Tag: Cyprian Latewood
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Grappa
In-between my drinking this grappa and my writing about it here, a wondrous new window opened in the world: we are getting a new Thomas Pynchon novel! I struggle to overstate my excitement at this tremendous, improbable news. It felt like—feels like—the Christmas of childhood. No doubt you’ve read the blurb, clearly penned by the…
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Ouzo
If the drinks dotted liberally through Against the Day represent a boozy symphony, ouzo appears as a major-key motif late in the piece. We first find Cyprian drinking it among “fair limbs and spring sunrises” in Salonica: “It was the absence of all hesitation here that impressed Cyprian, setting aside the ouzo and hashish whose…
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Szekszárdi Vörös
We now make a final return to a paragraph we’ve visited twice before (first for Apricot Brandy in 2015, then Gewurtztraminer a year later). Yashmeen and Cyprian are fleeing some Hungarians, hiding out in Ratty’s safe house, inspecting the pantry. Here it is one last time: By the unwritten rules of these transitory dwellings, the…
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Šljivovica
A few years ago, an old work friend and mentor originally from Montenegro showed up at a party I threw with a very kind gift of a bottle of Serbian šljivovica. Maybe a year later, she brought another bottle to another party. I had a few other spirits laid out that night I wanted finished,…
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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…
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Apricot Brandy
Around page 718 of Against the Day, Cyprian and Yashmeen meet up with Ratty McHugh to discuss Yashmeen’s fear that she’s being followed, including by a “Hungarian element.” (My recollection of this passage is close to nil, but the Chumps of Choice group-read blog has great memory-refreshing summaries of AtD chapters—it’s a great travelling companion if you’re reading the book…
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Montepulciano
Drunk Pynchonette and I ordered a couple of (enormous) glasses of this last night then only realised halfway through ’em that the name’s familiar ring owed itself not to my comprehensive knowledge of Italian viticulture but to Pynchon’s most alcoholic of opuses, Against the Day. So it was camera out, non-Instgramming restraint and decency away, and time for…
Tom Pynchon's Liquor Cabinet 