humor and enjoys jokes. Hoskyns described Waits as "unequivocally—some would say almost gruffly—heterosexual". Hoskyns suggested that Waits has had an "on-off affair with alcohol, never quite able to shake it off". During the 1970s, he was known as a heavy drinker and a smoker but avoided any drugs harder than cocaine. He told one interviewer, "I discovered alcohol at an early age, and that guided me a lot." Humphries suggested that Waits's use of alcohol as opposed to illicit drugs marked him out as being different from many of his contemporaries on the 1970s U.S. music scene. During interviews, Waits has avoided questions about his personal life, gone off on tangents, and thrown in trivia. Humphries noted that Waits has often supplied interviewers with "droll one-liners", something he termed "Waitsisms", observing that the singer was "dripping with wit and vinegar". Waits is known for getting irate with journalists. He dislikes touring, but Hoskyns added that Waits has "a strong work ethic". When asked about his religious beliefs, he noted: "With the God stuff I don't know. I don't know what's out there any more than anyone else." Reception and legacy During his career, Waits has had little chart success and no major commercial success. Instead, he has attracted a cult fan following. Hoskyns referred to him as being "as important an American artist as anyone the twentieth century has produced", while Humphries described him as "one of America's finest post-Dylan singer-songwriters". Humphries noted that at the time of his emergence to public fame, Waits represented "a unique voice on the late Seventies pop radar". He thought that Waits was, along with the painter Edward Hopper, "one of the two great depicters of American isolation". Hoskyns noted that by the end of the twentieth century, "Waits was an iconic alternative figure, not just to the fans who'd grown up with him but to subsequent generations of music geeks", coming to be "universally acknowledged as an elder statesman of 'alternative' rock". Journalist Karen Schoemer of Newsweek stated that "to the postboomer generation, he's more Dylan than Dylan. [His] melting-pot approach to Americana, his brilliant narratives and his hardiness against commercial trends have made him the ultimate icon for the alternative-minded." He was included among the 2010 list of Rolling Stones 100 Greatest Singers, as well as the 2015 Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time. A number of events have been