The sun also drinks a lot
My second Hemingway-related post in a single day! As it were, on this casual Saturday afternoon I’m going through some old notes of mine and found a few on Hemingway from circa 2008 when I read through most of his works.
During that period I had decided to reread The Sun Also Rises with the idea that I'd keep a log of every alcoholic beverage consumed. The salient memory from the first time I read the book (in high school, roughly ten million years ago) was that it was mostly about hanging out and having drinks (astute high school-level reading), so I wanted to get a rough measure of that impression. From my original log of unique drinks consumed I noted the following:
What I mean by unique is that the cited page and drink is not a re-mentioning of a drink from an earlier scene. Each drink here was consumed by one of the major characters in the given scene. There was, in fact, more consumption of alcohol than recorded here, but it occurred in the background and I did not feel it should be recorded. The page numbers are from the paperback edition from Scribner Paperback Fiction (ISBN 0-684-80071-3).
With that, I present a list of roughly every reference to an alcoholic drink consumed in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.
The Sun Also Rises, alcoholic summary
p. 19 -- Whiskey & Soda
p. 21 -- apéritif
p. 23 -- pernod
p. 24 -- "another bottle of wine"
p. 27 -- "liqueurs"
p. 27 -- beer
p. 28 -- beer
p. 28 -- cognac
p. 28 -- fine à l'eau (?)
p. 28 -- brandy & soda
p. 36 -- champagne
p. 36 -- wine
p. 40 -- brandy & soda
p. 41 -- brandy & soda
p. 45 -- beer
p. 48 -- Jack Rose (Calvados, Lemon Juice, Grenadine)
p. 50 -- port
p. 50 -- port (again)
p. 61 -- "a drink"
p. 63 -- brandy
p. 66 -- wine (possibly with champagne)
p. 68 -- brandy
p. 76 -- "a drink"
p. 79 -- "a drink"
p. 81 -- whiskey & soda
p. 81 -- pernod
p. 81 -- "a drink"
p. 82 -- fine
p. 89 -- "another"
p. 92 -- Chablis (white wine)
p. 93 -- bottle of wine
p. 97 -- beers
p. 100 -- "plenty of wine"
p. 109 -- wine
p. 109 -- wine (more)
p. 110 -- wine p. 110 -- wine (more)
p. 112 -- aguadiente (brandy, I think...)
p. 112 -- three rounds of "drinks"
p. 116 -- hot rum punch
p. 116 -- "bottles" of wine
p. 126 -- wine (two bottles)
p. 127 -- bottle of wine
p. 133 -- "bottle of wine apiece"
p. 134 -- "one more bottle of wine"
p. 145 -- several drinks
p. 150 -- wine
p. 153 -- brandy
p. 154 -- vermouth
p. 157 -- sherry
p. 159 -- wine
p. 161 -- wine
p. 162 -- some drink that tastes of licorice (absinthe?)
p. 168 -- absinthe
p. 177 -- red wine
p. 179 -- Fundador ("smooth amontillado brandy")
p. 180 -- cognac
p. 182 -- Fundador
p. 184 -- bottle of Fundador
p. 186 -- drink of Fundador
p. 191 -- cognac
p. 205 -- beer
p. 207 -- beer
p. 208 -- "half a dozen bottles of beer and a bottle of Funador"
p. 209 -- beer
p. 210 -- beer
p. 215 -- wine
p. 225 -- absinthe
p. 226 -- absinthe
p. 226 -- absinthe (more)
p. 227 -- absinthe
p. 232 -- Fundador (while driving)
p. 232 -- whiskey & soda
p. 233 -- whiskey & soda
p. 234 -- "two more rounds"
p. 236 -- "bottle of wine for company" (alone at dinner)
p. 237 -- two vieux marc's
p. 239 -- whiksey & soda
p. 240 -- cognac
p. 247 -- martini
p. 248 -- martini
p. 249 -- martini
p. 249 -- three bottles of rioja alta
p. 250 -- two more bottles of rioja alta (wine, I think)
So, there you have it. A little over 80 primary drinks and countless other background drinks in about 240 pages of story (the writing starts on page 11).