Hemingway & Bailey's Bartending Guide to Great American Writers
Page 6
..........
1809–1849. Poet, short-story writer, and literary critic. Poe’s first collection of short stories, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, contains his most famous work, “The Fall of the House of Usher.” With The Murders in the Rue Morgue and “The Purloined Letter” he created the modern detective story. As for verse, musical and mellifluous, “The Raven” brought Poe national fame. His other celebrated poems include “The Bells” and “Annabel Lee.”
SAZERAC
Poe had a great affection for absinthe. Sixty-eight percent alcohol mixed with a toxic herb called wormwood, absinthe was the drink of choice for poets and artists of the mid- to late nineteenth century. Until banned in 1912, absinthe was a key ingredient of the Sazerac. One of the first cocktails created in America, the Sazerac originated in New Orleans in the early 1800s. We have replaced the absinthe with Pernod. We hope Poe will forgive us.
3 dashes of Pernod
2 oz. rye whiskey
¼ oz. simple syrup
3 dashes of Peychaud bitters
Lemon twist
Pour Pernod into a chilled Old-Fashioned glass. Swirl until entire inside of the glass is coated, then discard excess. Pour rye, simple syrup, and bitters into a mixing glass filled with ice cubes. Stir well. Strain into the Old-Fashioned glass (no ice). Garnish with lemon twist.
Manuscript found on the wall of the Washington Tavern, Lowell, Massachusetts, date unknown
Fill with mingled cream and amber,
I will drain that glass again.
Such hilarious visions clamber
Through the chamber of my brain.
Quaintest thoughts, queerest fancies
Come to life and fade away.
What I care how time advances;
I am drinking ale today.
Dawn Powell
“Learn to be very stingy very soon and drink alone in the dark.”
Visiting in upstate New York, Powell and Edmund Wilson drove into town one day for a bottle of vodka. On the way home, the car had a flat tire. Wilson’s daughter, who was driving, waited while Powell and Wilson wandered off into a cornfield with the bottle, purportedly looking for help. As both writers were short and the summer corn tall, they soon disappeared. Hours later, Wilson’s daughter returned home to find Powell and Wilson sitting on the porch. It seems they had spent the afternoon in the cornfield polishing off the vodka. They had finally stumbled out, into another county altogether, and a sheriff had driven them home.
..........
1896–1965. Novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. One of the few female satirists of her time, Powell achieved only moderate success. Her fifth novel, Turn, Magic Wheel, brought some acclaim, and A Time to Be Born fared better. Powell was rediscovered in the late 1990s with the publication of her exceptional diaries.
DUBONNET COCKTAIL
An elegant pre-dinner drink, the Dubonnet Cocktail came about during Prohibition. Given all the bathtub booze being served, the wine ingredient seems to have been just another attempt to counter the gin’s harshness. As for Powell, it seems she never met a gin she didn’t like.
1½ oz. Dubonnet Rouge
1½ oz. gin
Lemon twist
Pour Dubonnet and gin into a mixing glass filled with ice cubes. Stir well. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon twist. Sometimes a dash of Angostura bitters is added.
From Angels on Toast, 1940
EBIE FOUND THE BOTTLE and some glasses.
“Want some?” she offered the girl.
“A half one,” said the snip. “I learned that in Ireland. I went back last year, and my dad thought it was awful I didn’t drink. ‘Come on, Maureen,’ he’d say, ‘a drop’d do you good, just a half one.’ He’d put away a dozen half ones. I’d say, ‘Why don’t you take a full one, pop, you want it,’ and he’d say, ‘No Maureen, I only take a half one, I’m no drunkard, my girl.’”
Anne Sexton
“I have a martini and I feel, once more, real.”
After Robert Lowell’s writing class at Boston University, Sexton and fellow classmate and poet Sylvia Plath would jump into Sexton’s Ford and zoom off to the Ritz Carlton. Sexton would park illegally in a loading zone, reasoning that she and Plath intended to get loaded. Once at the bar, according to Sexton’s letters, the two poets would sip cocktails, eat free chips, and talk at length about their first suicide attempts.
..........
1928–1974. Poet. Part of the confessional school of poetry, Sexton suffered from depression and successive mental breakdowns. She found early success with her first book, To Bedlam and Part Way Back. Her third volume, Live or Die, won the Pulitzer Prize.
KIR ROYALE
Both the Kir Royale and the Kir make for a lovely afternoon drink. Certainly, Sexton appreciated the stronger stuff too (Martinis in particular). But when sitting down with a friend or a fellow poet, a light elegant cocktail must have been hard to beat.
Champagne
¼ oz. crème de cassis
Lemon twist
Pour champagne into a chilled champagne flute. Drizzle in cassis. Garnish with lemon twist. Be sure to go easy on the cassis, lest the black currant overwhelm the taste.
For a Kir, substitute white wine for champagne and serve in a chilled wineglass.
