Discover the Book that Teaches You “How to Drink Like a Writer”
How to Drink Like a Writer By Margaret Kaplan, 296 pp. Apollo Publishers ($18.39, Bookshop) is a book that becomes more essential the closer you are to a small liberal arts school. If you have a younger relative who is currently completing their English degree, it is a useful roadmap to their education, one you can use at Thanksgiving to test the depth of their literary waters (“So, enjoying the May Queens, eh?”).
As a cheekily-written compilation of cocktail and drink recipes, featuring a bibliography to satisfy the hardest-boiled professor, it would be at home in English department kitchenettes and beneath the college bars where Fitzgerald wannabes gather.
Writers & Their Drinks
Author Margaret Kaplan has captured writers more keenly than they would care to admit, though she seems well aware of it. Nearly every recipe has the bitters of quips only a fellow writer could give: suggestions that you enjoy Edna St. Vince Millay’s customary speakeasy cocktail “alone in your basement with the lights off,” or introductions to fortifying concoctions like Gary Shteyngart’s breakfast martini that will enable you to pump out “countless blurbs for New York’s literati.”
It’s worth wondering what it is about writing and drinking, something Kaplan alludes to in the small notes accompanying the author-centric cocktail recipes. Alcohol is hardly necessary for the act (as you’ll read in George Orwell’s exacting instructions for “A Nice Cup of Tea,”), but it is damned helpful. Perhaps this is because writing requires exploded views of a single moment, like those engine diagrams you see in the older car maintenance guides and something requiring a magic-like alcohol to replicate in real life. Or perhaps it’s that as a writer, your greatest fear is that you will run out of words. A good drink relieves this worry, if only for an hour.
But if you are interested in only drinking like the greats and not having their existential crises, this book does not disappoint. Some of the recipes read a bit light like SparkNotes glosses: a mere gin & tonic for J.K. Rowling, a neat bourbon for James Baldwin. Perhaps, as an assurance for the everyman, these sections are a relief. Not every night can be a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster (a fictional cocktail courtesy of SciFi giant Douglas Adams; like “having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick”). But if providing recipes for neat pours or routine happy hour specials is a shortcoming, it is quickly outshone by rich, delightful essays-in-miniature elsewhere. Kaplan possesses a wit on the topic that would be at home in the New Yorker. And of complex recipes, there is no shortage: Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas’ “Summer Champagne Fruit Salad” will challenge the bartender and chef in any reader.
Proceed With Caution!
In a sense, the one hundred recipes that compose How to Drink Like a Writer are an act of honest journalism. Sometimes, advice is ill-advised but given nonetheless. Noël Coward’s “Horse’s Neck,” a sworn hangover cure includes three aspirin muddled in with its brandy. Kingsley Amis’ “Tuft of the Dog” is a formidable tincture of hot water, vodka, lemon, Worcestershire sauce, and beef bouillon. Many of these cocktails are drink-at-your-own-risk, and only a few times does Kaplan step in with editorial wisdom and swap ingredients for something more legal.
Other drinks are probably too much even if taken singularly for the evening unless you are also a writer: see Richard Hughes’ and Anthony Burgess’ Hangman’s Blood, the recipe of which is a bracing 2 ounces each of rum, gin, whiskey, brandy, port, plus a “small bottle of stout” and a tipple of champagne to fill the pint glass up to its besotted rim. But Kaplan records this all with honesty, precise recipes, and neat illustrations, an approach that manages to be warm and approachable despite the tottering subject matter.
This is a book to read through with your own favorite drink, marking your favorites for future trials. You’ll pick it up again when you read through a classic and wonder what its author was drinking at the time they wrote it. The only thing missing, really, is an index by the main ingredient, should you not possess a bar that could satisfy the Half Price Books classics section. Being able to purchase a single bottle of alcohol and identifying which writers you could emulate that weekend would be a useful addition to an otherwise thorough book. If future editions include more writers, an index by last name might also be helpful.
For Readers & Writers
For those who read more than they write, this book should prove an enjoyable additive to many an evening and cannot help but improve your literary experiences. For writers, it may hit a touch close to home. You may be reminded of another haunting quote from a whale of a presence in English literature, Dr. Samuel Johnson, who was known to hang out at taverns. When once asked when a man is truly happy, he quipped: “Never, but when he is drunk.”
That is the grimmer side of drinking like a writer, and one that cannot help but be mentioned in any discussion of the topic. And for that reason, to fully enjoy How to Drink Like a Writer, you might take the work with a grain of salt, much like one of Jack Kerouac’s margaritas. But for those hoping to find literary inspiration where other authors have walked (and some stumbled) before, it’s worth considering the words of English author and pint-drinker, G.K. Chesterton:
“Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable … drink because you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient health of the world.”
Here’s a taste of the book, with credit to Apollo Publishers, and line drawings by Jessica Fimbel Willis.
