Dwight Garner, who is one of the good guys, has written a book about food, drink and reading. It’s called The Upstairs Delicatessen.
He was my editor when I reviewed for the New York Times Book Review, and although we had lunch a few times, I don’t recall us ever drinking martinis, which is relevant because lithub.com has just published an extract from Dwight’s book which they title ‘Dwight Garner on the Long History of Writers and America’s Greatest Invention, the Martini.’ I can’t find a picture of him with a martini.
Of course I’m devastated not be included in the list of literary martini drinkers but many of of the usual suspects are there - Eliot, Mailer, Hitchens, Highsmith, Roger Angell, Field Marshall Montgomery, et al. I can’t find a picture of Monty drinking a martini either.
One thing that surprised me in the article, though not absolutley totally, was the news that Kenneth Tynan, inspired by Alan Watts, ‘had his girlfriend inject the contents of a large wineglass of vodka, via an enema tube, into his rectum. “Within ten minutes the agony is indescribable,” he wrote in his diary. His anus became “tightly compressed” and blood seeped from it. It took three days for the pain to abate. “Oh, the perils of hedonism!” he wrote.’
This is interesting to me chiefly because a long time ago on the Greek island of Samos, I met a group of Americans, some of whom had been in Vietnam, and despite having what seemed to me fairly generous war pensions, they found it too expensive to drink Greek wine in bars or tavernas, and so they tried the intra-anal method, or so they said. They said it was very effective if you wanted to be falling-down drunk (as they did) and all perils aside, it was cheap.
Dwight says in his article that he makes his own martinis every night at home, and adds ‘If you want to go broke quickly rather than slowly, drink your martinis outside the house.’ This is certainly true and I like to think I construct a pretty good home-made martini, and I certainly do a more generous pour than you get in most bars, but somehow the experience is never quite as good as when you’re in a dark American bar with a friendly (or even surly) bartender.
No comments:
Post a Comment