The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto by Bernard DeVoto
The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto
by Bernard DeVoto
I got an ARC of the current release of this book (introduction by Daniel Handler) and was blown away by how much I want to kill the author.
I've gotten some criticism of my criticism because this book was written in the 1950's...and so because it was a different time it can't be offensive now. I don't believe that, but what really annoyed me is that this re-release is getting rave reviews with no mention of the sexist content.
Description: One part celebration, one part history, two parts manifesto, Bernard DeVoto's The Hour is a comic and unequivocal treatise on how and why we drink - properly. The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author turns his shrewd wit on the spirits and attitudes that cause his stomach to turn and his eyes to roll - warning: this book is not for rum drinkers. DeVoto instructs his readers on how to drink like gentlemen and sheds new light on the simple joys of the cocktail hour. Daniel Handler's introduction to this reprint of the 1950s classic provides a humorous framework for the modern reader.
Let's concentrate on the chapter entitled 'The Enemy,' shall we?
Mr. DeVoto, I couldn't agree with you more. The real problem isn't alcohol, it is this country's preocupation with sweets. Why, I can't count how many times I've been wandering the streets at the middle of the night, smashed on cupcakes, and raped and beat some random guy.
Now that that's out of the way, indulge me my silly feminist ideas, if you will.
I don't appreciate his comment that the reader should go into the kitchen and see what his wife's books are; that being cookbooks. He rants that there are too many cookbooks in press and that women waste their efforts on them. Ruining good alchohol with fancy concoctions. He urgers not only that women learn to make a correct cocktail but also serve her husband and his guests well and "...for God's sake, develop a little skill and then do the job unostentatiously." He warns the reader, "By the way, never accept a divorced woman's invitation to cocktails until you have looked into her divorce; it may very well have resulted from something that began 'take a cupful of gin and four tablespoonfuls of grenadine.'"
But what is worse to Mr. DeVoto is that single women buy these books as well! "Some of them may be attractive, all are at least well-meaning, and a moment of unwariness or even simple good manners may land any of us at a party that one of them has worked up from a cookbook." He goes on to say, "She," she being one of these single woman you may get tricked into spending time with, "is a bright girl, though, and when a man takes her to a bar she suppresses her impulses and orders what he does or else says 'Scotch on the rocks.' (The only innate fault in women drinkers is that they think too highly of Scotch."
And the cherry on top is that DeVoto refers to women as bitches and wentches.