Alfred Gilbert Aronowitz:
(20 May 1928 – 1 August 2005).
American rock journalist best known for introducing Bob Dylan to The Beatles in 1964.
Aronowitz was born in Bordentown, New Jersey, southeast of Trenton, and graduated from Rutgers University with a degree in journalism in 1950. He was the son of an Orthodox Jewish butcher.
August is the month when wars start. It’s when the water dries up, and the spirit begins to wither.
The quote isn’t about literal warfare or drought — it’s an impressionistic riff on August as a month of psychological unraveling. After the long stretch of summer, heat and light start to feel oppressive rather than pleasant; routines break down, tempers fray, and people feel unmoored. “The water dries up” and “the spirit begins to wither” are metaphors for that late-summer depletion — physical, emotional, and even civilizational, since the author uses the historical tendency of wars to break out in August (a real pattern, e.g. WWI in 1914) as his opening image for the month’s unstable energy.
Origin:
The line comes from a personal essay called “August Blues,” published on the author’s self-run website “The Blacklisted Journalist” — a platform he started later in his career after being pushed out of mainstream journalism. In the full piece, the quoted line is followed by a cascade of similarly moody, list-like observations: sailing ships getting becalmed in the month, dogs going mad, a rise in tranquilizer sales, corporate executives losing their jobs, and organizations falling apart. He also ties the essay to something personal — the fact that his father died in August, with him and his sisters standing at the bedside.
Author: Al Aronowitz (1928–2005)
– the American rock journalist best known for introducing Bob Dylan to the Beatles in 1964 and for covering the Beat Generation for the “New York Post” in the late 1950s.
It’s since been lifted out of context and circulated widely on quote-aggregator sites (often paired with other “August quotes”), which is likely where you encountered it — the attribution to Aronowitz in those collections is accurate, even though the original essay itself is fairly obscure.
