Hemingway & Bailey's Bartending Guide to Great American Writers Read Online Free

Unfortunately, two weeks into shooting, he had yet to find an ending and was suffering from writer’s block. He told his producer, John Houseman, that although he was a recovering alcoholic and had been sober for some time, he could only finish the script if he relapsed completely. Houseman arranged for Paramount to place six secretaries at Chandler’s house around the clock. A doctor was hired to give him vitamin shots, as he rarely ate when drinking. Limousines waited outside, ready to run pages at a moment’s notice. In the end he produced one of his best original scripts, and the story of his self-sacrifice became Hollywood legend.
    ..........
    1888–1959. Novelist, short-story writer, and screenwriter. Most famous for his seven novels featuring the detective Philip Marlowe. Chandler’s best-known screenplays include
Double Indemnity, The Blue Dahlia,
and
Strangers on a Train.
He is considered Dashiell Hammett’s principal successor.
    GIMLET
    It wasn’t until Chandler’s detective Philip Marlowe introduced the Gimlet in
The Long Goodbye
that the cocktail finally caught on in America. Surprisingly, the recipe did not use fresh lime juice. As Chandler wrote, “A real Gimlet is half gin and half Rose’s Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow.”
    2 oz. gin
    1 oz. Rose’s Lime Juice
    Lime wedge
    Pour gin and lime juice into a mixing glass filled with ice cubes. Stir well. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lime wedge.
    The Gimlet can also be served on the rocks in an Old-Fashioned glass.
From
The Long Goodbye,
1953
    “I LIKE BARS JUST AFTER THEY OPEN for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny and the barkeep is giving himself that last look in the mirror to see if his tie is straight and his hair is smooth. I like the neat bottles on the bar back and the lovely shining glasses and the anticipation. I like to watch the man mix the first one of the evening and put it down on a crisp mat and put the little folded napkin beside it. I like to taste it slowly. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar—that’s wonderful.
    I agreed with him.
    “Alcohol is like love,” he said. “The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl’s clothes off.”

John Cheever

    “I love parties excessively. That’s the reason I don’t go to them.”
    When he was teaching at Boston University, Cheever found it difficult to make it through the day without a drink. More often than not, he would be rescued by fellow faculty member and tippler Anne Sexton. Sexton would spike Cheever’s coffee with the whiskey she kept hidden in her purse. Such secretive drinking was not unfamiliar to Cheever, who kept liquor hidden all over his house, including a bottle behind his collection of Henry James.
    ..........
    1912–1982. Short-story writer and novelist. A frequent contributor to
The New Yorker,
he offered a humorous though dark vision of suburban American life. His first novel,
The Wapshot Chronicles,
won the National Book Award, and his collection
The Stories of John Cheever
was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
    RUSTY NAIL
    A mellow cocktail with a lovely rusty color, the Rusty Nail was invented in the 1960s. Touted by Hugh Hefner’s
Playboy
magazine and sipped in the suburbs, it was considered a swinger’s drink—how fitting for Cheever.
    2 oz. scotch
    1 oz. Drambuie
    Pour scotch and Drambuie into an Old-Fashioned glass filled with ice cubes. Stir gently.
From “The Common Day,” 1978
    “W E DROVE BACK TO N EW Y ORK after the ceremony and your father stopped along the way at a bootlegger’s and bought a case of Scotch. It was a Saturday afternoon and there was a football game and a lot of traffic outside Princeton. We had that French-Canadian chauffeur, and his driving had always made me nervous. I spoke to Ralph about it and he said I was a fool, and five minutes later the car was upside down. I was