From “For the Year of the Insane,” 1963
O Mary, tender physician,
come with powders and herbs
for I am in the center.
It is very small and the air is gray
as in a steam house.
I am handed wine as a child is given milk.
It is presented in a delicate glass
with a round bowl and a thin lip.
The wine itself is pitch-colored, musty and secret.
The glass rises on its own toward my mouth
and I notice this and understand this
only because it has happened.
Jean Stafford
“It gives me the wimwams to be in a house that’s bone-dry.”
Stafford’s alcohol consumption was impressive, even by the standards of her contemporaries. Often she found it necessary to hide her drinking, as she did from her first husband, Robert Lowell, no teetotaler himself. When living together in a dry village in Maine, Stafford hired the local sheriff to drive her twenty miles for rum. She used to hide bottles behind cookbooks and sneak nips from a flask she kept in her purse. One night after a party, Stafford was chauffeured home with another guest. Perhaps it was a sign of the times, but both women played sober, until without warning and quite spontaneously, they each threw up in their respective handbags.
..........
1915–1979. Short-story writer and novelist. Stafford achieved early success when her first novel, Boston Adventure, became a best-seller. She wrote two other novels, but it was her Collected Short Stories that won her the Pulitzer Prize.
CUBA LIBRE
During the Spanish-American War, homesick GIs had cola shipped to Cuba by the boatload. Legend has it that a soldier poured cola into his rum, squeezed in some lime, and lifted the glass, toasting, “Viva Cuba Libre.” Whatever the politics, the Cuba Libre was one of Stafford’s favorite drinks.
2 oz. light rum
Top with cola
3 wedges of lime
Fill a chilled highball glass with ice cubes. Pour in rum, top with cola. Squeeze in lime, tossing the wedges in after. Stir gently. Serve with two straws.
From In the Snowfall, not published
PROBABLY THE PROCESS WAS GRADUAL but it seemed to her that very suddenly and with no warning at all she was drunk. The sensation was wholly novel and delightful. It was an awakening to a new surrounding: the light altered, the room expanded, the faces were familiar and her host and hostess acquired a hospitality of which she was the principal beneficiary. But the awakening was combined with a delicious bodily drowsiness and though to her eyes the barroom seemed large, to her physical being it contracted its spaciousness into a s
mall, snug nest.
John Steinbeck
“Only lust and gluttony are worth a darn.”
Living in Hollywood, now a successful screenwriter (his script for Hitchcock’s Lifeboat was nominated for an Academy Award), Steinbeck hobnobbed with celebrities such as Charlie Chaplin, Burgess Meredith, and Spencer Tracy. He was particularly fond of Robert Benchley. Witty, inventive, and good with a bottle, the two writers were kindred spirits. In fact, at one of Steinbeck’s pool parties, they invented a game to test their capacity for booze. Empty wine bottles were placed at the bottom of the pool and various guests took turns diving down to retrieve them. If guests drowned in the process, it was decided they had had too much to drink.
..........
1902–1968. Novelist, short-story writer, and screenwriter. Steinbeck’s fourth novel, Tortilla Flats, brought him recognition, but it was Of Mice and Men that established him as a major literary figure. The Grapes of Wrath won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In 1962 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
JACK ROSE
Applejack is essentially apple brandy. Not for the snifter set, it is more raw than Calvados, and a bit lower rent. Made only in New Jersey, in Steinbeck’s day it was nicknamed “Jersey Lightning.” For a brandy drinker who also happened to be a champion of the working class the Jack Rose was the perfect cocktail. A beautiful pinkish-red color, the name comes from the Jacqueminot rose.
2 oz. applejack
¾ oz. lemon juice
½ oz. simple syrup
¼ oz. grenadine
Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker filled with ice cubes. Shake well. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
From Tortilla Flats, 1935
TWO GALLONS IS A GREAT DEAL OF WINE, even for two paisanos. Spiritually the jugs may be graduated thus: Just below the shoulder of the first bottle, serious and concentrated conversation. Two inches farther down, sweetly sad memory. Three inches more, thoughts of old and satisfactory loves. An inch, thoughts of old and bitter loves. Bottom of the first jug, general and undirected sadness. Shoulder of the second jug, black, unholy despondency. Two fingers down, a song of death or longing. A thumb, every other song each one knows. The graduations stop here, for the trail splits and there is no certainty. From this point on anything can happen.
Hunter S. Thompson
“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”
Ralph Steadman, an illustrator and Thompson’s longtime collaborator, put it plainly enough, “Never try to drink as much as he does.” Thompson began his day with a lumberjack breakfast, never to be served before noon. Calling it his “psychic anchor,” he described the meal: “four Bloody Marys, two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crepes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon or corned beef hash with diced chiles, a Spanish omelette or eggs Benedict, a quart of milk, chopped lemon for random seasoning, something like a slice of key lime pie, two margaritas and six lines of the best cocaine.” It is hard to imagine chopping wood after that—or even standing up.
..........
