Caroline knapp oprah
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Caroline Knapp, 42; Wrote of Alcohol Struggle
Caroline Knapp, a journalist and author who detailed her struggle with alcoholism with candor and eloquence in the bestselling memoir, “Drinking: A Love Story,” has died. She was 42.
Knapp died June 3 at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Mass. The cause of death was complications from lung cancer.
A slight book and one of relatively few in the literature of alcoholism written from a woman’s point of view, “Drinking” was a bestseller when it was released in 1996 and earned generally positive reviews. Knapp became a familiar figure on talk shows, including “CBS This Morning” and “Oprah,” and was profiled in People magazine and the New York Times.
Knapp was raised in Cambridge. Her father was a prominent psychiatrist and professor at Boston University. Her mother was an artist.
High-strung and with behavior patterns that would later be seen as obsessive, Knapp was a bright student who attended an exclusive prep school. She later graduated with honors from Brown.
She became a respected journalist, working first at the Boston Busine
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Caroline Knapp
American writer and columnist
Caroline Knapp | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 8, 1959 |
| Died | June 3/4, 2002 |
| Notable works | Drinking: A Love Story |
Caroline Knapp (November 8, 1959 – June 3/4, 2002) was an American writer and columnist whose candid best-selling memoir Drinking: A Love Story recounted her 20-year battle with alcoholism. She was the daughter of noted psychiatrist Peter H. Knapp, who was a researcher of psychosomatic medicine.
Life and career
Knapp grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts[1] and graduated from Brown University. From 1988 to 1995, she was a columnist for the Boston Phoenix where her column "Out There" often featured the fictional "Alice K." In 1994, those columns were collected in her first book, Alice K's Guide to Life: One Woman's Quest for Survival, Sanity, and the Perfect New Shoes.
Knapp won wide acclaim for Drinking: A Love Story (1996) that described her life as a "high-functioning alcoholic" and remained on The New York Times Best Seller List for several weeks. She followed Drinking with Pac If you have tears, prepare to shed them. Caroline Knapp was the author of Drinking: A Love Story. I wrote about it because some of you surely have issues with alcohol, and I thought it might be of use. And because it's acutely observed and beautifully written. And because there's a painful irony here: Caroline gets sober, only to die in June of 2002, when she was forty-two, seven weeks after she was diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer.•
Caroline Knapp had a best friend. Gail Caldwell. Also a writer. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2001. She too had alcohol issues.
Two women writers. Both dog lovers. Both recovering alcoholics. Both living alone, and liking it. Both athletes. Near-neighbors in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Friends. Best friends. One died. The other wrote a book: Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
There are men and women I love, and I think they know it, and I hope they know how incredibly lucky I feel that I'm in their lives, but we're talking abou
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