Tag: Bars/Places
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Pulque
I remember clearly the moment I reached page 376 of my first reading of Against the Day. I’d already been moonlighting as Drunk Pynchon here for a few years, just with a big “Coming Soon” sign plastered in place of the AtD list (or actually, it originally said “coming less soon”; I was pretty intimidated…
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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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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…
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Sake
I was in Japan a while back, and when I wasn’t annoying my travel buddy and oldest friend searching for good Japanese whisky (ping Hibiki), I was annoying my travel buddy and oldest friend searching for a Japanese edition of Gravity’s Rainbow. Priorities are important. Occasions also did arise when I annoyed no one, and…
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Whisky Sours
8 May is universally recognised and celebrated as Pynchon in Public day. Parades fill the streets from Venice Beach to Vheissu; confetti pours from airships over all the world’s great capitals. In celebration of this grand holiday, I gathered some compadres to join Oedipa Maas and me for a whisky sour. Boilermaker House whipped us up a…
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Cock Ale
Don’t get too excited—Pynchon clearly has his saucier moments, but I haven’t gone all NSFW on you here. A cock’s a chicken, you dirty bastards. And what could be a more natural beer ingredient than a chicken. The Cock Ale appears in Mason & Dixon, brewed regularly at “The Moon,” a St Helena “punch house”…
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Champagne Cocktails
With all the drinking in Pynchon, you’d think there’d be a few more recognisable bars dotting his fictional landscapes. But the only one that really jumps out to me is The Scope, which we find out on the way to LA, near the Yoyodyne factory in The Crying of Lot 49. From chapter three: The Scope…
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Singapore Sling
We Australian Pynchonites have been waiting patiently and less patiently for Inherent Vice to reach our shores. It did finally appear in Melbourne in a moonlight preview last week, but I was already seeing (the excellent) Gareth Liddiard that night. So I’m still waiting. BUT the movie comes out on Thursday and I have a ticket in hand! So…
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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…
Tom Pynchon's Liquor Cabinet 