Literary Billiards.
Or: No Damn Wonder the List of Books You Want to Read is So Frickin' Long.
I was reading Andrew Barr's Drink: A Social History of America (NY: Carroll & Graff Publishers, Inc.; 1999; trade paperback edition, 2000; ISBN: 0-7867-0743-7) when I chanced upon this passage:
"[The mid-nineteenth century] was a period, it should be understood, when restaurants in the booming cow towns and mining camps of the West used menu cards copied directly from those of Delmonico's [in New York]. Any correspondence in the food that they served was, however, accidental. In his novel The Virginian, Owen Wister related the story of a traveler who saw vol-au-vent on a bill of fare in Texas and ordered some. The proprietor pulled out his six-shooter and told him, 'Stranger, you'll take hash.'"
-- p. 87
Okay, okay, framdammit; I give. *Hurriedly scribbles "Must read The Virginian sometime in the next year or so"* There. Bah!
Wonder if some putz tries to order coq-au-vin at Swearingen's in the second season of Deadwood...?
I was reading Andrew Barr's Drink: A Social History of America (NY: Carroll & Graff Publishers, Inc.; 1999; trade paperback edition, 2000; ISBN: 0-7867-0743-7) when I chanced upon this passage:
"[The mid-nineteenth century] was a period, it should be understood, when restaurants in the booming cow towns and mining camps of the West used menu cards copied directly from those of Delmonico's [in New York]. Any correspondence in the food that they served was, however, accidental. In his novel The Virginian, Owen Wister related the story of a traveler who saw vol-au-vent on a bill of fare in Texas and ordered some. The proprietor pulled out his six-shooter and told him, 'Stranger, you'll take hash.'"
-- p. 87
Okay, okay, framdammit; I give. *Hurriedly scribbles "Must read The Virginian sometime in the next year or so"* There. Bah!
Wonder if some putz tries to order coq-au-vin at Swearingen's in the second season of Deadwood...?