Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis

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Editorial Reviews:

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.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars

One Drunk Englishman May 28, 2008
27 out of 31 found this review helpful

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.

4 out of 5 stars

Funny, thorough -- and bittersweet June 12, 2008
19 out of 21 found this review helpful

If you want a funny and thorough handbook on drinking, this one's for you. I liked the book, but as an infrequent drinker I found myself floundering in its depths. Even when I was in over my head, though, I enjoyed the late author's wit and wry humor.

There's a lot in this little book. An encyclopedic collection of three previously published essays, it covers everything from which wine goes with fondue (Neuchatel will help you "force it down") to how to handle a hangover (drink more alcohol). There are dozens of drink recipes, and the back has a series of funny quizzes, each on a different type of alcoholic beverage.

But in the end, all this attention and intelligence devoted to drinking left me a little sad. Here was a man with such a graceful way with words, yet he spent so much time drinking or recovering from drinking. Indeed, the introduction mentions that "the booze got to him in the end, and robbed him of his wit and charm as well as of his health." What a shame.

On that jolly note, here's the chapter list:

I. On Drink
Introduction
Drinking Literature
Actual Drinks
Tools of the Trade
The Store Cupboard
First Thoughts on Wine
Further Thoughts on Wine
Wine Shopper's Guide
What to Drink with What
Abroad
Mean Sod's Guide (Incorporating Mean Slag's Guide)
The Hangover
The Boozing Man's Diet
How Not to Get Drunk

II. Every Day Drinking

III. How's Your Glass?
Introduction
List of Abbreviations
Quizzes:
Wine -- Elementary
Wine -- Intermediate
Wine -- Advanced
Wine -- France
Wine -- Germany
Wine -- Italy, Spain, Portugal
Wine -- Others
Beer in General
Beer in Particular
Vodka
Aperitifs and Such
Gin
Liqueurs
Rum
Cognac and Armagnac
Brandy (One Step Down)
Distillation
Minor Spirits
Scotch Whiskey I
Scotch Whiskey II
Whiskies and Whiskeys
Port
Sherry
Madeira, Marsala and Others
Cocktails and Mixed Drinks
Inventors and Inventions
Pousse-Cafe I
Pousse-Cafe II
Pousse-Cafe III
Alcohol and Your Interior

5 out of 5 stars

A supremely witty treatment of the subject of boozemanship. November 28, 1998
10 out of 11 found this review helpful

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.

5 out of 5 stars

Not All Great Minds Drink Alike. June 9, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

"Now and then I become conscious of having the reputation of being one of the great drinkers, if not one of the great drunks, of our time"--Kingsley Amis.

Sir Kingsley Amis (1922-1995) was a prolific English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. Although he is perhaps best known for his 1954 novel Lucky Jim, he is also well known for his lifelong passion for women and drinking. He was not only a disciplined writer, but he was a serious drinker as well, spending much of his time in pubs. He always separated the two activities, writing before the pubs opened every day. "Whatever part drink may play in the writer's life," he wrote in his memoirs, "it must play none in his or her work." With a short Introduction by Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything), Everyday Drinking features a collection of previously out-of-print Amis writings on the art of drinking drawn from his 1972 book, On Drink, and his 1983 collection of columns on Every Day Drinking. His collection ends with an entertaining assortment of drinking quizzes, "How's Your Glass?" The spirited observations collected here will not only appeal to anyone with an interest in the drinking life, how to cure a hangover, or how to mix a Lord Jim, but to readers who delight in reading Kingsley Amis, who is known for his meticulously well-crafted prose infused with a brilliantly wry sense of humor. As an authority on the subject of drinking, Amis ridicules wine snobs, Americans, the Irish, Canadians, wives insistent upon wasting space in the refrigerator "with irrelevant rubbish like food," and Pina Coladas ("just the thing for the 95-IQ female") alike. In a word, Everyday Drinking is intoxicating.

G. Merritt

5 out of 5 stars

Entertaing read June 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Kingsley Amis sure packed a lot of knoweldge into this book. He just doesn't go on telling us everything there is to know about alcohol, he also tells us how it can be best used for parties. I also liked the section on weight loss for a drinker.

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