Everyday Drinking.

My introduction to Kingsley Amis came through his comic novel Lucky Jim, but Amis was also a prolific columnist on the subject of alcoholic beverages. Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis combines two previous anthologies of Amis essays on drink (1973’s primer On Drink and 1983’s collection of newspaper columns Everyday Drinking) with a series of ten-question quizzes, originally published under the title How’s Your Glass?. Although there’s a bit of repetition – mostly of information but occasionally of jokes – between the first and second sections, the volume is educational and extremely witty, plenty to hold the attention of an occasional drinker like myself.

Each essay or column is built around a specific topic, usually a specific drink or class of drink, with digressions on topics like how to drink without getting a hangover, how to stock a liquor cabinet, or the decline of the English pub (so strongly felt that he delivers the same rant twice). Amis’s chief skill in writing these essays, aside from an apparently indefatigable liver, is blending strident opinion with direct advice so that his lectures don’t become shrill or dull.

His essay on liqueurs, for example, starts with an explanation of where that class of beverage originated (from preserving fruits in spirits) to discussions of a few major types to a digression on Southern Comfort, including his discussion of a drink called a Champagne Comfort:

Champagne Comfort is not a difficult drink to imagine, or to make, or to drink. My advice is to stop after the first one unless you have the rest of the day free.

Amis lays into any practice of which he disapproves, referring to lager and lime as “an exit application from the human race if ever there was one” (it’s listed in the index under “lager and lime, unsuitability for higher primates of, 170”) or as a Harvey Wallbanger as a “famous or infamous cocktail … named after some reeling idiot in California.” He expounds on Champagne as “only half a drink. The rest is a name on a label, an inflated price tag, a bit of tradition and a good deal of showing off.” There are several columns and one section on how to stiff your guests by shorting their drinks or by fawning over their wives so the women will defend you to their grousing husbands on the drives home.

While Amis is busy amusing you, he’s educating you on the history and processes of drink as well as offering suggestions and recommendations, even on wine, a beverage he professes to dislike. Understanding drink means understanding ingredients, processes, industrial practices, and accumulated wisdom of old sots like Amis. He writes that it’s best to keep seltzer or sparkling water outside the fridge, as refrigeration kills the bubbles. Why isn’t Jack Daniel’s technically considered a bourbon? (Because it’s made in Tennessee, not in Bourbon County, Kentucky.) What do (or did) winemakers in Bordeaux do in poor harvest years? (Import grapes from Rioja, a region in Spain that’s a major producer of red wines, particularly from the Tempranillo grape.) And he won points with me with several mentions of Tokaj azsu, the sweet wines of Hungary made from grapes affected with the “noble rot” fungus.

He also includes numerous drink recipes, including a few of his own making, one of which is, in fact, named “The Lucky Jim,” a dry martini with cucumber juice. I’ll trust one of you to give that a shot and report back to me.

Next book: Hangover Square, a novel by Patrick Hamilton, author of Rope, a play that became one of Alfred Hitchcock’s more famous films.

Comments

  1. I don’t know that I’ve ever had “The Lucky Jim” but I will say that, in my experience, almost any cocktail not made with whiskey of one sort or another does will with lime (especially ones made with vodka or gin). Cucumber juice just brings a really nice clear freshness to things without being sweet and cucumber is the kind of flavor that somehow seems to inhabits its own plane such that it doesn’t crowd out any other flavor and also is not easily overlooked even in drinks with a lot (or too many) other flavors.

  2. Ouch, scratch lime and put in cucumber in my comment above, I don’t know where my brain is sometimes.

  3. Hendrick’s gin includes cucumber in the botanical recipe. It’s a fantastic gin that makes a great gin and tonic. I’ve never tried it in a martini, since it’s not a London dry gin (it’s Scottish), but it would probably approximate a Lucky Jim.

    Sounds like a good book

  4. Hendricks gin, Pimms’ Cup, lemonade, seltzer, cucumber slices: The Porch Swing.

  5. Hendrick’s is by far my favorite gin. I like a straight-up Hendrick’s martini garnished with either a twist or a cucumber slice. I’m kind of craving one right now.

  6. The part about bourbon having to be made in Bourbon County, Kentucky, is a myth. There is plenty of bourbon made in Kentucky outside of Bourbon County. If I remember correctly, there are even a couple of bourbons made in Virginia. Instead, the difference between bourbon and Tennessee whiskey is that makers of Tennessee whiskey filter it with charcoal after it is distilled and before it goes in the barrels. Bourbon goes straight into the barrels.

  7. Amis implied that it was a D.O.C.-type situation, like how you can’t sell it as Champagne unless it’s from that region of France. I was taking his word for it.

  8. [Insert Miguel Cabrera joke here]

Trackbacks

  1. […] The humor, meanwhile, is decidedly lowbrow, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Self gets drunk, falls down, embarrasses himself, starts fights, deals with a stalker, cheats on the women he’s using to cheat on his girlfriend, says awful things, and blacks out on a regular basis. Amis is clearly a fan of creating silly character names in the P.G. Wodehouse tradition, and inserts himself into the book as a novelist who annoys Self and ends up working on the script to Good Money, while portraying the language of the slovenly, sodden Self (as narrator) as you might expect from the son of a great author who enjoyed a good tipple. […]