Read Hemingway & Bailey's Bartending Guide to Great American Writers Online
Authors: Mark Bailey,Edward Hemingway
Hemingway & Bailey's Bartending Guide to Great American Writers (2 page)
“After one drink it’s very hard not to take another, and after three it is even harder not to take three more.”
Agee, often quiet and despairing when sober, was transformed by alcohol. The life of the party, no, but he could be terrifically entertaining. Director John Huston found that the more Agee drank the more he talked, and the funnier he got. A clever parodist, he liked to mime a piss-drunk Ulysses S. Grant accepting the sword from Robert E. Lee at Appomattox and sliding onto the floor. Although not an actor, Agee occasionally cast himself in bit roles. He played a drunk in both
The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky
and a television film on Abraham Lincoln. Clearly, he knew how to play to his strengths.
..........
1909–1955. Novelist, journalist, screenwriter, film critic, and poet.
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,
poorly received at the time of publication, is Agee’s most celebrated work. His unfinished autobiographical novel,
A Death in the Family,
won the Pulitzer Prize.
The African Queen,
written with John Huston, was nominated for an Academy Award.
WHISKEY SOUR
Like many southern writers, Agee (born in Knoxville, Tennessee) loved his bourbon. One of America’s oldest cocktails, the venerable Whiskey Sour is a fine way to imbibe yours. When made just right, a balance between sweet and sour is achieved.
2 oz. bourbon, rye, or blended whiskey
¾ oz. simple syrup
¾ oz. lemon juice
Orange or lemon slice
Maraschino cherry
Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker filled with ice cubes. Shake well. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with orange or lemon slice and cherry. Traditionally, a raw egg white is added to give the drink a silky consistency.
The Whiskey Sour can also be served on the rocks in an Old-Fashioned glass.
A Death in the Family,
1938
“B
LESS YOU
, P
APA
.”
“Rats. Drink your drink.”
She drank deeply and shuddered.
“Take all you can without getting drunk,” he said. “I wouldn’t give a whoop if you got blind drunk, best thing you could do. But you’ve got tomorrow to reckon with.” And tomorrow and tomorrow.
“It doesn’t seem to have any effect,” she said, her voice still liquid. “The only times I drank before I had a terribly weak head, just one drink was enough to make me absolutely squiffy. But now it doesn’t seem to have any effect in the slightest.” She drank some more.
“Good,” he said. “That can happen.”
“A poet without alcohol is no real poet.”
One evening at a pub in England, Aiken and Malcolm Lowry (a writer who also liked his liquor) set to drinking at a relatively brisk pace. After more than a couple, they headed out into the thick fog. At nine o’clock, Aiken’s worried wife, Clarissa, was stunned to see two mud-soaked zombies lurch into the house. It turned out they had staged an impromptu javelin-throw—this across an inlet where three rivers converged. Unfortunately, Aiken forgot to let go of the javelin and fell into the river. Lowry slipped in after him. Given the dark night and the slimy wall, they were lucky the tide proved lower than their blood alcohol levels.
..........
1889–1973. Poet, short-story writer, and novelist. Aiken gained recognition with his first book of verse,
Earth Triumphant.
His
Selected Poems
was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, his
Collected Poems
a National Book Award. Aiken’s best-known short story is “Silent Snow, Silent Secret.”
NEGRONI
The Negroni, supposedly named after a bar-hopping Italian count, has a remarkable red-orange color and a taste as distinctive and complex as any Aiken poem. You have to appreciate Campari, and not everyone does. Like a Martini, a Negroni can be made dry or sweet.
1 oz. gin
1 oz. sweet vermouth
1 oz. Campari
Orange twist
Pour all ingredients into an Old-Fashioned glass filled with ice cubes. Stir gently. Garnish with orange twist. Sometimes a splash of club soda is added.
The Negroni can also be served straight up in a cocktail glass.
Punch in a beer-house, drinking beer,
Booms with his voice so that all may hear,
Bangs on the table with a red-haired fist,
Writhes in his chair with a hump-backed twist,
Leers at his huge nose, in the glass,
And then proclaims in a voice of brass:
Let all who would prosper and be free
Mark my words and listen to me!
Call me a hunchback? call me a clown?
I turned the universe upside down!
And where is the law or love or chain
That can’t be broken by nerve or brain?
“When you get drunk there is no difference between you and a lot of drunken advertising men.”
In New Orleans, an introduction was arranged between Anderson and the young William Faulkner. They became instant friends. As impressed as Anderson was with Faulkner’s talent, he was equally impressed with his astonishing tolerance for alcohol. Faulkner attributed his own heavy drinking to his limp and a metal plate in his head, World War I injuries received as a pilot in the Canadian Flying Corps. Believing the tale, Anderson worked the details into a short story, not knowing Faulkner had in truth been too short to enlist. Years later, Anderson himself would be severely injured, fatally in fact. This was not due to wartime exploits, but from drinking itself. Aboard an ocean liner bound for Brazil, Anderson accidentally swallowed a toothpick at a cocktail party. He died shortly afterward of peritonitis—an infection of the stomach.
..........
1876–1941. Short-story writer and novelist. Most famous for
Winesburg, Ohio,
a collection of interrelated short stories. In form and subject matter, Anderson’s work was a major influence on younger American writers, including Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Wolfe.
OLD-FASHIONED
You would think with a name like “Old-Fashioned” the recipe would be set in stone, but in fact a heated debate rages around the fruit. Some argue to muddle it; others add it as garnish; still others leave it out altogether. It is not known how Anderson took his Old-Fashioned, but we like our fruit as garnish—and, out of respect for the author, no toothpick.
1 cube of sugar
3 dashes Angostura bitters
2½ oz. bourbon, rye, or blended whiskey
1 dash simple syrup
1 orange slice
1 maraschino cherry
Lemon twist
Place a sugar cube at the bottom of an Old-Fashioned glass. Add bitters, and muddle. Pour in whiskey and a dash of simple syrup. Fill the glass with ice cubes, and stir gently. Garnish with lemon twist, orange slice, and cherry. Sometimes a splash of club soda is added.
Winesburg, Ohio,
1919
O
NE NIGHT
T
OM
F
OSTER GOT DRUNK
. That came about in a curious way. He never had been drunk before, and indeed in all his life had never taken a drink of anything intoxicating, but he felt he needed to be drunk that one time and so went and did it. . . .
Tom got drunk sitting on a bank of new grass beside the road about a mile north of town. Before him was a white road and at his back an apple orchard in full bloom. He took a drink out of the bottle and then lay down on the grass. . . .
“It was good to be drunk,” Tom Foster said. “It taught me something. I won’t have to do it again.”
“At four o’clock in the morning, when everybody’s drunk enough, then extraordinary things can happen.”
In Paris, Baldwin spent many long nights in cafés drinking and arguing with writers James Jones and William Styron, fellow expatriates with a similar fondness for booze. At Jones’s home, where they would often start out and end up, Jones had a bar made out of an old church pulpit. Late at night, Baldwin, who in his youth had been a preacher, would entertain his friends by delivering mock sermons on the evils of drink.
..........
1924–1987. Novelist, essayist, short-story writer, and playwright. Best known for his autobiographical first novel,
Go Tell It on the Mountain.
Baldwin’s second novel,
Giovanni’s Room,
explored homosexuality and created controversy. An active voice in the civil rights movement, he followed with
Another Country
and
The Fire Next Time
. Baldwin spent much of his career as an expatriate in Paris.