Some people describe reading as a hobby. Then there are true
bibliophiles, for whom literature is an obsession, something without
which life is unimaginable. People’s attitudes towards whisky could be
categorized these same ways.
As literature can be divided into forms and genres, so too can whisky
be divided by style. Single malt whisky is distilled exclusively from
malted barley. Single pot still whisky is made from a mash of both
malted and unmalted barley. Single grain whisky is made from a mash
which might include any combination of grain, often corn. And while many
American whiskies technically fall into this single grain category, in
Ireland and Scotland single grain whisky is typically used for blending
with single malt or single pot still to make a more affordable bottle.
Single pot still is perhaps the most iconically Irish style, while the
best whiskies from Scotland are certainly single malts. If you’re
looking for a recommendation from your neighborhood librarian, I
especially recommend the single pot still style.
I could continue with the comparison. Just like the best poetry comes
from Ireland and Scotland (in my opinion), I similarly wouldn’t
recommend wasting too much of one’s time with American whisky either.
Both whisky and literature seem to get better the more time you spend
with them, especially the more unusual varieties. As literature contends
with censorship, so whisky with prohibition.
But the real question is what to read with one’s whisky. I suggest
the following.
The
Best Laid Schemes: Selected Poetry and Prose of Robert
Burns
Robert Burns’s poetry can be challenging at first, mostly because it
was written in eighteenth-century Scottish dialect. In my opinion, Burns
excelled in the use of apostrophe, a form of figuration in which a piece
of literature is ostensibly addressed to a thing or person unable to
respond. This was a technique of particular importance to the Romantics,
as in Shelly’s “Ode to a Skylark” or Keats’s “Ode to a Grecian Urn.”
Burns also wrote a fair amount about whisky, including one poem titled
“Scotch Drink.” In this poem, Burns attributes his own poetic
accomplishment to a stiff drink:
O Whisky! Soul o’ plays and pranks!
Accept a bardie’s gratfu’ thanks!
When wanting thee, what tunless cranks
Are my poor verses!
Dubliners
by James Joyce
Joyce’s
Dubliners is like Springsteen’s
Born in the
USA. Both works appear to be blindly nationalistic, while in fact
they are subtlety contemptuous sneers at the indifference and cruelty of
prevailing cultural attitudes. Joyce’s cannon increases in stylistic
innovation over time. The opaque prose of
Finnegan’s Wake
shouldn’t deter readers from enjoying the wit and emotional insight of
the stories in
Dubliners. The last story, titled “The Dead,”
may be the most famous, and features a shift in tone at the end which
leaves readers feeling haunted. (Or leaves me feeling that way, at
least.)
The
Complete Poems by Philip Larkin.
This book deserves to be mentioned for two reasons. The first reason
is the poem titled “Party Politics,” a deceptively simple poem of two
quatrains in iambic pentameter with an ABAB rhyme scheme. This poem uses
the image of an empty tumbler as an analog for the unfairness and
uncertainty of life, not unlike the saying about a glass being half
full. I particularly enjoy Larkin’s use of the phrase “mine host” in the
fourth line to refer to the host of a party, while at the same time
intimating the anxiety of faith in god during difficult times. The
second reason is that Larkin was a librarian; I’m biased.
Rapture
and Melancholy: The Diaries of Edna St. Vincent Millay
It’s hard to remember now in the age of “influencers” just what big
stars writers and poets were in early twentieth century America. Edna
St. Vincent Millay was a celebrity known equally for her sonnets and her
rock ‘n roll lifestyle. Should you visit her estate, legend has it that
in the woods behind her house can be found a huge pile of empty glass
alcohol bottles discarded from her prolific drinking. I can only imagine
the intimacy of seeing those bottles which touched the lips of the poet
who wrote the line “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and
when.”
The
Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
Reflecting shifting cultural mores, Hemingway’s work has recently
undergone a reevaluation with particular emphasis on his portrayal of
gender roles. Also, Hemingway was a gin drinker. Nonetheless, he remains
one of my personal favorites, at once the most American of American
modernists and the most conversant with European politics and
literature.
The Snows of Kilimanjaro is his most mature work,
saturated with an acute awareness of death not as an absurdity visited
upon the young (as in other Hemingway works), but as an inevitability no
less tragic at the end of a long life. It’s best enjoyed with a Scotch
and soda.
Ice or water, movies or books? I’ll limit my suggestions to no more
than two ice cubes.
A
Star is Born
The 1937 version only. Dorothy Parker wrote the screenplay. Enough
said.
Road
to Perdition
Set during prohibition, is this film a meditation on the virtue of
bravery in a violent and unforgiving world, or is it about what happens
when the whisky runs out? You decide.
- Neil, Lawrence Headquarters Branch
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