. The topic reveals the arbitrariness and wretchedness of very different legislation around the world. It gratuitously swings between the death penalty and the legal sale of the same substance and is strongly influenced by cultural structures and stuff. Trough the book one lives a whole drunkard career alongside London and the motives, fears, and backgrounds were rarely drawn in such haunting pictures. A timeless work because, unfortunately, it is impossible to make a drug, once so profusely buried in the cultural and social life of a people, disappear. Heck, even our genes already adapted to it to deal better with booze. For a disappearing of drug addiction humanity would require self-criticism, reflection, general rethinking, new social order and other utopias. Like a civilization that does not have to embarrass itself with the glorification of pathogenic poisons to prevent revolutions of the exploited masses. To instead enable its members to lead a dignified and fulfilling life so that there is no reason for the destruction of millions of lives. A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real-life outside books:

Review # 2 was written on 2007-05-12 00:00:00 Marc Tosca I always believed that Jack London kind of sucked. Like most people, I read 'To Build a Fire' and Call of the Wild in school, and was bored senseless, wishing the hero would just freeze to death faster. John Barleycorn proved me completely wrong. In it, London is funny and sharp and angry about all the right things. Lately it's been marketed as a pro-prohibition book, which I think obscures the point. London is not concerned with alcoholism as a disease. What he's trying to pin down is the malevolent spirit of the ancient god of drink, personified, as of old, as John Barleycorn. It's the best description I've ever read of the glories of drinking to excess - the shining nights, the wild tales, the companionship - and exactly why this is so dangerous to the thinking person. He argues that it's precisely the best, the strongest, the brightest, the wildest, who poison themselves with drinking, worn down by the dullness of normal life; that drinking becomes an adventure, a sign of courage and great-heartedness. But he also believes that John Barleycorn demands your life as payment, and brings, instead of wisdom, what he called 'the White Logic', a sort of super-lucid, nihilistic despair. The book is filled with these mystical, revelatory, poetic ravings, passages so beautiful I wish I could just tear them out and plaster them on walls for everyone to read. But there's tons of other great stuff in here, too - stories about the socialist movement, and about working in factories and hopping trains and grappling with cheap typewriters and sailing and fighting and oyster pirates and Aristophanes and loving and eating too much candy. It's been a great read, and it's given me a lot to think about. I mean, alcoholism is such an easy answer, isn't it? If you drink too much, you're an alcoholic; you have a disease, you need treatment. London's viewpoint is more complex and feels more valid: that you drink because that is what people of vision do, and you drink together, and your life is richer, and you put aside the injustices of the world - what he calls the cold iron collar around the neck of your soul. Therefore, change not yourself, but the world. I love it! The answer isn't repentance and detox and rehab and counseling, it's revolution!