May 5, 2015
I feel sorta weird right now – I swear I’ve put up a Cocktail Talk post from Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key before. I swear! But I certainly can’t find evidence of such. Drinking does take its toll! But even if there is some rogue post, it doesn’t matter, cause I recently re-read the book, and found even more swell quotes. If you don’t know (I’m taking it for granted you at least know Hammett a bit, cause who doesn’t) The Glass Key, it’s one amazing little book, packed with politics, punches, and pulchritude. The inspiration (even if not called out directly) for the Coen Bros. movie Miller’s Crossing, it has swagger, smarts, and sass. The dialogue is crisp, the machinations are mapped minutely, and the drinks flow. As evidenced in the below.
A waiter came. Ned Beaumont said: “Rye.” Jack said: “Rickey.”
Jack opened a pack of cigarettes, took one out, and, staring at it, said: “It’s your game and I’m working for you, but this isn’t a hell of a good spot to go up against him it he’s got friends here.”
“Has he?”
Jack put the cigarette in a corner of his mouth so it moved batonwise with his words.
–Dashiell Hammet, The Glass Key
April 28, 2015
Not too long ago, I posted a few Cocktail Talks from the Day Keene story collection, The League of the Grateful Dead. Cause Day Keene is awesome (go see all the Day Keene Cocktail Talk posts to see what I’m talking about). And now, I’ve got my gin-stained hands on the second Day Keene pulps story collection, We Are the Dead, and it is also the tops (and, between us, also needed a good copy editor. But don’t get stuck on the small stuff). There are many worthy novella-length stories in the collection, but our quote today is from A Slight Mistake in Corpses.
“He’s in the chair,” McNeary said grimly. “We caught him, as the colored maid at his hotel informed me, in ‘fragrent delicto.’ The dead blond was in his bed, the boodle was on his dresser, and Little Boy Blue had a hangover that was a yard wide and all rye.”
–Day Keene, A Slight Mistake in Corpses
April 14, 2015
The lost James M. Cain novel – which was found, thankfully – is good enough that I couldn’t have just one Cocktail Talk from it (if you missed The Cocktail Waitress Part I, catch up). So, here’s another quote from the book to wet your whistle (and to get you to read the book, if you haven’t already. But you probably have. Cause you’re cool like that).
“Sergeant Young, can I thank you again, for suggesting I come here, for recommending me to Bianca, or vice versa, whichever is the right way to say it? I handed over the wine and cocktail list, though obviously he knew the Garden better than I did and probably already knew what he liked to have.
“I’m glad she had an opening for you, and that you took it.” He handed back the card. “You can ask Jake to make me up a smash.”
Jake mixed a whiskey sour and poured it into a highball glass with some muddled mint leaves at the bottom. Sergeant Young took a long sip and set it down, then looked me over from head to toe. This time I didn’t stiffen. A week can make a difference
— James M. Cain, The Cocktail Waitress
April 7, 2015
A lost novel by James M. Cain (James M. Cain!) came out a couple years ago, and I didn’t even realize it. Cause I am an idiot! But, that didn’t make me any less happy when I did find out, and when I found a copy I was ridiculously happy. Mr. Cain is of course one of the honest-and-true pulp and hardboiled masters, and so discovering The Cocktail Waitress, a lost novel of his, well, that’s treasure to a guy like me. And the book is fantastic, with many of the Cain hallmarks (sex, greed, stark, and characters that breathe), and with a fair amount of action in a bar called The Garden of Roses. In it, our main character learns a bit about what she’ll need to do besides delivering drinks.
“First set-up is for the old-fashioned. You know what an old- fashioned is?”
“You mean the orange slices and cherries?”
“…Yeah, them.” He gave me a long look, then went on: “And for Martinis?”
“I turn the olives out in a bowl and stick toothpicks in them.”
“For Gibsons—”
“Onions, no toothpicks.”
“O.K. Now, on Manhattans—”
“Cherries.”
“No toothpicks if they have stems on them. But sometimes the wrong kind is delivered, and them without stems take picks. On Margaritas—”
“Salt? In a dish? And a lemon, gashed on one end, to spin the glasses in?”
