A Sidecar Named Desire: Great Writers and the Booze That Stirred Them

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I was once told that to be a great writer, you had to be a womanizer, an alcoholic, or severely depressed. Granted, many great writers fit one or several of those categories, but I don’t necessarily believe you have to be any of those three in order to reach iconic status.

Though, clearly, a little tippling never hurts.

A Sidecar Named Desire splashes into the booze-soaked history of the written word, liberally dousing bits of history and biography with servings of writers’ favorite drinks. Like a visit to your very own drunken Algonquin Table, you get anecdotes, excerpts of famous works, and stories galore than all involve indulging in spirits. The chapters are even organized by type of alcohol, rather than chronologically or by literary genre.

Although there’s a fair amount of hero worship here, it actually doesn’t glorify drinking; on the contrary, the deleterious effects of alcohol on many of these writers are made perfectly clear. Of course, that doesn’t stop the authors from including a few recipes to get the aspiring Great Writers in the readership started.

A Sidecar Named Desire is a curious take on literary history, offering many tales not nearly as neat as the drinks that inspired them. Bottoms up!


Reviewed By:

Author Greg Clarke • Monte Beauchamp
Star Count /5
Format Hard
Page Count 192 pages
Publisher Dey Street Books
Publish Date 2018-10-30
ISBN 9780062696380
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Issue Mar-19
Category Reference
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