Baker - The Dedalus Book of Absinthe

Praise for The Dedalus Book of Absinthe:

James Joyce in Finnegans Wake described a character as absintheminded, while lesser punsters spoke of absinthe making the tart grow fonder. It reaches across time, this potent concoction of eccentricity and beauty. Alluring, then informative and witty.

Time Out

Dwarfish Bohemian psychopaths in stove-pipe hats, ageless Louisiana vampires, Victorian books bound in human skin, fin-de-sicle brothels, strange Goth subcultures and lice- ridden poets: yep, its a history of absinthe. Theres cultural history by the bucket load, possibly the worst Victorian poetry ever to have seen the light of day for a century, along with the full story of todays absinthe boom An indispensable guide for the contemporary absintheur.

Class: the magazine of bar culture

literate and cheerfully squalid a model of popular cultural history brilliant

Gary Lachman in The Fortean Times

engaging, curious, and gruesomely hilarious

Andrew Jefford in The Evening Standard

For someone who actually likes the beastly stuff, Phil Baker writes very well and drily I greatly recommend the tasting notes of current brands at the end

Philip Hensher in The Spectator

informative and hair-raising

Roy Herbert in The New Scientist

packed with enjoyable anecdotes and eccentric absintheurs, and reveals why it has been the most demonised of all alcoholic drinks

The Sunday Times

Absinthe is a brilliant book full of arresting facts and new illuminations.

Gay Times

Phil Bakers consistently enjoyable study is meticulously researched, liberal with its quotations, comprehensive in its range, and light in its telling.

The Literary Review

This is all great stuff, and sets us up for the extended coda of the modern absinthe revival both in its American gothic variant of New Orleans and Anne Rice vampires and its British co-option into the hell-bent twenty-first century drink-drug cocktail culture. Turning finally from the drinkers to the drink, we get the bottom line on whether the wormwood in absinthe makes it a more trippy intoxication that other spirits, or more toxic (or, as it turns out, both). Rounded out with an appendix of classic absinthe texts, another of road-tests of the currently available brands, and plenty of notes and sources, this is a very appealing package tastier, definitely cheaper and probably more illuminating than the drink itself.

Mike Jay in Black Ice

One of the most fascinating themes in this witty, erudite and desperately poignant study is that of the cultural war waged between England and France at the end of the 19th century. English moralists would wax not very eloquent on the sapping effects of absinthe on the susceptible French soul, always uncomfortably aware that the French were producing writers and artists of a calibre unmatched in England.

Murrough OBrien in the Independent on Sunday

Still, as alcohol, absinthe is harsh, potent stuff. If only the booze went down as easily as the book. The Dedalus Book of Absinthe, ably written by Phil Baker, is a well-researched and entertaining wealth of fact and fancy, anecdotes and information about the Green Fairy. Interspersed with historical accounts of absinthe production and legislation are debauched accounts excerpted from the writings of famous debauchees, among them Hemingway, Picasso and Van Gogh. Also surveyed are the rituals of libation, including digressions on the appropriate hardware.

Prague Pill

This splendid book also discusses the rituals and modus operandi of absinthe drinking, with a short chapter on the medical properties and effects of the drink, and includes a collection of apposite French poetry and prose. It also includes a useful appendix where current brands are tested and given a a Dowson rating. All in all, a most entertaining and informative read, for which Mr. Baker is to be commended.

The Chap Magazine

Published in the UK by Dedalus Limited

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ISBN printed book 978 1 903517 40 6

ISBN e-book 978 1 907650 47 5

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Publishing History

First published by Dedalus in 2001, reprinted 2002

First premium edition 2006

First e-book edition 2011

The Dedalus Book of Absinthe Phil Baker 2001

The right of Phil Baker to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act, 1988

Printed in Finland by Bookwell

Typeset by Refine Catch Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A C.I.P. listing for this book is available on request.

THE AUTHOR

Phil Baker reviews regularly for a number of papers including The Sunday Times and The Times Literary Supplement. The author of a book on Beckett and a short history of psychogeography, Secret City, he has just completed a biography of Dennis Wheatley and is researching a study of the artist, Austin Osman Spare.

CONTENTS

Vice Marie Corelli the Sublime Aleister Crowley George Saintsbury the part for the whole

Enoch Soames at the Caf Royal Fleet Street nights Arthur Symons Oscar Wilde the backlash The Green Carnation Smithers and the Savoy

Stranger in a Strange Land faithful in his fashion like a protoplasm in the embryo of a troglodyte Jekyll and Hyde a night out in the East End Paris and religion peacefully in Catford Yeats is mistaken

Alfred de Musset Baudelaire Verlaine Rimbaud

Communication with Other Planets Strindberg the alchemist Villiers de LIsle Adam Alfred Jarry a Man of Letters

The useful herb bitterness a tonic is invented the Bat dAf bourgeois habits under the Second Empire the Green Hour Bohemia inspiration

Bad scenes at the Absinthe Hotel female troubles Zola, Manet, and Degas Orpen absinthe and the workers it kills you but it makes you live absinthism and the spectre of degeneration sad news about Toulouse-Lautrec Picasso not before time

Nostalgia death in America Hemingway Harry Crosby American Gothic the English are amused

Prague The Idler Johnny Depp has need of a crate an open secret mixology the French are not amused the birth of La Fe the Charenton Omnibus revisited laissez faire dissenting voices a word from Mr. Social Control

Fire and water the louche modus operandi a pleasure in itself the absinthe professors the language of absinthe more classic methods Valentin has a better idea

A different experience placebos and learned intoxication absinthism revisited thujone the strange case of Vincent Van Gogh recreational wormwood abuse the mystery solved coca wine and the speedball effect alcohol kills you slowly