Unraveling Darkness: How Kyle Kouri’s The Problem Drinker Reveals the Hidden Struggles Behind Addiction
But then the second paragraph arrives: “Sometimes I get so close, I feel like I am you.”
Dammit. Empathy triggered in eleven words.
The Problem Drinker, even absent the alcohol (which, I admit, is an unfair subtraction, even in the hypothetical), is a hard book for other writers to read. The pain of agent rejections and submission rejections is so vivid I imagine some of my colleagues asking for a trigger warning. Kouri depicts that particular trauma so harshly, compounded by the success of his girlfriend’s writing, that I caught myself nodding along, grimacing. It’s knowing that Theodore Roosevelt had it wrong. Comparison isn’t the thief of joy. Comparison shoots joy in the heart and then comes back with another shot to the head for good measure.
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