Hemingway & Bailey's Bartending Guide to Great American Writers

by Mark Bailey

  RUSTY NAIL

  A mellow cocktail with a lovely rusty color, the Rusty Nail was invented in the 1960s. Touted by Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine and sipped in the suburbs, it was considered a swinger’s drink—how fitting for Cheever.

  2 oz. scotch

  1 oz. Drambuie

  Pour scotch and Drambuie into an Old-Fashioned glass filled with ice cubes. Stir gently.

  From “The Common Day,” 1978

  “WE DROVE BACK TO NEW YORK after the ceremony and your father stopped along the way at a bootlegger’s and bought a case of Scotch. It was a Saturday afternoon and there was a football game and a lot of traffic outside Princeton. We had that French-Canadian chauffeur, and his driving had always made me nervous. I spoke to Ralph about it and he said I was a fool, and five minutes later the car was upside down. I was thrown out of the open window into a stony field, and the first thing your father did was to look into the luggage compartment to see what had happened to the Scotch. There I was, bleeding to death, and he was counting bottles.”

  James Gould Cozzens

  “With a beer mug beside you, it’s now whatever o’clock it is, and all’s (for the prolonged moment) well.”

  Cozzens typically drank a double scotch with lunch, two doubles before dinner (poured with a heavy hand), and four beers afterward. At age sixty-seven, he was informed by his doctor that his liver was enlarged and he needed to go on the wagon. Cozzens complied, abstaining from all alcohol, even his much beloved beer. Whatever benefits this had for Cozzens’s health (he lived another seven years), it unfortunately came at great expense to his work. Without drink, his creativity all but dried up and he soon stopped writing altogether.

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  1903–1978. Novelist and short-story writer. Cozzens wrote about upper-middle-class professionals whose ideals are challenged. He first gained attention when his novella S.S. San Pedro was awarded the Scribner’s Prize. For his short story “Total Stranger” he won an O. Henry Award. His novel Guard of Honor was awarded the Pulitzer.

  HALF AND HALF

  The Half and Half is perhaps better known as a Black and Tan. The nickname is derived not just from the colors, but from the regiment of British soldiers stationed in Ireland after World War I. Called the Black and Tans, their mismatched uniforms resembled the colors of the drink. Ironically, while the soldiers were a notoriously rough lot, the Half and Half is rather smooth. An easy combination of bitter and mild, you’ll find it a pleasant way to develop a taste for stout.

  8 oz. chilled lager

  8 oz. chilled stout

  Pour lager into a chilled pint glass. Pour stout over the back of a bar spoon to help it float over the “tan.” Sometimes ale is used instead of lager.

  From Ask Me Tomorrow, 1940

  WHEN HE CAME BACK he carried a stack of paper cups, a bottle of mineral water with the cork drawn, and a flask of brandy. “It’s probably poison,” he said, drawing the door closed and setting these things on the window ledge, “but it’s bound to be warm.” He separated two cups, poured an inch of brandy into one and filled the other with mineral water. “Just take a deep breath and swallow that,” he said, holding them out to her. “You’ll think it’s summer.”

  “That’s much too much,” Miss Robertson said. Her fingers touched his as she took the cups. “You’re the one who needs it,” she said. “Your hands are like ice.”

  Shivering, Francis said, “And how!” He poured brandy in another cup and tasted it. “It’s dreadful,” he said truthfully, and swallowed it.

  Hart Crane

  “I’ve worn out several kidneys and several bladders already on bootleg rum, but I seem always ready to risk another.”

  A drunk, of the complete and utterly mad variety, Crane found himself late one night drinking alone at Café Select in Paris. Loaded to the gills but not with money, Crane realized he could not cover the tab. He tried to argue his way out. Other Americans in the café offered to pay the bill, but the ill-tempered owner refused. An eager though unskilled fighter, Crane decided to punch a waiter, and then another, and then a policeman. Soon more police arrived and Crane was clubbed senseless. He was dragged feet first to the station. After a week in a rat-infested cell, Crane was fined eight hundred francs and released. He left the country shortly thereafter.

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  1899–1932. Poet. Crane’s first collection, White Buildings, established him within the avant-garde community. His epic poem, The Bridge, brought wider recognition as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Broken Tower was Crane’s last and perhaps finest work.

