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Merry Christmas! (Fruitcake soaked in brandy)
Merry Christmas all! The day’s over here in Australia; probably just beginning for Tommy Pynchon himself. Among my celebrations, I’ve squeezed in a fruit cake soaked in brandy, as recommended by Mason in Mason & Dixon. A nice chunk of Christmas does appear in M&D, but the fruit cake doesn’t actually herald from any of the…
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A gigantic pitcherful of margaritas
When I reread Inherent Vice a month or so ago, the first pages had me worried. It wasn’t the writing–I slipped into the Lebowski haze more happily and with even more laughter than on my first reading. But there weren’t any drinks. I started this project after reading Bleeding Edge, finding lots of alcohol, and vaguely remembering lots…
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Guinness Stout
V. reaches its apex in Chapter 16, in Valetta, Malta, where the crew of the USS Scaffold are “getting liberty.” Stencil and Profane show up later in the chapter, but it starts out with Pappy Hod and Fat Clyde heading ashore amid sun-showers and “even a rainbow.” They made their way through the dockyard. Around them…
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Tom Collins
Well Tom Pynchon’s Liquor Cabinet has entered its sixth month of life, and two Pynchon books remain undrunk from: Slow Learner and Against the Day. The latter I haven’t even read yet (looking forward to getting into it soon). But the former has a decent little list awaiting for our attentions. Unfortunately, Tommy Boy doesn’t mention anything alcoholic in…
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Schloss Vollrads
Does anyone have a time machine handy? Some of these drinks are getting tricky to pull off stuck in 2014. Peach brandy, for example, seems to be the liquor of the moment in the 18th century of Mason & Dixon, but it’s a lot harder to come across now. The Mt Vernon estate made a special batch of the…
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Cachaça with beer chasers
Well I really lived up to that ‘Drunk Pynchon’ moniker on this one. Cachaça, it turns out, goes down easy and goes down fast and then may or may not come right back up again. A few days later now, I think I’ve just established enough distance between myself and the event to write about it. That’s contrary to my…
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Gallo wine with ice
After a couple of moody European spirits (oude jenever and absinthe), it seems about time we have something more frivolous. This one definitely fits that bill. It’s pink and light and sweet and totally without bite. At the start of Chapter Six of V., Profane’s just finished his first day (or actually, night) of alligator hunting in the sewers…
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Oude Genever
Now we’re getting somewhere. The beaten track just slipped out of sight. Oude Genever.It’s totally obscure to me, but gets a couple of runs in Pynchon, making a grand debut in Gravity’s Rainbow then popping its head up again in Mason & Dixon. In GR, it’s episode fourteen and we’re flashing back in Katje’s memory/imagining to Holland, to the…
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Absinthe with water
From Hemingway’s Papa Doble, on to another drink with a great literary/artistic pedigree: absinthe. We’re all familiar with its green fairy aura of inspired madness and creative self-annihilation. The stuff’s been put away by Baudelaire, Emile Zola, Oscar Wilde, Picasso, Modigliani, etc etc etc. Even more impressively, it gets mentioned in both V. and Gravity’s Rainbow. In V., a not exactly gallant…
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Papa Doble (and a giveaway!)
The paperback of Bleeding Edge comes out tomorrow in the US. That’s the updated cover passing on our right. The press release from Penguin Press reminds me (as I’m sure I don’t have to remind you) that the book is “dazzling and ludicrous,” “full or verbal sass and pizzazz … totally gonzo, totally wonderful,” “a necessary novel and one…
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Tom Pynchon's Liquor Cabinet 