Literary Boozehounds

I have a second guest post on Foreword Magazine's Shelf Space blog about Great American Writers and their penchant for alcoholic fuel which appears today. This is a followup to the Literary Libations research I blogged about earlier here at the Book Trout.

Writers in the Flesh at the Bookshop

In the dozen years that our used bookstore, Old Saratoga Books, has been open, we've had a few famous writers browse their way through the stacks and order books from us over the Internet. We are located in a quiet rural village of Schuylerville in upstate New York, but are only nine miles from Saratoga Springs and the artist colony of Yaddo, so some writers have taken a break from the Spa City to check out our books. From the imposingly tall Donald Antrim ("The Hundred Brothers" is a hilarious novel) who strode in the shop in biker spandex that seemed to add another foot in height, to the friendly and down to earth author A.M. Homes (who coveted my "It's Always Time to Read" clock in the children's section), it's always interesting and gratifying to meet someone who makes the stuff I sell.

Authors come in many packages. Some shun attention like Jonathan Lethem, who I only recognized after I read his name on his credit card slip. I yammered on about how much I enjoyed "Motherless Brooklyn" but tuned in quickly to his desire to leave with his pile of books without any more chatter. Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Millhauser ("Martin Dressler") was similarly demure when he came in to quietly buy some fiction and grudgingly agreed to sign some (but not the paperbacks) of his books that we had in stock. His companion that day, Skidmore College Professor colleague Steve Stern, prowled around himself for copies of his short story collections to sign.

Despite his reticence, Millhauser has a special place of dedication in our shop as pictured on the right. The shelf of Modern Library classics lies somewhat dangerously in front of the door leading to our basement lair and storage area and my husband didn't know that a famous author was afoot when he briskly strode upstairs and flung the door open, nearing bowling poor Millhauser head first into some Ibsen plays. Someday we'll get around to putting that historical plaque up.

The biggest "rock star" in the bookshop, though, has to be Ruth Stiles Gannett, author of the fantastic "My Father's Dragon", who charmed her way into my psyche with her modesty. You can read all about it my gushing vintage blog post here.

We sold an antique children's book over the Internet to the late William F. Buckley in one of the first years we were in business and just last year sold a cookbook to "Salt" and "Cod" author Mark Kurlansky. That last transaction was spooky, because Dan has just finished "Cod" the night before and we brought the book in to the shop to be housed on our "Books We've Liked" shelf. Kurlansky's call came a few hours later and he wasn't particularly interested in discussing the whole synergy of the transaction (or perhaps was working under a deadline), so that was a brief encounter. Still, kinda cool.

In 1997 we hosted historian Richard M. Ketchum for a book signing of his lively "Saratoga: Turning Point of America's Revolutionary War". Ketchum was an editor at American Heritage for many years and has written many other engaging history and nonfiction titles. He was a courtly and delightful guest at our shop and took the time to speak at length with many of our customers, even the aggressive ones who conducted their conversations with a proprietary hand on his arm. Earlier this year we were also pleased to host Sheridan Hay in our shop for a signing to celebrate the trade paperback release of her bookstore novel "The Secret of Lost Things". She was a similar delight: warm, attentive to all who came and enthusiastic about chatting about other books.

There are many Saratoga County writers who have graced our shop: the prolific Joe Bruchac: poet, reteller of Native American tales and children's author ("Skeleton Man" is Scary with a capital S and highly recommended); Jennifer Armstrong, children's author extraordinaire whom I predict will one day score a Newbery Award; soft spoken Barry Targan, who brings the best books in to trade and who writes novels and short stories in between building handmade boats; Amy Godine, an Adirondack and Saratoga history writer who gobbles down books like candy; and Saratoga gadfly and urban planning critic James Howard Kunstler, who is best known in the larger world for his book "The Geography of Nowhere" and in Schuylerville as the infamous author of a critical New York Times Magazine article.

We're still waiting for William Kennedy to stroll up from Albany and I sure would whoop up a storm if Russell Banks dropped by, but all in all it's still a thrill when we get a real live author in among the ones on paper.

