Plagiarism

I read in this biography of Jim Morrison that toward the end he was getting through two bottles of Jack Daniel’s a day. That’s amazing. I can just about get through one.

The last email I had from my publisher friend was about the reasons for his depression. They were all sound reasons, hard to argue with. In a p.s. he added that, toward the end, Jim Morrison was drinking two bottles of Southern Comfort a day. He said he was impressed, as it was all he could do to get to the bottom of one.

Today’s class will be about Jim Morrison, a notable song writer, hedonist, mystic, and lead singer of The Doors. Morrison died in Paris, just like Oscar Wilde, Richard Wright, Wallis Simpson, and, of course, numerous French people. Jim abused—or, as he would argue, used—drugs and alcohol. Jim was famous, even legendary, for his drinking. By the time he died at twenty-seven he was downing two bottles of Chivas a day, so they say. I think you’ll find that it’s hard just getting through one. That’s been my experience, anyway.

My old lady claims she’s as good a drinker as Jim Morrison because, like him, she can guzzle two bottles of Four Roses a day. I make that eight roses. She calls me a wimp because I can’t swallow more than two roses.

Nobody’s really sure what killed Jim Morrison, but alcohol probably had something to do with it. According to those in a position to know, in his last year he was polishing off two bottles of Jim Beam a day.

—–And that’s why I stop at one.

Robert Wexelblatt is a professor at Boston University. He has published five fiction collections; two of essays; a pair of short novels; essays, stories, poems in various journals, and a novel awarded the Indie Book Awards prize for fiction. A collection of Chinese and one of non-Chinese stories are forthcoming.