29.04.

10 THE DRINK
Drunks and readers alike,
Welcome to the first edition of the Book Club
For Drunks, featuring Catcher in the Rye by
J.D. Salinger. It was first published 1951 by
Little, Brown & Company, runs 224 pages long
and mentions cigarettes and booze more than
35 times apiece.
Cheers!
THE BOOK
Catcher In The Rye covers 48 hours in the
life of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield, who has
just flunked out of his expensive boarding
school in eastern Pennsylvania. This makes
the fourth school from which he's been
expelled from. Holden heads to New York City,
his home, and puts himself up in the Edmont
Hotel. Over the next two days, through a
series of encounters, Holden experiences the
cynicism and phoniness of adult life— his
narrative voice capturing the essence of
teenage angst and alienation. A self-
indulgent romp with a helluva lot of drinking
and smoking for such a young man.
HOW IT STARTS
*2 For 1 – get thee to the bar!*
“The bar was closing up for the night,
so I bought them all two drinks apiece
quick before it closed, and I ordered
two more Cokes for myself. The goddam
table was lousy with glasses. The one
ugly one, Laverne, kept kidding me
because I was only drinking Cokes. She
had a sterling sense of humor. She and
old Marty were drinking Tom Collinses --
in the middle of December, for God's
sake. They didn't know any better. The
blonde one, old Bernice, was drinking
bourbon and water. She was really
putting it away, too.”
Tom Collins
- 1 1/2 oz gin
- 1 oz lemon juice
- 1 tsp sugar
- 4 oz club soda
Mix gin, lemon juice and sugar in a cocktail
shaker with ice. Strain into a highball glass
over ice. Top with club soda. Garnish with
fruit (a cherry, lemon wheel and orange
wheel).

The delicious Tom

“If you really want to hear about it, the
Collins originated in
first thing you'll probably want to know is
New York City during
where I was born and what my lousy childhood
The Great Tom Collins
was like, and how my parents were occupied
hoax of 1874, and was
and all before they had me, and all that
first memorialized in
David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't
writing in 1876 by
feel like going into it, if you want to know
"the father of
the truth. In the first place, that stuff
bores me, and in the second place, my parents American mixology"
would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I Jerry Thomas.
told anything pretty personal about them.”
Did you know that there’s a whole
THE AUTHOR wutchamacallit family of Collinses. The John
Collins is made with bourbon, the Juan
Collins with tequila, and the Vodka Collins
In case you’re wondering,
is made with vodka. In Cuba they scull the
this is what a crabby
Ron Collins, which is made with Rum. In
‘literary genius’ looks
Finland it is also possible to try Jallu
like.
Collins, where Jaloviina is the substitute of
gin. Cheers to all of that.
J.D. Salinger was born and
grew up in Manhattan. The
son of a prosperous Jewish
NEXT TIME
importer of Kosher cheese
and his Scotch-Irish wife.
We’ll be smashing Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast
of Champions. Cos we all know a martini is
Salinger was best known for
the perfect way to start the day.
Catcher, his only novel, and his reclusive
nature. His last original published work was
If you have any suggestions for the future
in 1965; he gave his last interview in 1980.
alcohol sodden reads, email
amber@codeforsomething.com or post it on the
Book Club For Drunks facebook group. Salute!
You ought to go to a boy's school sometimes.
Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of
phonies, and all you do is study so that you
can learn enough to be smart enough to be
able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and
you have to keep making believe you give a
damn if the football team loses, and all you
do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all
day, and everybody sticks together in these
dirty little goddam cliques. The guys that
are on the basketball team stick together,
the goddam intellectuals stick together, the
guys that play bridge stick together. Even
the guys that belong to the goddam Book-of-
the-Month Club stick together.
--
The waiter came up, and I ordered a Coke for
her - she didn't drink - and a Scotch and
soda for myself, but the sonuvabitch wouldn't
bring you one, so I had a Coke too.
--
What really knocks me out is a book, when
you're all done reading it, you wished the
author that wrote it was a terrific friend of
yours and you could call him up on the phone
whenever you felt like it.
--
There isn't any night club in the world you
can sit in for a long time unless you can at
least buy some liquor and get drunk. Or
unless you're with some girl that really
knocks you out.
--
'You know that song, "If a body catch a body
comin' through the rye"?...'
'It's "If a body meet a body coming through
the rye"!' old Phoebe said. "It's a poem. By
Robert Burns."
Holden Caulfield and Phoebe
--
She was sort of cute, the blonde one, and I
started giving her the old eye a little bit,
but just then the waiter came up for my
order. I ordered a Scotch and soda, and told
him not to mix it--I said it fast as hell,
because if you hem and haw, they think you're
under twenty-one and won't sell you any
intoxicating liquor…
"Can'tcha stick a little rum in it or
something?" I asked him. I asked him very
nicely and all. "I can't sit in a corny place
like this cold sober. Can'tcha stick a little
rum in it or something?"
--
I ordered a Scotch and soda, which is my
favorite drink, next to frozen Daiquiris. If
you were only around six years old, you could
get liquor at Ernie's, the place was so dark
and all, and besides, nobody cared how old
you were. You could even be a dope fiend and
nobody'd care.
--
I'd only had three drinks at Ernie's, and I
didn't even finish the last one. One thing I
have, it's a terrific capacity. I can drink
all night and not even show it, if I'm in the
mood. Once, at the Whooton School, this other
boy, Raymond Goldfarb, and I bought a pint of
Scotch and drank it in the chapel one
Saturday night, where nobody'd see us. He got
stinking, but I hardly didn't even show it. I
just got very cool and nonchalant. I puked
before I went to bed, but I didn't really
have to--I forced myself.
--
Then I tested to see if my breath stank from
so many cigarettes and the Scotch and sodas I
drank at Ernie's. All you do is hold your
hand under your mouth and blow your breath up
toward the old nostrils. It didn't seem to
stink much, but I brushed my teeth anyway.
Then I put on another clean shirt. I knew I
didn't have to get all dolled up for a
prostitute or anything, but it sort of gave
me something to do. I was a little nervous.
--
It was pretty early when I got there. I sat
down at the bar--it was pretty crowded--and
had a couple of Scotch and sodas before old
Luce even showed up.
--
Boy, I sat at that goddam bar till around one
o'clock or so, getting drunk as a bastard. I
could hardly see straight. The one thing I
did, though, I was careful as hell not to get
boisterous or anything. I didn't want anybody
to notice me or anything or ask how old I
was. But, boy, I could hardly see straight.
When I was really drunk, I started that
stupid business with the bullet in my guts
again.