Kingsley Amis was one of the last of the old guard - writers who lived enigmatic lives that weren't defined by their social media presence. In a way I'm jealous of that rampant hedonism that existed solely for its own purpose, rather than as a social status marker of a well traveled life, as it is defined by likes and follows. Amis lived to live, and, according to his contemporaries, didn't particularly like anyone butting in on his good time.
Amis is a personal favorite of mine (if you can't tell) because he loved booze and he loved to laugh. Lucky Jim, his first novel, was published in 1954 (at a time when the dominant writing style was as dry as the martinis being served). Amis pokes fun at the stuffy nature of academia through the eyes of a young history professor. His tongue in cheek handling of humor is simultaneously subtle and blatant.
This same style is suffused in Everyday Drinking, which is a compendium of his earlier books On Drink (1972) and Everyday Drinking (1983) (which were themselves compilations of columns written for The Daily Telegraph), and How's Your Glass? (1984) which is a longform quiz on the subject of drinking.
While I don't agree with a lot of what Amis has to say about building drinks (eg he believes that the cocktail shaker is a mostly unnecessary piece of equipment), and find that his attention to quality wavers a bit (he finds that prepackaged, preground spices are just as fine as whole spices in hot cocktails), his panache makes up for any technical issues I find in his content.
His take on the nature of hangovers is spot on and contains some intelligent advice. Amis splits the hangover into two categories: the physical hangover and the metaphysical hangover. The physical, or acute body pain, is curable by specific breakfast foods, a late morning lay-in, and most importantly, time. The metaphysical hangover refers to your spiritual distress following a night of drinking. This is something that only those of us of an advanced age experience - no 19 year old has to worry about the psychological implications of a night out on the town.
When that ineffable compound of depression, sadness (these two are not the same), anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear for the future begins to steal over you, start telling yourself that what you have is a hangover... He who truly believes he has a hangover has no hangover.
Amis's cures for the metaphysical hangover are as practical as the ones for the physical hangover: give yourself time, read poetry, and listen to Miles Davis.
Every once in awhile, he lands on a surprisingly astute observation about human nature and its relationship with alcohol, and you're immediately reminded that he was not only a man who knew how to drink, but one who knew how to read people. In the first few pages, he relays the notion that the increase in the strength of our drinks has to do with the increasing anonymity of urban life:
In other words, our drinks are getting stronger as well as more numerous. The strains and stresses of urban living, to coin a phrase, are usually held accountable for these increases... the sudden confrontation with complete or comparative strangers in circumstances requiring a show of relaxation and amiability.
In essence, when we are with familiar people and places, we can relax a little more completely, but for those of us living in cities and engaging with the larger populace, a little bit of alcohol helps grease the social wheels. I begin to wonder how far we've developed that notion in the past 40 years - with the increased isolation and isolative mores that the pandemic has forced upon us and our dependence on social media as a reflexive answer to filling that social need.
As I sat in New Orleans last night with my Aunt and Uncle, who have lived just a block from the local universities (and college bars) for the past forty plus years, they mentioned that the kids don't interact in the streets anymore. Even just a few years ago, groups of girls and guys would meet randomly on the sidewalk and join forces to head to the Boot, creating instant connections fueled by cheap drinks and whatever energy New Orleans confers on us to just relax and be social. "They're all looking down at those screens," my aunt remarked sadly, "what happened to free love?"
Has social media dependence replaced alcohol dependence? Big questions for an article reviewing a satirical book on booze. And probably a question that I'll leave open ended for now.
Ultimately, as much as Amis made me laugh, he made me question, which is one of those wonderfully clear signs of a master. This is a compendium that will give you exactly what you ask of it: recipes, humor, introspection, and is made for flipping to the pages that suit you.
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