A review by nitessine
Everyday Drinking: The Distilled by Kingsley Amis
3.0
Everyday Drinking is actually a compilation of three works – On Drink, Every Day Drinking and How's Your Glass?. The first is a short book on, well, drink, the second a collection of columns he wrote for a paper, and the third a quiz book. The introduction to this compilation is written by the inimitable Christopher Hitchens, which itself qualifies as a selling point.
On these pages, Kingsley Amis opines on beer, booze and wine, on drinking habits and everything else related. His style is erudite and entertaining, but he writes from the perspective of an Englishman in the 60s and 70s, and in some parts the material is noticeably and painfully dated. Additionally, as the introduction notes, it occasionally repeats itself. Indeed, Every Day Drinking is particularly bad in this respect. Newspaper columns in general are a form of text that lends itself especially badly to compilations. They are short pieces best read at a week's distance from one another, not one after the other in quick succession.
The most interesting and gracefully aged material in the book are the General Principles spread around On Drink, such as G.P.7: "Never despise a drink because it is easy to make and/or uses commercial mixes. Unquestioning devotion to authenticity is, in any department of life, a mark of the naïve—or worse."
Amis also offers up a chapter on a rare topic – the hangover. Many have written about drinking, but analytical treatises of the hangover are few and far between. Mind you, I do not recognize my own mornings after from his text. Hangovers, like everything else relating to drink, are ultimately subjective things. The matter requires more research.
Well-read, well-written, but badly aged, Everyday Drinking is an amusing diversion to those of us who not only like our drink but like to understand it as well.
On these pages, Kingsley Amis opines on beer, booze and wine, on drinking habits and everything else related. His style is erudite and entertaining, but he writes from the perspective of an Englishman in the 60s and 70s, and in some parts the material is noticeably and painfully dated. Additionally, as the introduction notes, it occasionally repeats itself. Indeed, Every Day Drinking is particularly bad in this respect. Newspaper columns in general are a form of text that lends itself especially badly to compilations. They are short pieces best read at a week's distance from one another, not one after the other in quick succession.
The most interesting and gracefully aged material in the book are the General Principles spread around On Drink, such as G.P.7: "Never despise a drink because it is easy to make and/or uses commercial mixes. Unquestioning devotion to authenticity is, in any department of life, a mark of the naïve—or worse."
Amis also offers up a chapter on a rare topic – the hangover. Many have written about drinking, but analytical treatises of the hangover are few and far between. Mind you, I do not recognize my own mornings after from his text. Hangovers, like everything else relating to drink, are ultimately subjective things. The matter requires more research.
Well-read, well-written, but badly aged, Everyday Drinking is an amusing diversion to those of us who not only like our drink but like to understand it as well.