JOI's life, death, and the founding of E.T.A. (p. 64)
probably not helped at all by the man’s very gradual spiral into the crippling dipsomania of his late father
Context
The other thing that comes down the belt is the bottle. The passage credits JOI's late films' unevenness in part to his "very gradual spiral into the crippling dipsomania of his late father" — the same disease, named as an inheritance, the son sliding into the exact condition ("dipsomania") the raw has already pinned on the grandfather two paragraphs up. What the father built in the boy and what the father passed into the boy turn out to be the same lineage seen from two sides: a talent engineered in, a sickness bred in, and no clean line between them.