Hemingway & Bailey's Bartending Guide to Great American Writers (6 page)
Read Hemingway & Bailey's Bartending Guide to Great American Writers Online
Authors: Mark Bailey,Edward Hemingway
MAI TAI
Crane once remarked, “Rum has a strange power over me, it makes me feel quite innocent—or rather, guiltless.” We’re not sure the Mai Tai will have that same effect on you, but it sure beats going to confession. Believed to have been invented by Victor Bergeron (Trader Vic) at his bar Hinky Dink’s outside San Francisco, the Mai Tai is, at the very least, a great umbrella drink.
1 oz. light rum
1 oz. dark rum
½ oz. Grand Marnier
1 oz. lime juice
½ oz. orgeat (almond-flavored syrup)
½ oz. simple syrup
1 mint sprig
Fresh fruit (orange slice, pineapple chunk, etc.)
Pour all ingredients (except mint and fruit) into a cocktail shaker filled with ice cubes. Shake, and then strain into a chilled double Old-Fashioned glass filled with cracked ice. Garnish with mint sprig and fruit.
The last bear, shot drinking in the Dakotas
Loped under wires that span the mountain stream.
Keen instruments, strung to a vast precision
Bind town to town and dream to ticking dream.
But some men take their liquor slow—and count
—Though they’ll confess no rosary nor clue.
“Civilization begins with distillation.”
Unlike most writers, Faulkner, from the very beginning of his career, drank while he wrote. He claimed, “I usually write at night. I always keep my whiskey within reach.” That he did. In Hollywood, hired by director Howard Hawks to write
Road to Glory,
Faulkner showed up to a script meeting carrying a brown paper bag. He pulled out a bottle of whiskey, but accidentally sliced his finger unscrewing the cap. If the film’s producer thought the meeting was over, he was wrong. Faulkner dragged over the wastepaper basket—so he could gulp whiskey and drip blood as they hashed out the story.
..........
1897–1962. Novelist, short-story writer, and screenwriter. Faulkner’s southern epic, the Yoknapatawpha cycle, includes his most celebrated novels,
The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, The Light in August, The Unvanquished,
and
Absalom, Absalom!
His most famous screenplays are
The Big Sleep
and
To Have and Have Not.
In 1949, Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
MINT JULEP
In the early 1800s, doctors used the word
julep
to describe “a kind of liquid medicine.” These were remedies in which leaves from the
mentha
family were used to soften the taste of the medication. Of course, this is not to suggest the Mint Julep is good for you, but it may be what Faulkner had in mind when he said, “Isn’t anythin’ Ah got whiskey won’t cure.” He was so much an authority on the drink that the famous Musso & Frank Grill in Los Angeles let him mix his own.
7 sprigs of mint
½ oz. simple syrup
3 oz. bourbon
Crush 6 mint sprigs into the bottom of a chilled double Old-Fashioned glass. Pour in simple syrup and bourbon. Fill with crushed ice. Garnish with the remaining mint sprig and serve with two short straws. Sometimes a splash of club soda is added.
Sanctuary,
1931
G
OWAN FILLED THE GLASS LEVEL FULL
and lifted it and emptied it steadily. He remembered setting the glass down carefully, then he became aware simultaneously of open air, of a chill gray freshness and an engine panting on a siding at the head of a dark string of cars, and that he was trying to tell someone that he had learned to drink like a gentleman. He was still trying to tell them, in a cramped dark place smelling of ammonia and creosote, vomiting into a receptacle.
“First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.”
Fitzgerald’s preferred liquor was gin; he believed you could not detect it on the breath (a funny notion given his remarkably low tolerance). He would get roaring drunk on very little, but then it was the Roaring Twenties, and he was the symbol. Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, were a pair of drunken pranksters. There are stories about how they jumped into the fountain at the Plaza Hotel, boiled party guests’ watches in tomato soup, stripped at the Follies. Invited to an impromptu party, “Come as you are,” he and Zelda arrived in their pajamas. Zelda soon enough removed hers and danced naked. Did anyone have to smell their breath to know?
..........
1896–1940. Novelist and short-story writer. With his first novel,
This Side of Paradise,
Fitzgerald became the spokesman for the Jazz Age.
The Beautiful and the Damned
came next, followed by Fitzgerald’s masterpiece,
The Great Gatsby,
considered by many the finest American novel of the twentieth century.
Tender Is the Night
was published nine years later. Fitzgerald’s last novel,
The Last Tycoon,
was published posthumously.
GIN RICKEY
It is easy to imagine a warm summer evening out on the shore of Long Island—say a party at Gatsby’s house, the bartenders serving up light, refreshing Gin Rickeys as the jazz band swings. In the 1920s and ’30s there were any number of Rickeys (scotch, rum, applejack), but gin is the one that endured. And besides, it was Fitzgerald’s favorite.
2 oz. gin
¾ oz. lime juice
Top with club soda
Lime wheel
Pour gin and lime juice into a chilled highball glass filled with ice cubes. Top with club soda, and stir gently. Garnish with lime wheel. Serve with two straws.
Tender Is the Night,
1933
B
Y ONE O’CLOCK THE BAR WAS JAMMED
; amidst the consequent mixture of voices the staff of waiters functioned, pinning down their clients to the facts of drink and money. . . .
In the confusion Abe had lost his seat; now he stood gently swaying and talking to some of the people with whom he had involved himself. . . .
Across from him the Dane and his companions had ordered luncheon. Abe did likewise but scarcely touched it. Afterwards, he just sat, happy to live in the past. The drink made past happy things contemporary with the present, as if they were still going on, contemporary even with the future as if they were about to happen again.
“Three times I have been mistaken for a Prohibition agent, but never had any trouble clearing myself.”
Hammett spent his later life in a famously passionate love affair with Lillian Hellman. Both heavy drinkers, their relationship was figuratively and literally on the rocks for much of thirty years. During one evening, drunk and arguing with Lillian Hellman, Hammett took the cigarette he was smoking and began to grind it out on his cheek. “What are you doing!” screamed Hellman. Hammett’s answer, “Keeping myself from doing it to you.”
..........
1894–1961. Novelist and short-story writer. Drawing on his experiences as a Pinkerton, Hammett created tough heroes for hard-boiled fiction.
The Maltese Falcon,
his most famous novel, introduced the streetwise detective Sam Spade, portrayed on-screen by Humphrey Bogart. A great many of Hammett’s works were adapted to film.
MARTINI
“I was leaning against the bar in a speakeasy on Fifty-second Street, waiting for Nora,” so begins Hammett’s novel
The Thin Man.
The speakeasy was the “21” Club, and the characters, Nick and Nora, were based on Hammett and Lillian Hellman. More than likely, the Martinis they enjoyed were made wet like ours. During Prohibition, the bootleg gin was of such poor quality, they needed the vermouth to cover up the bad taste.
2 oz. gin
1 oz. dry vermouth
Olives or lemon twist
Pour gin and dry vermouth into a mixing glass filled with ice cubes. Stir well. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with olives or twist.
