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Reed "bellowed "let's have a drink" and downed 12 double measures of rum before he retreated to his more accustomed double whiskies. All four of them were well known for being very drunk a lot of the time, difficult to work with, violent, womanising, impossible to live with (ask their ex wives), but geniuses in their art. Anyone who has ever been through a severe depression knows that there's nothing romantic or even remotely creative about it.
If you want an entertaining escape into lives so outrageous that they seem to recognise no limits then this is the book to provide it. This book was funny, interesting and entertaining and can make you feel as though you yourself are a bit boring! JAKe is an artist whose work has appeared in Esquire and Time Out; he also worked for LucasFilm on Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Even if a quarter of the stuff covered in ‘Hellraisers’ is true, these guys sure weren’t candidates for sainthood.
While these four men were world class drunks they were much much more than that also but reading this book you don't really get a sense of that.
Richard Burton was plagued by a bad back in his later years; when undergoing surgery for the problem, it was found his spine was encased in crystallised alcohol.As with Dorian Gray, four years later, exactly what he gets up to in his mysterious adventures in Soho and the East End is, apart from violence, not detailed.
Another time, he woke up one morning and looked in the mirror, and his whole face was covered in scars and smeared in dried blood.In the end the endless repetition of dumb activities reads like a great advertisement for a 12-step program - the pursuit of fun is all so desperate and boring and soulkilling.
He had this operation in the '70s, where most of his stomach was removed because of his excessive drinking. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. A wonderful and enthralling read whether you're an admirer of these movie legends or even if you've never heard of them.
Set in Edinburgh at the fag end of the Thatcher era, the anomie and despair of the central characters, though never preached, is clear. He's joined in turn by Burton, Harris, Reed, and O'Toole, who take Martin on tours of their tumultuous childhoods, rises to stardom, and chaotic personal lives. Also, less than a month ago, I saw a brief interview with the old Richard Harris in which the alcoholic said he didn’t regret even one drop of what he’d done in his life.
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