KATHLEEN DROWNE. Spirits of Defiance: National Prohibition and Jazz Age Literature, 1920-1933. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. 2005. Pp. xii, 189. Cloth $59.95, paper $21.95, CD $9.95

Abstract

Historians will find much that is enlightening and entertaining in Kathleen Drowne's book. Drawing on Prohibition-era fiction by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Langston Hughes, Dorothy Parker, and a host of others, Drowne compares the authors' portrayals of drink culture to those that appeared in newspapers, magazines, and scholarly analyses during and after the “dry decade” (1920–1933). “Collectively,” she argues, “the works of fiction addressed in this book offer a realistic, historically accurate picture of how different kinds of Americans responded to the legal, social, and cultural changes wrought by the passage of National Prohibition” (p. 5). Historians may be more skeptical about the reliability of such literary evidence than Drowne, whose training is in literary, not historical, analysis. Nevertheless, her study provides a gold mine of contemporary references to Jazz Age free spirits who gleefully drank spirits in open defiance of the Eighteenth Amendment. Drowne focuses on what she terms the “culture of National Prohibition” (p. 13), in which a sense of rebellious playfulness found expression in the period's language, music, movies, and literature. She devotes chapters to the principal actors and settings of this national rebellion, including liquor providers, youthful consumers, drinking establishments, and house parties. The chapter on drinking in private homes is particularly informative. In the chapter's first section, “Cocktail Parties,” Drowne examines fictional portrayals of upper and middle-class drinkers, nicely complementing Catherine Gilbert Murdock's study, Domesticating Drink: Women, Men, and Alcohol in America, 1870 to 1920 (1998). Even more intriguing are the sections featuring Harlem Renaissance writers such as Wallace Thurman and Langston Hughes on “Rent Parties,” and Claude McKay and Zora Neale Hurston on “Good-Time Flats.” Drowne selects vivid passages from their earthy accounts of Harlem's flamboyant social scene and brings to light many overlooked aspects of African American drink culture in the 1920s.