Category: V
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Gentian Brandy in Tea
Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers. Gravity’s Rainbow, p. 251. I am pleased to inform you all I have meditated on Lt .Tyrone’s Third Proverb and concluded that “Ooh what’s this they’re drinking then?” is in fact exactly the right question.…
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Broglio
Chapter seven of V. opens with some very fancy dentistry, as New York dentist Dudley Eigenvalue admires his treasured set of dentures, “each tooth a different precious metal”. Not too many pages later, we’re in front of a wine shop on the Ponte Vecchio, Florence, with a gem of a bottle. Signor Mantissa is on…
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Chilean Riesling
You would think I could have taken care of this one years ago. But nary a drop of Chilean riesling has graced Australian shores in the years I’ve been looking. So it took a trip to Santiago. We had only a day in the Chilean capital, sandwiched between two weeks in Patagonia and a week…
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Piña Colada
It’s January 1956; it’s Chapter One of V.; Benny Profane’s back in New York, up early yo-yoing sub-pavement between Grand Central and Times Square. He meets a group of Puerto Rican kids called Tolito, José, and Cucarachito (Klook to his friends). Their sister Josefina shows up too and shortly decides that Profane should move in…
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Sloe Gin Fizz
In the last part of the last pre-epilogue chapter of V., Fausto Maijstral walks into Profane’s lodging-house in Malta, looking for Stencil. He’s gone though, and Maijstral can’t even find a drink. Profane’s drank everything in the house, and now lies “snoring and drooling and apparently enjoying himself,” (p. 452). Maijstral wakes him up and…
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Chablis Punch
In the innocent days of late 2019, I ordered a box of wines of Pynchonian pedigree. We’ve since knocked off the Constantia, the Pouilly Fuisse, the Tignanello, and the Zeltinger. But the bottle of Chablis has had to bide its time. It was destined to become punch, and opportunities to break out the punch bowl…
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Homemade wine
I started making wine at the very beginning of covid lockdowns in Melbourne. On Good Friday 2020, in a transaction illegal under the newly implemented social distancing laws, I picked up four boxes of grapes from the back of a Hilux at a servo on the side of a highway. I spent the drive there…
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151 and Pineapple Juice
Last week, we made burgers. Hailing as I do from the great state of Queensland, it was imperative I get a slice of tinned pineapple in there. Later in the week, another few slices made their way on top of a curry. Both applications were thoroughly delicious. (We will avoid the fraught question of pizza.)…
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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…
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Something dark and fizzy
Last night—or actually, at 2 AM this morning, thanks to the magic of time zones—I had the pleasure of hanging out with the Pynchon in Public podcast crew for their upcoming 100th episode, reprising my role as token podcast drunk. Having previously inflicted Hpnotiq and vodka with vegetable soup on those fine people, I this…
Tom Pynchon's Liquor Cabinet 