Literary Libations

When one first thinks of writers and alcohol, it is hard-drinking Ernest Hemingway's weary visage that pops into view. Poor Hemingway, tormented by mental demons in an unfortunate era of shock treatment therapy, certainly drank in the same driven way he hunted, fished, attended bullfights and bar fights. His Havana days were spent well marinated in a variety of rum drinks, according to the entertaining and intriguingly-illustrated "Tropical Bar Book: Drinks and Stories", by Charles Schumann (NY: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1989).

Papa Hemingway apparently had certain drinks that he would only order at specific bars: Mojitos at the Bodeguita del Medio (lime juice, sugar, mint, crushed ice, white rum & soda water), and Daiquiris at La Floridita (crushed ice, lime and grapefruit juice, maraschino and white rum); the Daiquiris often ordered as doubles, hence the nickname "Papa Dobles".

Other tropical tipplers of literary note included the British ex pats that hung out at the Writers Bar in the Raffles Hotel at the turn of the century century Singapore, including Rudyard Kipling, Somerset Maugham, Joseph Conrad and Noel Coward. The Singapore Sling was invented at the Writers Bar, and according to the Tropical Bar Book, started out as a concoction of grenadine, gin, lemon juice and water. Present day recipes for the classic cocktail are significantly pinker and sweeter and include three liqueurs, gin, two juices and a dash of bitters. It does seem hard to imagine Kipling cozying up to the bar and slurping up one of these pastel potions through a pineapple and cherry garnished straw.

The Tropical Bar Book features other snippets of author’s writings and drinking habits, including Graham Greene, Jane Bowles, and Malcolm Lowry, as well as an extensive collection of rum, tequila and other cocktail recipes, many of the author’s own devising. The topic of writers and their alcoholic fuels intrigues me so you can look for more Book Trout posts on this subject as future installments.

Breaking Book Trout News....

Sheridan Hay, author of The Secret of Lost Things, a biblionovel about an eccentric array of New York City used bookstore employees and one of the best books I read last year, is coming to Old Saratoga Books for a book signing on May 3rd. Her book is now out in paperback and in keeping with the title of her book, she graciously forgave my having lost her contact information for over a month. Stay tuned for more details and for an upcoming email interview with her by the Trout herself.

In the interim, you can check out my book review from the blog archives and Hay's own website.

Craving Christie

The nearsighted bloggers over at Chicago's Myopic Bookstore have a great post recommending that SERIOUS readers take a break from their wrist-busting Proust and Joyce tomes to give Dame Agatha a try. Agatha Christie is not the Queen of the Mysteries for nothing; there is plenty of wit, eccentric characters, surprising and intricate plots and social satire enough in her 80+ books for the snootiest fiction reader.



During the 1980s I had a blast reading through the majority of her mysteries. At one point I tried to amass the entire Christie catalog, but when Dan and I decided to open a used bookstore in 1996, we parted with a good bit of our home library to stock the shelves, and my Christies were sucked into the book vortex that is Old Saratoga Books. Several years later, I started scooping some Christie titles back, but I have come to the middle-aged realization that I'm not going to have time to read all of the books I want to at least once, much less twice, so I have just saved some of my favorite Christie mysteries to reread and savor: Curtain, And Then There Were None, Murder on the Orient Express, Sleeping Murder and Murder at the Vicarage.

For those Christie addicts that have read all the Agatha and crave more, there are many mystery writers that pay homage to the Queen, including Carolyn Hart, M.C. Beaton, Gilbert Adair, Susan Kandel, and Lawrence Block (in his Burglar mysteries, not the Matt Scudders).

For Christophiles, there is the great treat of reading "The New Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Agatha Christie", edited by Dick Riley and Pam McAllister, which we always try to have a copy of at the bookstore. This compendium includes a synopsis of all the Christie mysteries and many other interesting articles about clothing, English tea, murder weapons, British law enforcement, film versions of the novels, biographical tidbits, poisons, and crossword puzzles with Christie clues.

