The Hour by Bernard DeVoto
"But when the evening quickens in the street, comes a pause in the day's occupation that is known as the cocktail hour. It marks the lifeward turn. The heart wakens from coma and its dyspnea ends. Its strengthening pulse is to cross over into campground, to believe that the world has not been altogether lost or, if lost, then not altogether in vain. But it cannot make the grade alone. It needs help; it needs, my brethren, all the help it can get. It needs a wife (or some other charming woman) of attuned impulse and equal impatience and maybe two or three friends but no more than two or three. These gathered together in a softly lighted room and, with them what it needs most of all, the bounty of alcohol. Hence the cocktail."
I always knew of the author Bernard DeVoto as an historian
of the western United States and of his monthly column
"Easy Chair" in Harper's. He was born in Ogden, Utah but
made his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He wrote
numerous history books such as Across the Wide
Missouri, The Year of Decision: 1846, and
The Course of Empire. His articles in Harper's and
other national publications saved the western public lands
when post-war schemes were advanced in Congress to turn
them over to ranching, grazing and mining interests.
But let me draw your attention to one other slim volume he
wrote in 1948 entitled The Hour. In this book he
focuses wit and wisdom on the cocktail hour.
A man of considerable enthusiasm and definite opinions, the
book is hilarious. If you've ever loved a cocktail hour or
you think you'd like one but haven't yet given it a try,
find this book and enjoy DeVoto at his most urbane.
Be ready for his certain opinions, for example, there are
only two cocktails: a slug of whiskey and a dry martini.
And in the later only gin and dry vermouth are permitted.
No olives, no twist and certainly not a pickled onion!
Here's his view of rum:
"In that sudden roar the word you make out is 'Daiquiri.' Yes, yes, I know. I have alluded to rum before, we must not deny that it exists and is drunk, and as a historian I must give it its due. It gave us political freedom and negro slavery. It got ships built and sailed, forests felled, iron smelted, and commercial freight carried from place to place by men who, if their primordial capitalist bosses had not given them rum, would have done something to get their wages raised. In both the cheapness and effectiveness it proved the best liquor for Indian traders to debauch customers with. People without taste buds can enjoy it now, though the head that follows is enormous, and such sentimentalists as the seadogs of small sailing craft can believe they do. But mainly it is drunk as all sweet liquors are, in a regressive fantasy, as sad hope of regaining childhood's joy at the soda fountain. No believer could drink it straight or gentled at the fastidious and hopeful hour. No one should drink it with a corrosive added, which is the formula of the Daiquiri."
A fun book preserving a fun institution.
