The fascinating biography of the author of The Lost Weekend--a writer whose life and work encapsulated what it meant to be an addict and a closeted gay man in midcentury America, and who is ripe to be rediscovered.

Charles Jackson's novel The Lost Weekend--the story of five disastrous days in the life of an alcoholic man--was published in 1944 to triumphant success. Nearly half a million copies were sold within five years; the book was added to the prestigious Modern Library and was made into an award-winning film starring Ray Milland. Sober since 1936, Jackson did not wish to go down in history as the author of a thinly veiled autobiography about a crypto-homosexual drunk, but The Lost Weekend was all but entirely based on his own experience, and Jackson's valiant struggles fill these pages. He and his handsome gay brother, Fred ("Boom"), grew up in the scandal-plagued village of Arcadia, New York, and later lived in Europe as TB patients, consorting with aristocratic café society. Jackson went on to work in radio and Hollywood, was published widely, lived in the Chelsea Hotel in New York City, and knew everyone from Judy Garland and Billy Wilder to Thomas Mann and Mary McCarthy. Though he was a doting family man and a celebrated spokesman for AA, Jackson ultimately found it nearly impossible to write without the stimulus of pills or alcohol. Rich with incident and character, Farther & Wilder is the moving story of an artist whose commitment to bringing forbidden subjects into the popular discourse was far ahead of his time.