Schtick Lit Recommendations

NPR's Morning Edition has a great audio interview with Steve Almond, author of Candyfreak (reviewed here in an earlier posting) about the trend of "My Year of" nonfiction titles, or as Almond defines them, "schtick-lit". This genre involves the author's quest for knowledge about a certain niche subject, or as Almond notes, schtick lit is the literary version of the current plague of reality television shows.

I have enjoyed many of these recent "My Year Of" titles, most memorably A.J. Jacobs' The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004). Jacobs read through the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and his book is an enjoyable romp through his humorous takes on all sorts of scientific, historical and biographical tidbits. His next schtick-lit project is The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, but as I have no patience with fundamentalism of any stripe, I think I'll pass.




Other schtick-lit I've enjoyed in recent months:

Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, by Julie Powell (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2005). Julie tackles the entirety of Julia Childs' Mastering the Art of French Cooking (volume one only). Amusing for this foodie, but I wanted more focus on how she tried to shop for classic French ingredients and learned fancy cooking techniques, and less about her friends' personal lives. A much more absorbing read was My Life in France, the posthumously-published memoir by Childs, in which her good humour shines throughout.

Anything by English travel writer Tim Moore. Moore just cracks me up. He is a self-deprecating and very witty writer who has tackled projects in each of his notable books:


Frost on My Moustache: The Arctic Exploits of a Lord and a Loafer (Moore morosely follows the Nordic travels of gung-ho Victorian explorer Lord Dufferin); French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France (great Anglo-French rivalries and sore butt jokes); Travels with My Donkey: One Man and His Ass on a Pilgrimage to Santiago (Moore and his hilariously-stubborn donkey Shinto walk 500 northern Spanish miles in the footsteps of many a religious pilgrim). All are highly recommended to anyone who enjoys armchair travel with such guides as Bill Bryson or Tim Cahill; Tim Moore writes in that vein, but is just so much more hapless.

R.I.P. George MacDonald Fraser

It is with great sadness that I report the death of a cherished author, George MacDonald Fraser, on January 2nd, aged 82. His Flashman series features the cravenly, yet absurdly lucky, bounder and "hero", Harry Paget Flashman. The twelve titles are a wonderful way to soak up Victorian military history. Like Thomas Berger's Little Big Man, the Flashman books insert our military man and sometime spy in the middle of actual historical events with over-the-top results (i.e., gastric disturbance impels him to unwittingly lead the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava).

"Flashy" rogers his way around the globe, collecting medals for unintentional bravery and generally blundering his way to a brigadiered generalhood. I feel the series just got better over time with greater nuances to Flashman's character and to that of his wife, Elspeth. I have read through the Flashman series once and daydream about digesting it again in the future during a long, lazy stretch of reading.

Flashman is responsible for a bit of family legend at Dan's expense. Two years ago, my loving spouse went to the local big box bookstore to pick up a copy of "Flashman on the March" (sadly, perhaps the last Flashman book ever, although there is some possibility of an Australian adventure) to surprise me as a gift. He was wearing his woodcutting outfit (large tuke on his head, several days worth of beard scruff, Army surplus coat, big mud boots) and waited politely in line for an available cashier. He then asked if the store had the latest "Flashman". There was a pause from the female employee, who then asked him to repeat his query. He said "Flashman" again a little more loudly. And repeated it. She then got very wide-eyed and backed away from the counter. I guess she thought he was wearing nothing under his funky outfit, so poor Dan just slunk away, rather humiliated. But I think George MacDonald Fraser would've gotten a kick out of that scene.

A Hunger for Books

The Guardian carried the full text of newly laureled Doris Lessing's Nobel Prize acceptance speech and it is a very moving and thoughtful piece. Here's the link to read it in its entirety, including vivid passages about the hunger for reading in Zimbabwe, India and other parts of the globe. It is often easy to overlook the great wealth we have here in the United States and when one is a bookseller surrounded by books at work and at home, I often forget how very rich I am to have the thoughts and knowledge of so many writers at my fingers.

