Books on Drinking

A well-stocked library will include these books on the pleasures and hazards of drink, says Iain Gately


1. Under the Volcano. Malcolm Lowry. Penguin, 1947. FIC Lowry

Malcolm Lowry wrote of this novel: “The dream I cherished in my heart was to create a pioneer work . . . and to write at last an authentic drunkard’s story.” He ­succeeded—it is amusing, ­poignant and macabre. Lowry sobered up to write the book, which is set in a provincial Mexican town during its annual festival celebrating the dead. The story describes the last days of Geoffrey Firmin, a ­British diplomat who had been posted to this backwater so that he can kill himself, with mescal, discreetly. “Under the Volcano” offers vivid descriptions of what it feels like to be under the influence, including the dubious pleasure of ­vomiting in your neighbor’s garden and the shame of ­being incontinent and legless. ­Moreover, the novel shows great literary merit as Lowry plays with our sense of time, intercutting flashbacks and black-outs in stream-of-semiconsciousness. Above all, Lowry is a sympathetic observer of humanity, sober or not.

2. Prohibition. Andrew Sinclair. Little, Brown, 1962 973.9 S

I like my history dry. “Prohibition: The Era of Excess” documents, with an ­appropriate degree of cynicism, ­America’s flirtation with ­enforced sobriety. The ­champions of abstinence were frauds or megalomaniacs; the politicians they blackmailed to amend the Constitution without a vote were equally amoral; and the gangsters who profited from keeping Americans wet pushed the murder rate back to frontier-era levels. National Prohibition lasted from 1919 to 1932, encompassing the ­Roaring ’20s, the Great ­Depression and the birth of the modern age. The book is as much testament to the changes that occurred during that period as to the failure of the “noble experiment.” There is a supporting cast of fanatics, lunatics and thieves and final salvation via the intercession of a president promising a new deal. A master of his material, Andrew Sinclair also has an eye for pleasing ephemera, such as this bumper sticker from Michigan in 1929: “Don’t shoot—I’m not a bootlegger.”

3. Vintage. Hugh Johnson. Simon & Schuster, 1989 641.2209 J

“Vintage” is an excellent ­reference work on “the story of wine,” distinguished by its ­genial style and the evident ­affection of its author for his subject. In ­addition to charting how our passion for wine has influenced the ebb and flow of civilizations, the book is packed with esoterica, including the taste and price of Falernian red in ancient Pompeii and the menus of Parisian restaurants during the Franco-Prussian war (roast cat garlanded with rats, served with Bollinger champagne). ­Essential for anyone wishing to know how ­champagne got its fizz or how claret evolved from the generic name for a pink, sour fluid into the Premier Crus of Bordeaux.

4. Gin. Patrick Dillon. Charles Justin, 2003 363.41 D

In the early 1700s, London was the largest, most dissolute and most exciting city in Europe. People flocked to it from the provinces, inspired by the ­pantomime of Dick Whittington and his Cat and the rumor that its streets were paved with gold. The king, William of ­Orange, had come to power in the Glorious Revolution, after sailing over from Holland, the “home of spirits.” He owed his throne to a cabal of landowners and merchants who were suffering from a fall in the price of grain, and he placated them by giving anyone in ­England the right to distill gin, or Geneva, as it was called, in an approximation of the Dutch word for the juniper berries used as flavoring. Demand soared for grain and gin, which was distilled in basements and sold from shops, houses, the crypts of churches, boats, wheelbarrows and stalls at public executions. In “Gin,” ­Patrick Dillon sets the scene and details the fall-out of the West’s first spirits craze with charm and a degree of relish. For roughly half a ­century, until Parliament finally reined in the gin-distilling business, the death rate in London exceeded the birth rate. The city swarmed with “scandalous wretches” (as one Londoner put it) who “ran up and down the streets swearing, cursing and talking beastliness like so many devils” because of “this damn’d bewitching liquor.” While documenting the ­carnage, Dillon makes space for the sea change in public opinion that enabled Parliament to slay the monster it had created. The book is an outstanding example of how narrative nonfiction can bring an era and its concerns back to life.

5. Headlong Hall. Thomas Love Peacock. 1816. FIC Peacock

The Enlightenment collides with the squirearchy in this ­Regency novel set in a Welsh manor over Christmas. Guests argue over “Progress” or its ­absence, and their host, Harry Headlong, moderates their ­debates with claret, port, brandy and aqua vitae. There are skulls, explosions, landscaped gardens, the Peacock-coined word osseocarnisanguineoviscericartilaginonervomedullary (the bony fleshy bloody gutsy gristly marrowy totality of the body), a ball and later betrothals—all lubricated with lashings of booze. ­“Headlong Hall” is also a roman à clef ­featuring Samuel Taylor ­Coleridge and other Romantic poets, drawn from life. Best of all, it is an enthusiastic and stylish picture of the joys of commensal drinking.

—Mr. Gately is the author of “Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol,” published in ­paperback by Gotham.