Title: The 20-Year Lost Weekend: Rip Van Winkle Was a Drunk
Headings: The 20-Year Lost Weekend: Rip Van Winkle Was a Drunk
The 20-Year Lost Weekend: Rip Van Winkle Was a Drunk
Content: ″We paint an image of Rip as a wonderful guy, but that’s a terrible image,″ Press says. ″He abandoned his wife and kids. The ogre of the story is Dame Van Winkle, the shrew who died of a heart attack. Dame van Winkle was no ogre. She deserves to be pretty damn angry at this guy.″
While Rip inherited a fortune, Rip Jr. inherited his father’s drunken ways. Irving said Rip Jr. became a drunk, ″which is interesting because of recent findings about genetic inheritance of alcoholism,″ Press says. Historians and Irving scholars doubt Press’ version. ″That’s a new one on me,″ says Dan Porter, director of the New York State Historical Association. ″He’s got to have some pretty strong evidence, because Irving dealt in fiction, not fact.″
″I’m sure there were people at the time who fit that pattern,″ said Robert Wells, an English professor who holds the Washington Irving chair at Union College in Schenectady. ″There may well have been people like Rip Van Winkle who were drunkards and were irresponsible like that.