Life's Pleasures Quote by Jim Bishop

Bishop’s line lands because it punctures a cozy myth: that proximity to a craft automatically confers authority to judge it. The first clause sets up a credentialing assumption we still make reflexively - “good writer” as a kind of all-access pass. Then he flips it with a barroom analogy that’s deliberately unromantic. Writing is the intoxicant; criticism is the job behind the counter. Plenty of people can enjoy the buzz, even produce it for others, without understanding proportion, palate, or the quiet discipline of service.

The subtext is less anti-writer than anti-self-appointed gatekeeper. Bishop is taking a swipe at the era’s (and our own) tendency to treat a byline as proof of taste, as if talent were a transferable license. The joke also carries a warning about bias: the “good drunk” is the person most convinced they know what makes a great drink, precisely because they’re in the middle of craving it. That’s a clean metaphor for the writer-critic who reads as a competitor, a partisan, or a person protecting their own aesthetic turf.

Context matters. Bishop worked in midcentury American journalism, when critics were powerful, print was concentrated, and author reputations could be made or kneecapped by a small priesthood of reviewers. His quip defends specialization: criticism isn’t a lesser form of writing, it’s a different one, requiring distance, ethics, and an ability to translate private judgment into public guidance. The sting is democratic, too: being good at making something doesn’t mean you’re good at evaluating everyone else’s.