false 3644830 0747599785 9780747599784 20 10 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3644830.Everyday_Drinking 13078 Kingsley Amis 3112 475 3 2 false Mon Aug 04 20:19:06 -0700 2008 Tue Aug 12 13:04:47 -0700 2008
One humorous theme is Amis' blithe and recurring dismissal of wine as a legitimate category for the professional "drink man" -- a great phrase that we teetotalers from the leeward side of the Atlantic ought to appropriate. Wine for Amis is a kind of French shell game played on the English, who are better off, in Amis' reckoning, staying true to their "real Ale" and London gin.

Throughout, Amis plays the faux cabala of wine appreciation off the purer secrets of the booze aficionado, but his own understanding and taste are warily suspect: after months of columns disparaging the new lager culture ruining English pubs and praising the virtues of "real Ale", Amis settles into effusive praise for cans of Carlsberg. There are also eccentricities of taste one might blame generally on England rather than poor Kingsley: gin, he lies, is at its best served warm with water; ketchup is the key to a perfect Bloody Mary; sangria is made with wine and soda.

Perhaps the most pleasant aspect of the book is Kingsley's shameless embrace of drunkenness. Now five long decades past the three martini lunch, it is a helpful tonic to our woeful American obsession with sobriety and the self-immolating fires of hyper-productivity to remember that once Knights of the British Crown drank from morning to night and still managed to keep their Empire on the rails.]]>