The Books: Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink; edited by David Remnick; ‘Dry Martini’, by Roger Angell

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Next up on the essays shelf:

Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink, edited by David Remnick

Secret Ingredients is a collection of food writing from The New Yorker. I love these collections. So far, we have excerpted from the following collections: Life Stories, The Fun of It, and The New Gilded Age.

I’m not a foodie, but I love this collection because 1. it gives snapshots of different eras, 2. the writing is great.

There’s a section on beverages as well called “The Pour”, and the first essay is by Roger Angell, who is mainly a sportswriter (one of the best baseball writers ever). But here he writes about the history of the martini, seen through his own experience. I like the references in the piece, one of which is in the excerpt today. An analysis of the scene between Katharine Hepburn and her father (played by John Halliday) in The Philadelphia Story, and how the ritualistic mixing of the martinis is such a huge part of that scene, written into the action by Philip Barry.

the-philadelphia-story-father

… This reminds me of a great comment from a playwright who was in the Master’s Program with me. She said that she had learned through experience that if you want a certain specific action in your script to be written in stone, then you must write it into the dialogue. Because directors often ignore stage directions and feel free to make up their own (as well they should). But as a playwright, she had learned her lesson, and she said, “If it is the most important thing in the world that your character pours a cup of COFFEE, as opposed to a glass of juice, then you have to have the character SAY, ‘Want some more coffee?’ Because otherwise, it could all be changed.”

I’m not a big martini-drinker, and I’m not much of a drinker at all anymore. There is something festive about a martini, and it does give an amazing buzz. My main memory involving martinis is one time with Mitchell: he was visiting, he made a pitcher of martinis (we were at my apartment), we both drank two apiece (only two!), and all hell broke loose, including an infamous drunk-dialing marathon.

Angell’s essay talks about that mid-century aesthetic, and how important the martini was to it. It showed up in the literature, the poetry. Once the late 60s rolled around, marijuana came in, and it gave a mellower buzz. Angell suggests that that may have been a reaction to the downside of martinis, which the children of the 60s witnessed occurring at their parents’ dinner parties. The martini is back now. But I suppose it is also timeless.

Angell wrote this piece in 2002. It’s lovely.

Here’s an excerpt.

Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink, edited by David Remnick; ‘Dry Martini’, by Roger Angell

In John O’Hara’s 1934 novel, Appointment in Samarra, the doomed hero, Julian English, and his wife, Caroline, observe Christmas with his parents, as usual. They live in the Pennsylvania coal town of Gibbsville, but the Englishes are quality, and before their festive dinner Julian’s father, Dr. William English, mixes and serves up midday martinis; then they have seconds.

In the 1940 classic movie comedy The Philadelphia Story, the reliable character actor John Halliday plays Katharine Hepburn’s reprobate father, who has returned home unexpectedly on the eve of her wedding. Standing on a terrace in the early evening, he mixes and pours a dry martini for himself and his deceived but accepting wife (Mary Nash) while, at the same time, he quietly demolishes his daughter’s scorn for him and some of her abiding hauteur. It’s the central scene of the ravishing flick, since it begins Tracy Lord’s turnabout from chilly prig Main Line heiress to passably human Main Line heiress, and the martini is the telling ritual: the presentation of sophistication’s Host. Hepburn had played the same part in the Broadway version of the Philip Barry play, a year before, which also required that martini to be mixed and poured before our very eyes. Sitting in the dark at both versions, I was entranced by the dialogue – only Philip Barry could have a seducer-dad convincingly instruct his daughter in morals – but at the same time made certain that the martini was made right: a slosh of gin, a little vermouth, and a gentle stirring in the pitcher before the pouring and the first sips. Yes, okay, my martini-unconscious murmured, but next time maybe a little more ice, Seth.

This is not a joke. Barry’s stage business with the bottles and the silver stirring spoon in one moment does away with a tiresome block of explanation about the Lords: he’s run off with a nightclub singer and she’s been betrayed, but they have shared an evening martini together before this – for all their marriage, in fact – and soon they’ll be feeling much better. In the movie, which was directed by George Cukor, the afternoon loses its light as the drink is made and the talk sustained, and the whole tone of the drama shifts. Everyone is dressed for the coming party, and the martini begins the renewing complications. Sitting in the theater, we’re lit up a little, too, and ready for all that comes next – the dance, the scene by the pool – because the playwright has begun things right.

Cocktails at Hyde Park or on Philadelphia’s Main Line sound aristocratic, but the Second World War changed our ways. In the Pacific, where I was stationed, a couple of Navy fighter pilots told me a dumb story they’d heard in training, about the tiny survival kit that was handed out to flight-school graduates headed for carrier duty. OPEN ONLY IN EXTREME EMERGENCY, it said – which seemed to be the case of a pilot north of Midway whose Grumman quit cold a hundred miles away from his flattop. After ditching, he climbed into his inflatable raft, regarded the empty horizon that encircled him, and opened the kit. Inside was a tiny shaker and a glass, a stirring straw, a thimbleful of gin, and an eyedropper’s worth of vermouth. He mixed and stirred, and was raising the mini cocktail to his lips when he became aware that vessels had appeared from every quarter of the Pacific and were making towards him at top speed. The first to arrive, a torpedo boat, roared up, and its commanding officer, shouting through his megaphone, called, “That’s not the way to make a dry martini!”

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