“Speaking of lemon—”
“Twists? How many?”
“Many as three lemons make. Cut them thick, put them in a bowl, and on top put plenty ice cubes, so they don’t go soft on me. I hate soft twists.” He looked at me like I was a dancing horse or some other marvel. “You sure you never…?”
I explained: “My mother used to give parties, and my father fixed the drinks. I was Papa’s little helper.”
— James M. Cain, The Cocktail Waitress
March 31, 2015
We are now onto the third Cocktail Talk post featuring drinky talk from a book by Henry Kane. Please, please, for the love of all that’s dear to you, go back and read Part I and Part II, because you’ll only kick yourself when you miss them. Though the below may be my favorite, just cause you don’t see Sidecars come up in literature that often – and you need to savor them when they do!
I pursed my lips. I said, ‘Two sidecars.’
We sipped and looked at each other and set them down.
‘Let’s pay and leave,’ Edith said. ‘Mine stinks. And you look like yours does, too. Sacrilege. I’m going home. Got work.’
I put her into a taxi.
‘Bye, Red. Be seeing you.’
I walked home and went straight to the kitchen and fused lemon and Cointreau and cognac and in the living room I lapsed into beautiful beatitude.
–Henry Kane, Martinis and Murder
March 24, 2015
I introduced you to the book Martinis and Murder by Henry Kane (originally titled, A Halo for Nobody, by the way, which is nowhere near as good) in an earlier post, and promised, much like old Jacob Marley, that we’d have three different quotes from the book. And here’s the second!
‘Now,’ she said and she produced rye and bitters and cherries and olives and gin and two kinds of vermouth, dry and sweet, and then she backed up against a table and put her hands behind her and clasped the edge of the table and watched me, her body tight against her dress.
I mixed drinks. And set them up on the washtub and I looked at her and she didn’t move and I looked again and I don’t know which of us was breathing more heavily.
–Henry Kane, Martinis and Murder
March 17, 2015
The cover blurb from the NYT review of this book says it all, “A brutal story of mayhem and murder, liquor and lust.” Okay, it doesn’t seem all that brutal today maybe as in 1947, but it does deliver on the murder, liquor, and lust, no doubt about that! Written by Henry Kane and starring a detective named Peter Chambers, Martinis and Murder is probably B level hard-boiled pulp action – not at the level of the masters, but not a bad little read. And as far as cocktail talking goes, this book is packed and overflowing with booze-y asides, varieties of imbibibles, and lots of general drinking. Oh, there’s a mystery, too, which gets solved in-between the drinks. Because the book’s so tipsy and happy about it, this is only going to be the first Cocktail Talk, of three! And there could have been more! Really!
She touched a cord with a gold tassel and the butler came in.
‘Aperitif?’ she inquired and looked at me.
‘Manhattan,’ I said.
‘Manhattan, Alfred. And several Martinis, dry. Please serve them in the garden. Now, come along, Peter Chambers. And don’t disgrace me.’
–Henry Kane, Martinis and Murder
March 10, 2015
Tales of Whisky and Smuggling is a fun read, full of stories that take a variety of paths, but at heart are all about the struggle between what we might call the revenue men, though in the book they’re usually referred to as gaugers or excisemen, versus the smugglers, the home-distillers operating outside the tax scheme much as their foreparents did, making their Uisge Beatha (water of life, or whisky). Neat, right! Even neater though, is when reading one of the stories I learned of the deoch-an-dorus, or a drink-at-the-door you give a guest as they leave. That’s a great tradition. I am in to that! Check out the below quote to see it in action.
‘Ach,well, you’ll just have a deoch-an-dorus before you go, I insist,’ their host said. Although feeling vaguely disappointed Holton and Muir were delighted to have this traditional Gaelic drink-at-the-door. James fetched glassed and poured them a hearty measure each and a smaller one for himself. The gaugers tossed off their drinks and said goodbye to their very convivial host, who was delighted to see how unsteady they were on their feet as they set off down the road.
–Stuart McHardy, Tales of Whisky and Smuggling
