He also never explores what makes his subjects write. He asserts that they drink because they are slaves to their genes, but he never really explains what inclines them to enter into a alcoholic cycle which they cannot escape.

There are other possibilities for the writers' decline, but he never mentions them--never mentions that like other writers, they might have grown tired or lost their passion for writing, that they might have lost the vitality of youth or that their material had grown stale. So Dardis never really convinces that the authors were victims of alcohol alone.

In reading The Thirsty Muse, the reader never doubts that the writers became powerless in the face of alcohol. Dardis writes that only O'Neill escaped its trap. But O'Neill merely traded addictions--he died a drug addict. Dardis does not even begin to explain what caused the author to fall prey to another addiction.

The structure of the book, though, is more conducive to biography than to analysis. It is surprisingly lively reading for nonfiction, and Dardis uses primary sources well.

BUT The Thirsty Muse is primarily a compilation of biographies--only 19 pages are dedicated to outlining the thesis, and those 19 pages comprise the introduction. In the body of the work, Dardis dedicates a portion to each author. Conspicuous in its absence is a conclusion or summary.

The individual biographies are well drawn depictions of these talented writers' descent into an ethyl hell, but they are not convincing pieces on the artistic merits of sobriety. Perhaps the world is still ignorant enough about the processes of art and addiction that a fair treatment of either--let alone the blending of the two--is impossible.