Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis

Product Description

A gift for anyone who loves good liquor and high-proof prose: a collection of hilarious and deeply informed writings about drink from one of the all-time authorities.
Kingsley Amis was one of the great masters of comic prose, and no subject was dearer to him than the art and practice of imbibing. This new volume brings together the best of his three out-of-print works on the subject. Along with a series of well-tested recipes (including a cocktail called the Lucky Jim) the book includes Amis’s musings on The Hangover, The Boozing Man’s Diet, What to Drink with What, and (presumably as a matter of speculation) How Not to Get Drunk—all leavened with fun quizzes on the making and drinking of alcohol all over the world. Mixing practical know-how and hilarious opinionation, this is a delightful cocktail of wry humor and distilled knowledge, served by one of our great gimlet wits.


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Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #75 in Books
Published on: 2008-05-13
Released on: 2008-05-13
Number of items: 1
Binding: Hardcover
320 pages

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Editorial Reviews
Review


"Among Amis’s literary output the journalism on drinking, recently collected and published with an introduction by (who else?) Christopher Hitchens, is in no way the least achievement because it is a reminder and a record of a culture that is incrementally slipping away….Like a bottle of Laphroaig, this book is full of good things, many of them familiar though others are more intriguing."--New Humanist

“Studded with hilarious observations and much good advice.”--Kyle Smith

“Thoroughly worthwhile reading. Amis was incapable of constructing a dull sentence. His writing was consistently clear, lively, and precise (surely the envy of any who pursue this exacting trade) and above all very, very funny. "--Bookforum

About the Author
Kingsley Amis was one of the best-loved British novelists of the twentieth century. He was the author of more than twenty books, including the classic Lucky Jim. He died in 1995 at the age of seventy-three.


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Customer Reviews
One Drunk Englishman
If you're interested in reading about the drinking life, where better to start than with a collection of writings on drink by Kingsley Amis, introduced by Christopher Hitchens? Though it weighs in at a mere 3.2 ounces, "Everyday Drinking" offers up enough drinking experience to float an aircraft carrier.

The book comprises three Amis titles. "On Drink" (1972) is a kind of informal treatise on drinking. "Every Day Drinking" (1983) is a collection of columns. "How's Your Glass?" (1984) is a set of drinking quizzes.

Though Amis provides a good bit of technical information and asks readers to produce no end of less-than-necessary information in the quizzes (he asks us to name a liqueur made with naartjies, for example), the main pleasures of "Everyday Drinking" are to be found in Amis's description of the drinking *life* and in his sublimely crotchety sense of humor.

Some people will object that Amis's repeated grousing about music in pubs is quaint, reactionary, and ridiculous. Such people are entitled to their opinions, of course, just as the rest of us are entitled to point out that such people are either drug-addled hipsters or ill-bred morons.

For those of you out there who are neither drug-addled hipsters nor ill-bred morons, here are a few choice sips of Amis:

* On the necessity of having a refrigerator to oneself: "Wives and such are constantly filling up any refrigerator they have a claim on, even its ice compartment, with irrelevant rubbish like food."

* On being a cheapskate of a host: "In preparing a gin and tonic, for instance, put the tonic and the ice and a thick slice of lemon in first and pour on them a thimbleful of gin *over the back of a spoon*, so it will linger near the surface and give a strong-tasting first sip, which is the one that counts."

* On the claim that the Irish taught the Scots the process of distillation: "The idea of a medieval Irishman inventing a rather complicated technique like that of distilling, or anything at all for that matter, is hard to credit."

* On Galliano: "Another Italian liqueur, Galliano, has gained a good deal of ground over the last few years, not as a drink on its own but as a constituent of the famous or infamous cocktail the Harvey Wallbanger, named after some reeling idiot in California."

* On drinking with wine snobs: "If asked what you think [about the wine], say breezily, 'Jolly good,' as though you always say that whatever it's like. This may suggest that your mind's on higher things than wine, like gin or sex."

Amis might be accused of being a bit harsh at times, as when he claims that the Pina Colada is "[j]ust the thing for the 95-IQ female" and that drinking lager and lime is "an exit application from the human race," but you have to admire a man who defends his convictions with such vigor. As someone who has been known to toss back lots (and lots) of Pina Coladas *and* lagers with lime when the weather's hot, I am more than willing to endure Amis's ridicule in exchange for the pleasure of having him ridicule wine snobs and Canadians.

He ridicules Canadians in a loving way, of course, just as he ridicules the Irish, Americans, and Kingsley Amis. As for wine snobs, they deserve their ridicule neat.

My one complaint about the book is that the introduction is on the short side. Hitchens is as entertaining as Amis, and an even better crafter of sentences, and I would have enjoyed a few more pages. Must have been pushing a deadline. Or running up against cocktail hour.


A supremely witty treatment of the subject of boozemanship.
Kingsley Amis writes in the breezy style of a good English gent, on a subject about which he has much knowledge and even more experience--boozemanship. This series of short articles provides an authoritative statement on what to drink and how to drink it, along with with a hefty jigger of Amis's profoundly hilarious sense of understatement.