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Dr. Roger Daniels Forseth (June 15, 1927 – December 3, 2016) was an American writer, and professor. -

Life
Roger Forseth was born June 15, 1927, in Aberdeen, S.D., the son of Fritz and Lillian (Daniels) Forseth. An insurance salesman who himself never attended college, Roger's father started The Forseth Insurance Co., became one of the first millionaires in the Dakotas, and with his resources funded the higher education of his 20 grandchildren.

The eldest of three boys, from his earliest days Roger was passionate about learning and literature and chose to pursue an academic career rather than take over the family business. After graduating from Central High School in Aberdeen, Roger went away to Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., where he met his future wife, fellow English major Grace Bahr. Prior to Carleton, Roger served as an electrician in the Navy from 1945-46 during which he was based in Chicago and Corpus Christi. After marrying Grace and graduating from Carleton in 1950, Roger completed his PhD in English at Northwestern University in 1956 with his dissertation on "The Function of Imagery in The Lyric: Pope to Wordsworth."

Dr. Forseth's first teaching post was at Louisiana State University of Baton Rouge (1955-57), where he became the youngest professor in that university's history. Following posts at Southern Illinois University ('57-'61) and LSU New Orleans ('61-'64), in 1964 Forseth accepted an offer from the University of Wisconsin-Superior and moved his wife and three young children to their beloved home in Superior where they welcomed a fourth child and resided the rest of their lives.

A recovering alcoholic since 1975, in sobriety Forseth dedicated his scholarship to the study of the writer and addiction, founding and editing the influential journal "Dionysos" that ran from 1989-2000, and is credited with pioneering the field of addiction and literature. In his tenure at UW-Superior, Forseth was instrumental in transitioning the campus into the digital age, motivated by the service he believed it would be to writers and students. He enjoyed several sabbaticals, including two in London, and with the academic support and expert editing of his wife, wrote numerous articles and talks that he delivered at literary conferences in the U.S. and England. Dr. Forseth retired from full-time teaching in 1991 but continued online for 23 more years, completing his last course in 2014. Dr. Forseth's most significant writings are being published as a book, "Alcoholite at the Altar: The Writer and Addiction," which will be released early 2017.

Writing
From a pioneer in the field of addiction and literature, Roger Forseth, comes a singular collection of essays on the complex role that alcohol has played in the lives of our literary heroes and their characters. With a focus on Prohibition-era writers, Forseth’s humanistic scholarship speaks to a breadth of professional fields as well as literary enthusiasts of all kinds. From poignant epigraphs to footnotes filled with supporting literary and scientific data (to say nothing of an epic index), Alcoholite At The Altar is a Great Books–style education and feast for the mind on the pleasures of comparative literature and unpretentious prose that is both entertaining and economical. Essential reading for anyone interested in the humanities, the social sciences or the matter of addiction, Forseth’s body of work will take his audience on a rich literary ride as it explores the human condition in all its thirst.

Style
A vintage study of drinking and writing by Jonathan Leaf A review of Alcoholite at the Altar: The Writer and Addiction, The Writings of Roger Forseth, edited by Cassandra Csenscitz. SHARE During the 1970s and 1980s, the English departments of America’s most prestigious universities became infested with structuralists. No “leading” university was without one. Harvard had Barbara Johnson, a follower of Jacques Lacan who, in addition to teaching English and Comparative Literature, served as the university’s Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry. At other schools, structuralist professors emerged in fields that have no obvious relation to structuralism whatsoever. At Princeton, there was a structuralist mathematics professor, Paul Benacerraf.

Hardly anyone, of course, still reads the “scholarship” that was produced by these supposedly great minds. And why should they? Reading their writing is a chore. Jargon-ridden and tedious, it offers us no insights into why authors set pen to paper or which compositions are worthy of note. Simply put, it doesn’t pass the test of being true criticism.

But this does not mean that there was no good literary research produced in American academia in this period. One way college professors continued to make meaningful contributions to the study of literature was through biography. This was how Joseph Frank made a lasting impact with his highly regarded five-volume account of the life of Dostoyevsky.

Another means was the annotation and editing of collections by first-rate authors. This is among the reasons why Ruth Wisse’s work abides.

A new volume of essays by the English professor Roger Forseth (1927–2016), Alcoholite at the Altar: The Writer and Addiction, The Writings of Roger Forseth (IntoWords Press), offers another type of valuable literary scholarship. In the interests of full disclosure I should note that it was edited by Cassandra Csenscitz, a friend of mine who also happens to be one of Forseth’s granddaughters.

The product of a wealthy midwestern family, Forseth taught for many years at a relatively obscure school in the heartland, the University of Wisconsin-Superior. Consequently, his academic reputation derived almost exclusively from his editorship of a literary journal called Dionysos. Continued interest in the publication is such that its back issues have recently been made available online by the University of Sheffield in England.

