F. Scott Fitzgerald - On Booze

Copyright 1931 by Charles Scribners Sons

Copyright 1933 by Editorial Publications, Inc

Copyright 1934, 1936 by Esquire, Inc.

Copyright 1945 by New Directions Publishing Corporation

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in anewspaper, magazine, radio, or television review, no part of this book may bereproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, includingphotocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Publishers Note: The pieces included in On Booze wereselected from the New Directions edition of The Crack-Up, publishedoriginally clothbound in 1945 and as New Directions Paperbook 54 in 1956;reissued as New Directions Paperbook 757 in 1993 and as New Directions Paperbook1135 in 2009.

Manufactured in the United States of America

New Directions Books are printed on acid-free paper.

First published as a Pearl (NDP1205) by NewDirections in 2011

Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books CanadaLimited

Design by Erik Rieselbach

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott), 18961940.

On booze / F. Scott Fitzgerald.

p. cm. (Pearls)

A collection of F. Scott Fitzgeralds best drinking writings.

eISBN 978-0-8112-1933-4

1. Drinking of alcoholic beveragesLiterary collections. I.Title.

PS3511.I9A6 2011

818'.52dc22

2011007596

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

by New Directions Publishing Corporation

80 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10011

THE NEW DIRECTIONS PEARLS

Csar Aira, The Literary Conference

Jorge Luis Borges, Everything and Nothing

Sir Thomas Browne, Urn Burial

F. Scott Fitzgerald, On Booze

Federico Garca Lorca, In Search of Duende

Javier Maras, Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico

Yukio Mishima, Patriotism

Joseph Roth, The Leviathan

Tennessee Williams, Tales of Desire

Nikolai Gogol, The Night Before Christmas

Victor Pelevin, The Hall of the Singing Caryatids

On Booze

F. Scott Fitzgerald

A NEW DIRECTIONS PEARL

Table of Contents

Selections from the Notebooks

Perfectly respectable girl, but only beendrinking that day. No matter how long she lives shell always know shes killedsomebody.

With a piquant face and all the chic in theworld. This is because I was educated in Paris and this in turn I owe tosomeones chance remark to Cousin Arletta that she had a nice big daughter whowas only twenty-two or three at the time. It took three bromides to calk CousinArletta and I started for the Convent of Sacr-Coeur next day.

We havent got any more gin, he said. Willyou have a bromide? he added hopefully.

Yes mam, if necessary. Look here, you take agirl and she goes into some caf where shes got no business to go. Well, then,her escort he gets a little too much to drink an he goes to sleep an then somefella comes up and says, Hello, sweet mamma, or whatever one of those masherssays up here. What does she do? She cant scream, on account of no real ladywill scream nowadays no she just reaches down in her pocket and slips herfingers into a pair of Powells defensive brass-knuckles, debutantes size,executes what I call the Society Hook, and Wham! that big fellas on his way tothe cellar.

You can order it in four sizes: demi(half a litre), distingu (one litre), formidable (threelitres), and catastrophe (five litres).

The blurred world seen from a merry-go-roundsettled into place; the merry-go-round suddenly stopped.

There were only the colleges and the countryclubs. The parks were cheerless, without beer and mostly without music. Theyended at the monkey house or at some imitation French vista. They were forchildren for adults there was nothing.

Debut: the first time a young girl is seendrunk in public.

When he buys his ties he has to ask if ginwill make them run.

Max Eastman like all people with a swayingwalk, he seemed to have some secret.

The boys defence of his mothers innocence inthe Lausanne Palace Bar. His mother sleeping with the son of the Consul.

Cocktails before meals like Americans, winesand brandies like Frenchmen, beer like Germans, whiskey-and-soda like theEnglish, and, as they were no longer in the twenties, this preposterous mlange,that was like some gigantic cocktail in a nightmare.

Sir Francis Elliot, King George, the barleywater and champagne.

When he gets sober for six months and cantstand any of the people hes liked when drunk.

Sending orchestra second rate champagne never, never do it again.

Lonsdale: You dont want to drink so muchbecause youll make a lot of mistakes and develop sensibility and thats a badtrait for business men.

Addresses in his pocket mostly bootleggersand psychiatrists.

He seldom exuded liquor because now he hadtuberculosis and couldnt breathe very freely.

Perhaps a drunk with great bursts ofsentimentality or resentment or maudlin grief.

The drunk on Majestic and his hundredyard dash.

He went back into the bathroom and swallowed adraught of rubbing alcohol guaranteed to produce violent gastricdisturbances.

Two brown port bottles appeared ahead,developed white labels, turned into starched nuns, who seared us with holy eyesas we went by.

When he urinated, it sounded like nightprayer.

Drunk at 20, wrecked at 30, dead at 40. Drunkat 21, human at 31, mellow at 41, dead at 51.

Then I was drunk for many years, and then Idied.

Sad Catastrophe

We dont want visitors, we said:

They come and sit for hours and hours;

They come when we have gone to bed;

They are imprisoned here by showers;

They come when they are low and bored

Drink from the bottle of your heart.

Once it is emptied, the gay horde,

Shouting the Rubaiyat, depart.

I balked: I was at work, I cried;

Appeared unshaven or not at all;

Was out of gin; the cook had died

Of small-pox and more tales as tall.

On boor and friend I turned the same

Dull eye, the same impatient tone

The ones with beauty, sense and fame

Perceived we wished to be alone.

But dull folk, dreary ones and rude

Long talker, lonely soul and quack

Who hereto hadnt dare intrude,

Found us alone, swarmed to attack,

Thought silence was attention; rage

An echo of their own homes war

Glad we had ceased to be upstage.

But the nice people came no more.

Turkey Remains and How to Inter Them with Numerous ScarceRecipes

At this post holiday season, therefrigerators of the nation are overstuffed with large masses of turkey, thesight of which is calculated to give an adult an attack of dizziness. It seems,therefore, an appropriate time to give the owners the benefit of my experienceas an old gourmet, in using this surplus material. Some of the recipes have beenin the family for generations. (This usually occurs when rigor mortis sets in.)They were collected over years, from old cook books, yellowed diaries of thePilgrim Fathers, mail order catalogues, golf-bats and trash cans. Not one buthas been tried and proven there are headstones all over America to testify tothe fact.

Very well then: here goes:

1. Turkey Cocktail: To one large turkeyadd one gallon of vermouth and a demijohn of angostura bitters. Shake.

...

12. Turkey with Whiskey Sauce: Thisrecipe is for a party of four. Obtain a gallon of whiskey, and allow it to agefor several hours. Then serve, allowing one quart for each guest. The next daythe turkey should be added, little by little, constantly stirring and basting.