At Old Saratoga Books, we are reminded of our book wealth at monthly intervals by a friend, Joyce, an education professor at a local college. Several years ago she asked about children's books featuring black children in them and I managed to find a handful from the stacks. She told me she takes them down in her luggage to Antigua where she goes twice yearly to help train local teachers. She said that the teachers are ecstatic when she hands out the books, because their classrooms don't have many books, and indeed, the entire Caribbean island nation of Antigua and Barbuda (69,180 population) has only one public library, in the capital of St. John, which holds 50,000 books.

We have been donating books for this annual pilgrimage to the Antigua schools ever since that first encounter. Twice yearly Joyce and some of her accompanying graduate education students fill their suitcases to the airline poundage limit with these books and stagger off to Antigua to pass them around. They used to send M-Bags full of these books before the postal prices went up this past Spring but now just use themselves as book mules.

Thankfully, our small contributions are not the only book resource for Antiguans. I just did a little Internet research and found that there is a New York City group, The Friends of the Antigua Public Library, that raises money to help the library with operating expenses, books and reading program materials, so this is a positive development. They accept book donations for Antigua, so metropolitan NYC residents might want to check this out.

Incidently, Antigua boasts a fabulous native writer, Jamaica Kincaid, whose Annie John relates the education of a young, bright girl coming of age in a stifling environment, where she yearns to break free of the limited life paths that set before her. (Kincaid is today a citizen of the kingdom of Vermont and a renowned writer of fiction, memoir and beautiful garden books). In today's Antigua, my friend tells me that the school system is fairly well geared to grooming future workers for the nation's luxury tourism industry, although individual teachers try to offer other options to their pupils.

Hungry for books indeed.

My Father's Dragon Lady

Today I had a customer come in and politely ask for directions to the children's section. She came back a few moments later and had the good taste to have a copy of L.M. Boston's "The Children of Green Knowe" in her hand. We chatted as I rang up her purchase and she commented about how used bookstores are such nice repositories of older titles and mentioned that she was an author herself. Ever-curious and ever-bold from my downstate New York upbringing, I asked what she had written. She demurred and said that she had written a book published way back in 1948 and that I probably had never heard of it. I pressed on with my queries and she very modestly said that she had written a children's book called "My Father's Dragon".

My mouth flapped open. Not heard of "My Father's Dragon"! Unthinkable! This book is a wonderful children's fantasy, and a winner of Newbery Honors. I not only read and loved this book as a kid, but I read it aloud to my kids when they were younger and have pressed many copies into the hands of parents and grandparents asking for recommended reading for their small fry. I restrained myself from running around the counter and squeezing the no-need-to-be modest Ruth Stiles Gannett in a bear hug, but couldn't resist asking if I could take a picture of her holding a copy of her much beloved book. She was gracious enough to inscribe this new family heirloom to my two girls, "daughters of the enthusiastic seller of books of yore".

I mentioned this author encounter to my next several customers and both were knocked out. They too, had not only heard of this book but had read, re-read and gifted this book to others. I found out that there are two sequels to this title, "Elmer and the Dragon" and "The Dragons of Blueland", which I will now have to purchase. A euphoric day at the old bookshop indeed.

Happy Birthday to the Bard of Avon

Tomorrow, April 23rd, is known as William Shakespeare's date of death and is also celebrated as his birth date as well. In case you are not able to attend the festivities in merrie olde England, here are some ways you might tip your hat to the Bard:

1) Read one of his wonderful plays or enjoy a sonnet. Every home library ought to contain a collected works of Shakespeare to dip into.

2) Try your hand at the Shakespeare Sonnet Shake-up, a fun website that allows you to create your own sonnet using lines from the Immortal One.

3) Attend a Shakespeare play and soak up some Elizabethan atmosphere. Lots of college and local theater groups incorporate Shakespeare's works in their annual schedules.

4) Read Leon Rooke's bawdy, intelligent novel "Shakespeare's Dog" (NY: Ecco Press, 1986), which chronicles Will Shakespizzle's (variant spelling) life from the point of view of his dog, the notably unneutered Mr. Hooker.