The subject of the journal and of Forseth’s research was one with special resonance to him: what is the connection between addiction and writing? The subject of the journal and of Forseth’s research was one with special resonance to him: what is the connection between addiction and writing? A reformed drinker who spent much of his early adulthood under the influence, Forseth was well aware of the research showing that writers have among the highest alcoholism rates of any profession. Forseth made it his life’s work to determine why this was.

Finding and identifying works of outstanding merit was much less an aim of Forseth’s scholarship than was bringing new appreciation and understanding to writers who were already recognized. Moreover, while Forseth’s essays often examine historical context—how the problem of substance abuse was viewed in different periods and how this relates to the literature of the time—his training was in the study of Romantic poetry and the British and American novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, not in medicine. Thus, he uses the term “narcotic” in its popular sense of an illicit drug, rather than its technical sense of an opiate.

But if he is not offering readers detailed scientific analysis of the sources of addiction, he shows in these essays that his knowledge of literature was great and his sympathetic understanding of it undeniable. The author of a dissertation on Wordsworth, he was also familiar with all the novels of the best-known American fiction writers from Hawthorne through Bellow. He was particularly interested in a number of the realist authors who had problems with the bottle, especially Jack London, Eugene O’Neill, Sinclair Lewis, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, along with the poet John Berryman.

Forseth’s interest is upon London’s elucidation of what he termed the “white logic”: the idea that inebriation might bring certain truths about life to the surface that could not be perceived without it. Forseth writes at particular length about London’s autobiographical novel John Barleycorn. It is perhaps best known today for its introduction of certain cliché images of drunkenness, including the idea of a lush who sees pink elephants. Forseth’s interest is upon London’s elucidation of what he termed the “white logic”: the idea that inebriation might bring certain truths about life to the surface that could not be perceived without it. This dovetails with Forseth’s belief that early experiences with alcohol and other intoxicants can expand an artist’s powers of imagination, although at a great cost. For London, of course, this was a worsening of the habitual depression that prompted his suicide.

Like Blake and Nietzsche, Forseth considered great art to be a union of ecstasy and grace. In this view, intoxicants loosen the bonds that constrain thought and feeling, providing Dionysian insight by which to achieve greater accomplishments in later, more Apollonian moments of sobriety. Forseth saw drinking as an aid in the process by which literary masters create themselves, even as he readily acknowledged how debilitating and destructive alcoholism is.

As Csenscitz notes in her introduction, Forseth’s strongest feeling of spiritual connection was with Sinclair Lewis, the author he wrote about most frequently. His analysis of Lewis’s novels is consistently thoughtful and often revealing. It is also persuasive in arguing that one cannot understand his work without knowing of his drinking problems, which have been greatly underestimated in recent times. So, one might say, has Forseth’s own transparent and intelligent writing.

Other
A pioneer in the field of addiction and literature, Roger Forseth (1927-2016) created a new language for a sensitive topic that is both buzz-kill and vicarious thrill. His language merged concrete experience and science to replace moral judgment with empathy and objectivism. A recovering alcoholic who lived to tell, he survived delirium tremens, an episode after which doctors said he would never regain more than half his brain. But rather than lose his mind, he went on to enjoy the first sober and most productive chapter of his career, most notably founding Dionysos: The Literature and Intoxication Triquarterly, which was published from 1990 to 2000. The eldest of three boys and with one older sister, Roger’s first love was books, a fact that controversially led him to an academic career instead of the family business. After graduating from Central High School in Aberdeen, he went away to Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where he met his future wife and fellow English major, Grace Bahr, the child of another first-generation American success story. The couple married and conceived a baby before senior year, making college history when he accepted Grace’s diploma because she was too pregnant to cross the stage. Prior to Carleton, he served as an electrician in the Navy from 1945 to 1946 at bases in Chicago and Corpus Christi. After graduating from Carleton in 1950, he completed his Ph.D. in English at Northwestern University in 1956 with his dissertation on “The Function Of Imagery In The Lyric: Pope To Wordsworth.” Roger's first teaching post was at Louisiana State University of Baton Rouge (1955-57), where at the time he was the youngest professor in that university’s history. Following posts at Southern Illinois University (’57-’61) and LSU New Orleans (’61-’64), in 1964 he accepted an offer from the University of Wisconsin-Superior and moved to the Northland with his wife and children. It was there in the cold country of Sinclair Lewis, on whose writing and drinking he would later concentrate, that his alcoholism would reach its peak and its end. Roger retired from full-time teaching in 1991 but continued part-time online for twenty-three more years, completing his last course in 2014.