10 Writers Who Wrote Famous Works While Wasted

James Joyce is celebrated as one of the greatest writers who ever lived, but it’s a brave soul who can dip their toes into Finnegan’s Wake and make it to the other side.

Composed in a weird and wonderful language straddling English and the hare-brained invention of nonsense poetry, the avant-garde Finnegan’s Wake divided Joyce’s audience and critics alike when it was published in 1922, even those who until that point had been in his corner. It’s still dividing people today, in fact - many can’t finish it.

Joyce had been a bingeing alcoholic for most of his life, functional enough when he wasn’t wasted - which was approximately half the time. He claimed that he only drank in the evening, but given that his ‘evenings’ tended to last until well past sunrise the following morning, that’s not much of a distinction.

Convinced that alcohol enhanced his writing, the implication is that Joyce often lubricated his pen with the hair of the dog. His previous masterpiece, Ulysses, carefully themed in style and structure, had been a clever, beautifully written novel, one that made his name and his fortune.

This enabled both his insecurity and his access to booze. Finnegan’s Wake is equally beautiful, in its own way: but it’s the product of seventeen years of writing and rewriting, his obsessive notes and paranoid marginalia incorporated into each new draft. Dense and lyrical, crafted to be recited as much as read, it’s a work of genius… the work of a drunken master of his art.