1937–2005. Journalist and novelist. Thompson’s innovative writing style, dubbed “gonzo journalism,” blurred the lines between author and subject. He is best known for his association with Rolling Stone. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, his most celebrated novel, is a cult classic.
GREYHOUND
Muhammed Ali once gave Thompson a health tip—eat a huge amount of grapefruit. Considering Thompson’s alcohol and drug intake, that hardly seems a drop in the bucket. Nonetheless he took the champ’s advice to heart; he just added liquor to the mix.
Make sure to use freshly squeezed grapefruit juice; Thompson always did. Indeed, he rarely was without a minimum half-dozen grapefruits and his stainless-steel bowie knife.
2 oz. vodka
5 oz. fresh grapefruit juice
Pour vodka and grapefruit juice into a highball glass filled with ice cubes. Stir gently.
From Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1971
TUESDAY, 12:30 P.M. . . . BAKER, CALIFORNIA . . . Into the Ballantine Ale now, zombie drunk and nervous. I recognize this feeling: three or four days of booze, drugs, sun, no sleep and burned out adrenalin reserves—a giddy, quavering sort of high that means the crash is coming. But when? How much longer? This tension is part of the high. The possibility of physical and mental collapse is very real now. . . .
. . . but collapse is out of the question; as a solution or even a cheap alternative, it is unacceptable. Indeed. This is the moment of truth, that fine and fateful line between control and disaster—which is also the difference between staying loose and weird on the streets, or spending the next five years of summer mornings playing basketball in the yard at Carson City.
Jim Thompson
“An alcoholic is driven by an urge which no one but another alcoholic can understand: He must justify himself (or stop drinking).”
Thompson was one of the hardest drinkers ever to make his name in letters. Back home in Nebraska, his grandfather would pour a morning toddy down Thompson’s throat to fortify him for the long cold walk to school. Later, as a hobo in Texas, Thompson would drink white lightning, home-brewed corn whiskey that could blind a man—and not just blind drunk. He drank ginger jack too, even more lethal, a ginger-based liquid sold as medicine. Still, if Thompson did not get to enjoy the fancy Sidecars he wrote about, he justified his drinking. On his deathbed, he told his wife, “Just you wait. I’ll become famous after I’m dead about ten years.” It didn’t even take that long.
..........
1906–1977. Pulp novelist, short-story writer, and screenwriter. Thompson was a principal figure of the second generation of hard-boiled writers. The Killer Inside Me is arguably his most important novel. With Stanley Kubrick he wrote the screenplays for The Killing and Paths of Glory.
SIDECAR
The Sidecar was invented in Paris during World War I and named after a French officer who would arrive at the bar in the sidecar of a chauffeur-driven motorcycle.
1½ oz. brandy
1 oz. Cointreau
½ oz. lemon juice
Lemon twist
Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker filled with ice cubes. Shake well. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon twist.
From The Grifters, 1963
CLOSING THE MENU, she handed it back to the waiter. . . .
“. . . A sidecar, say, with bourbon instead of brandy. And, Allen, no Triple Sec, please.”
“Emphatically!” The waiter wrote on his pad. “We always use Cointreau in a sidecar. Now, would you like the rim of the glass sugared or plain?”
“Plain. About an ounce and a half of bourbon to an ounce of Cointreau, and a twist of lime peel instead of lemon.”
“Right away, Mrs. Langtry.”
“And Allen . . .”
“Yes, Mrs. Langtry?”
“I want that served in a champagne glass. . . .”
Moira watched him as he hurried away, her carefully composed features concealing an incipient snicker. Now, wasn’t that something, she thought. No wonder the world was going to hell when a grown man pranced around in a monkey suit, brown-nosing dames who made a big deal out of ordering a belt of booze!
James Thurber
“One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.”
In a notorious incident at Tony Soma’s speakeasy, Thurber, a fairly obnoxious drunk, tossed his drink in Lillian Hellman’s face. Dashiell Hammett, pretty well lubricated himself, pushed Thurber up against the wall. In defense, Thurber tossed another glass at Hammett, but missed (he was partially blind) and hit a waiter who was cousin to the club’s owner. The police were called—an extreme measure at a speakeasy. The whole event was made famous in Hellman’s story “Julia” in her memoir Pentimento.
..........
1894–1961. Humorist and cartoonist. Thurber’s first book, Is Sex Necessary?, establis
hed him as a major comic talent. His short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” created his most enduring character, while his minimalist sketches in The New Yorker set the standard for sophisticated cartoons.
BRANDY ALEXANDER
A girl’s drink? A sissy drink? Thurber liked his brandy—as did Baldwin, Cozzens, Hellman, Lewis, Steinbeck, and Williams. Chances are, Thurber would have thrown his drink in your face just for thinking “sissy.”
1 oz. brandy
1 oz. dark crème de cacao
1½ oz. heavy cream
Freshly grated nutmeg
Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker filled with ice cubes. Shake well. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Sprinkle nutmeg over top.