Bernard DeVoto's slim 1951 volume "The Hour," recently reissued by Tin House Books, is a curious case in the annuls of drink literature. This "Cocktail Manifesto" is obviously the work of a crank behind whose rigid, irrational, hard-and-fast rules about drinking few would fall in line. Yet, the book is beloved by cocktails drinkers and historians.
DeVoto was an accomplished man. He won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. He had a column in Harper's Magazine for 20 years. He edited the papers of Mark Twain, was a novelist, composer, professor and many other things in his crowded 58 years. And yet, today, he's best remembered for his smallest book, in which he tries to impose an all-encompassing, moral philosophy of life on the Martini and the Cocktail Hour.
It's difficult to ascertain the tone of "The Hour." If it's satire, it's too subtle to be carried off. If it's written in all seriousness, it's too doctrinaire by half. What can one do with a man with thinks there are only two cocktails in the world (the Martini; and a slug of whiskey); who thinks "a slug of whiskey" is actually a cocktail; who called Manhattans "an offense against piety"; who abhors rum in all forms; who think fruit juices of no kind belong in the cocktail world; who really just hates almost everything that one might throw one down's throat, and all the people who don't abide by his narrow dicta; who sees blasphemy and treason all around him? One can only call him a kook, a nut, or worse—a bore. He's the kind of man it would be amusing to drink with once, because he is so utterly absurd and would make for fine entertainment; but with whom it would be torture to drink with twice. (Imagine him judging your drink choice carefully, eyeing your character for flaws.)
And yet. And yet.