5) Memorize a Shakepearean insult or two. Here are some memorable bits of invective from the plays:

-"This is a slight unmeritable man, meet to be sent on errands." (Julius Caesar)
-"[Thou art] wither'd like an old apple-john." (Henry IV, Part 1)
-"Drunkeness is his best virtue." (All's Well That Ends Well)
-"Would the fountain of your mind were clear again, that I might water an ass at it." (Troilus and Cressida)
-"You juggler! You canker-blossom!" (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
-"Then did the sun on dunghill shine." (The Merry Wives of Windsor)
-"Thou hast need of more rags to lay on thee." (The Winter's Tale)

6) Cook up a batch of Macbeth Soup:

1ST WITCH: Round about the caldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.-
Toad, that under cold stone,
Days and nights has thiry-one
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i' the charmèd pot!

ALL: Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire, burn; and, caldron bubble.

2ND WITCH: Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and howlet's wing,-
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

ALL: Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire, burn; and, caldron, bubble.

3RD WITCH: Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches' mummy, maw and gulf
of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse,
Nose of Turk; and Tartar's lips,
Finger of birth-strangl'd babe,
Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,-
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
For the ingredients of our caldron.

ALL: Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire, burn; and, caldron, bubble.

2ND WITCH: Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.

--Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 1

Man Booker Prize Finalists

The biennial (and only the second) Man Booker International
Prize will be granted to one of the following 15 authors. The 15 contenders are:

Chinua Achebe
Margaret Atwood
John Banville
Peter Carey
Don DeLillo
Carlos Fuentes
Doris Lessing
Ian McEwan
Harry Mulisch
Alice Munro
Michael Ondaatje
Amos Oz
Philip Roth
Salman Rushdie
Michel Tournier


For more information, check out the Man Booker website:


I vote for Canadian author Michael Ondaatje. Everything he writes: poetry, novels, essays, is incandescent and beautiful. "Anil's Ghost" is my favorite work of his, a haunting and tragic novel about war in the author's native Sri Lanka. Powell's Bookstore has a great interview with Ondaatje about this book which is fascinating.

His most widely known work, "The English Patient", is the Booker Prize-winning epic of memorable characters wounded by the onslaught of World War II. "Running in the Family" is an interesting autobiographical look at Ondaatje's parents and his childhood in Sri Lanka. I've got "Coming Through Slaughter" on my bookshelf of things to read and am really looking forward to this novel based on the life of jazz cornet legend Buddy Bolden.

The Book Trout mourns Kilgore Trout

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

Kurt Vonnegut has just died and the world is a poorer place. Dan and I regard him as one of our favorite authors and thinkers and we are saddened that he is gone. In the pantheon of beloved novels on our home library shelves Vonnegut is well-represented.

I first read Vonnegut in high school in the 1970s, under the tutelage of a hip, kooky-in-a-good-way teacher whose last name I can't remember, but who was known by all as "Fondly, Tanya" by the way she signed comments on our English compositions. We teenagers loved the course because she had us read a lot of contemporary classics in between Shakespeare and Hawthorne and Dickens. Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" was on the syllabus and it remains one of my favorite fantasies.

Fast forward twenty years: Dan and I were in the second year of operation here in the village of Schuylerville, New York (population 1,197). Dan answered the bookshop phone and almost passed out when someone identifying himself as Kurt Vonnegut wanted us to look at some books for sale. It turned out to be author Vonnegut's nephew, who wanted us to look over his late father Bernard's books. Bernard was a professor of meteorology at the State University of New York at Albany and provided some inspiration for his brother's ice-nine passages in "Cat's Cradle".

We ultimately purchased these books, and while we found no signed or first edition Vonnegut titles, we were amused and delighted with the books we had. In between esoteric weather science titles were lots of books by H.L. Mencken and Mark Twain, which nephew Kurt indicated were favorites with the Vonnegut boys. Later on, Dan and I read "Timequake", Vonnegut's quasi-autobiographical novel which referred to his brother with great affection, and we smiled again.

America has lost one of its greatest contemporary writers and we salute his memory.