Tag: Slothrop
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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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Taittinger
Here’s a quick one; I couldn’t let the month of fifty years since Gravity’s Rainbow‘s detonation into the world fly past uncelebrated! Back to the Casino Hermann Goering, just post the Veuve and the vulgar song, where Slothrop’s a bit out of it, his drunken dissolution presaging perhaps his later existential dissolution, and the waiters…
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Italian Gin
We return now after an interregnum of two years to the Ballad of Tantivy Mucker-Maffick, Slothrop’s ode to his drunkard mate. Last time we came for the French beer, nowhere near as septic as our lieutenant would have it. Hopefully he’s misjudged Italian gin too. The Ballad of Tantivy Mucker-Maffick Oh Italian gin is a…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Irish Whiskey and Water
When we last met here, you were humouring my rambling on at unprecedented length and pretentiousness about fermented horse milk. Let’s maybe settle back down with something a little simpler. Drugged drinks are a bit of a theme throughout Pynchon, if one we’re mostly yet to tackle here. Beer spiked here with LSD, there with…
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Berncasteler Doctor
Today’s plonk tube comes to us from no less notorious a recommender than Mrs Quoad, of Disgusting English Candy Drill fame. (The original, not the usurper, for you PIPCast listeners). We last visited this territory with some gin marshmallows. Also in her fearsome arsenal: wine jellies made from the products of great European vineyards. Slothrop remembers…
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Brandy Alexander
Just post-Slothrop’s troubling moment with the really-too-young Bianca (discussed with great thoughtfulness and insight on the latest Pynchon in Public podcast), our dubious hero finds himself weaving through “newly-risen roisterers” below decks on the Anubis. Page 480: There is hardly a thing now in Slothrop’s head but getting to Bianca. At the end of the passageway, across a score of…
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Veuve Clicquot Brut
Season two of the Pynchon in Public podcast‘s trek through Gravity’s Rainbow is a wrap! Watch your iTunes feeds. I popped some Champagne on the air this morning in celebration. You may notice the Champagne is pictured above in a beer mug. In this, as in the choice of the specific Champagne house, I follow the good example…
Tom Pynchon's Liquor Cabinet 