Category: Against The Day
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Opium Beer
I sit drinking this opium beer on my roof, and Australia’s current apocalyptic choke of bushfires has certainly leant the scene an opium den-esque smokiness. But that might be as close as we come to actual opium here. On Googling “opium beer”, one mostly uncovers tales of homebrewers getting arrested and genetically-modified morphine-producing yeasts. The…
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Pommery (Merry Christmas!)
Merry Christmas, Pynchondom! I hope you’re enjoying it with good friends and family and that your relatives’ paranoid conspiracy theories are at least entertaining. Here, we’ve pulled a festive bottle of Pommery Champagne from Against the Day to celebrate. The company is more sinister there — Foley Walker and Scarsdale Vibe drink some after Vibe…
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Some vermouth concoction
Often here, I’ll pluck a drink from a page of Pynchon based primarily on my ignorance of it. Tommy boy has introduced me to a vast array of new favourites thusly. (Hell, back when I started this, I don’t think I even really liked whisky). Sometimes though, it’s more like I’ll find the exact liquid…
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Cognac
Cognac first appears in Pynchon crated up on the Swinemünde dock, among the cargo Gerhardt von Göll / Der Springer is shipping upriver. Springer’s cargo also features “six chorus girls, wearing feathers and spangles under old cloth coats to save trunk space, a small pit band at different levels of alcoholic slumber, manymany cases of…
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Graves
It is February and a little late for new year’s resolutions, but I will nevertheless assert that I’m hoping to pick up the pace around here this year. When I last checked, there were something like 403 drinks on the list. We’re not even a quarter through; this one-a-month pace is not going to cut…
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Arak
Somewhere deep in the vast and mapless territories of Against the Day, Lindsay Noseworth of the Chums of Chance finds himself riding atop a camel through a “nook” of New York City that is also “in some not strictly metaphorical way” a Turkish desert. The geography of AtD is certainly intriguing. Lindsay rides through this…
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Nebbiolo
Right near the end of Against the Day, we witness Dally and Kit reunite with Reef and Yashmeen in Turin. There’s a little wife-with-ex-lover tension, but the whole thing basically seems to go very nicely. Page 1073: To celebrate they all went out to dinner at the Ristorante del Cambio, known locally as “the old lady.”…
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The Macallan
I first cracked open Tom Pynchon’s Liquor Cabinet and got stuck into the Chivas Regal four years ago today. That seems like a good excuse for more whisky. The Macallan graces the same top shelf Bleeding Edge Silicon Alley party bar where we found Stolichnaya Elit and Tanqueray No. 10. Those were both very pleasant, but if I were at…
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Green Beer
Early in Against the Day, the young Franz Ferdinand is hanging out in Chicago for the World’s Fair. Greenhorn private security agent Lew Basnight is tasked with protecting the Archduke, whose mostly interested in hunting down “ladies of flagrant repute.” One night, F.F. gives his handlers the slip. Lew goes looking for him. Page 47:…
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Italian Beer
On page 724 of Against the Day, we find sinister (likely orange-faced tiny-handed) plutocrat Scarsdale Vibe touring northern Italy with his faithful manservant Foley Walker hunting bargains in Renaissance art. The hunt involves regular humiliation for Foley, not a day going by that he doesn’t “find himself carrying out some chore better left to a performing monkey.” Page…
Tom Pynchon's Liquor Cabinet 