-
Jurançon White
A bit over a year ago, I was in lockdown drinking a very tasty German white wine from Gravity’s Rainbow. In 2021, things are looking totally different, where by totally different I mean exactly the same except the wine is French and the book is Against the Day. This year’s lockdown white is the 2017…
-
Tequila and Beer
Happy Pynchon in Public Day once again all. To celebrate, I’ve turned again to the well-nigh inexhaustible well that is Against the Day. I find often when I crack that spine afresh for one of these drinks, I’m plunged into a passage that a) I have all but zero memory of, and b) is of…
-
A Fifth of Old Stagg
In Chapter 13 of V. (in which the yo-yo string is revealed as a state of mind) Profane has occasion to call in a favour Pig owes him. This sends our narrator digressing away on how the favour came to be owed, a tale involving Profane saving Pig’s own mortal bacon via a radar antenna…
-
Banana Breakfast
This one’s been percolating in the back of my head pretty much since day one of the project. Parts of it have been bubbling away in the actual physical world since late 2019, creeping toward readiness. The time has come. From Mrs Quoad and her Disgusting English Candy Drill for drink ninety-nine, on to crest…
-
Lafite Rothschild
Well so I got bored of joking that someone should buy me a Lafite Rothschild bottle and just went and did it myself. Let’s not dwell too long on the fact that it maybe cost more than every other wine I’ve drunk here put together. It’s our ninety-ninth bottle pulled from the Pynchon cabinet: we…
-
Martinis
We’re fast approaching our 100th drink snuck from papa Pynchon’s liquor cabinet, but this is only the second straight from the Slow Learner shelf. SL did share some vermouth concoction with Against the Day and a tequila sour with Lot 49, but its only solo credit here to date was a Tom Collins way back…
-
Watered pink wine
Perhaps after a weekend of global celebration following the Americans’ step back toward sanity, I’m not the only one who could use some gentle Monday hair of the dog? My glass is half wine half water and I make no apology. If Pynchon is to be believed, the key constituencies for watered-down wine, other than…
-
Imported German Beer
On page 986 of Against the Day, Frank Traverse has just recently put his engineering skills to use rigging a train with an imperial fuckton of dynamite and now finds himself in the Mexican Capital. (Why the Capital is Capitalised isn’t clear to me. Was Pynchon working on Mason & Dixon at the same time…
-
Sherry
No one thus far has drunk sherry in a Pynchon novel that I have noticed. But sherry’s ghost does linger by a window during the Rathenau séance early in Gravity’s Rainbow. Milton Gloaming is telling Jessica about his statistical analysis of the paranormal investigations; Jessica’s “mad young gentleman” Roger is off in another room with…
-
French Beer
French stuff gets a good run around here. Usually wine, occasionally brandy, now and then absinthe. Never before a French beer though. Beer doesn’t really register on the Franco-radar. According to this book Farmhouse Ales I happen to have sitting on my shelf though, the French have a “little known tradition of beer appreciation” and…
-
Follow
Following
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Tom Pynchon's Liquor Cabinet 