  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.

  From “The River,” 1930

  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.

  William Faulkner

  “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.

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  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.

  From Sanctuary, 1931

  GOWAN 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.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  “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?

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  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.

  From Tender Is the Night, 1933

  BY 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.

  Dashiell Hammett

  “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.”

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  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.

  From The Maltese Falcon, 1929

  “AH, MR. SPADE,” he said with enthusiasm and held out a hand like a fat pink star.

  Spade took the hand and smiled and said: “How do you do, Mr. Gutman?”

  Holding Spade’s hand, the fat man turned beside him, put his other hand to Spade’s elbow, and guided him across a green rug to a green plush chair beside a table that held a siphon, some glasses and a bottle of Johnnie Walker whiskey on a tray, a box of cigars—Coronas del Ritz—two newspapers, and a small and plain yellow soapstone box.

  Spade sat in the green chair. The fat man began to fill two glasses from bottle and siphon. . . .

  “We begin well, sir,” the fat man purred, turning with a proffered glass in his hand. “I distrust a man that says when. If he’s got to be careful not to drink too much it’s because he’s not to be trusted when he does.”

  Lillian Hellman

  “Drinking made uninteresting people matter less and, late at night, matter not at all.”

  As far as drinking goes, it would have been difficult for anyone to go toe-to-toe (or elbow-to-elbow) with Dashiell Hammett, but Hellman certainly gave it her best. Hungover and facing the Broadway opening of The Children’s Hour, Hellman got blind drunk on brandy. Waking early the next morning and hungover yet again, she got herself a cold beer and telephoned Hammett, who was living in Los Angeles. She reached his secretary. Two days later Hellman would realize: (1) at the time she called it was three A.M. in California, and (2) Hammett had no secretary. She took the first plane out, got drunk en route, and went directly to Hammett’s house. She smashed his bar to pieces and flew back to New York. Hellman knew where to kick a man.

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  1905–1984. Playwright, memoirist, and screenwriter. Hellman received instant recognition with her first play, The Children’s Hour. Her best-known work, The Little Foxes, was adapted to screen and nominated for nine Academy Awards. An Unfinished Woman, part of her memoir trilogy, won a National Book Award.

  DAIQUIRI

  Invented in Cuba, the Daiquiri comes from the small village of Daiquiri, just outside of Santiago, where the Bacardi rum distillery was founded. Nothing to do with the frozen concoctions now trumpeted, the traditional cocktail was simple and not too sweet. Hemingway liked his doubled. His good pal Hellman, who often critiqued his writing, surely took his advice when it came to cocktails.

  2 oz. light rum

  1 oz. lime juice

  ¾ oz. simple syrup

  Lime wheel

  Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker filled with ice cubes. Shake well. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lime wheel.

  From Maybe: A Story, 1980

  IN THOSE DAYS THERE WAS ONLY ONE standard remedy for a hangover. My hangover had, by this time, on the wet grass, turned to shivers. I stumbled, half crawled back to my room, managed a shower, and sent for the remedy: a raw egg, a double sherry and two teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce. Then I slept for a few hours, heard the phone ringing and, several times, loud knocks on the door. When I woke up, I vomited, which is what the remedy was supposed to do if you were in good health. After you were sick the custom was to wait a while and then you drank a few beers which tasted fine and you could move for a few hours until it was time for a regular drink.

  Ernest Hemingway

  “A man does not exist until he is drunk.”

  Hemingway was not one for pretension, literary or otherwise. In a famous incident at Costello’s, a New York writers’ haunt, he found just the opportunity to make those feelings known. After drinking in back with friends, he passed John O’Hara at the bar. O’Hara was carrying an Irish blackthorn walking stick (shillelagh) and Hemingway began to mock him for it. Defensively, O’Hara claimed that it was “the best piece of blac
kthorn in New York.” Hemingway immediately bet him fifty dollars that he could break it with his bare hands. Then in one swift move he smashed the walking stick against his own head, snapping it in half. The broken pieces hung over Costello’s bar for many years.

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  1899–1961. Novelist and short-story writer. Hemingway was one of the principal figures of the Lost Generation. As a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star, he developed a minimalist style. With his second novel, The Sun Also Rises, he immediately became a literary star. In 1954 Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.