The drinks pairings pick up on aspects of the texts that might otherwise go un-noticed. What happens when you read a novel (or poem) with an eye to the beverages it contains? There is a history to be told in the objects taken for granted, the things we absent-mindedly consume, and the minor details of the material world that a text conjures up. The pairings also allow other stories or brief anecdotes to encroach in from the margins, interrupting but often resonating with the main thread of the reading. Further, they remind us of the embodied situatedness of textual reception: we read with full or empty stomachs, before dinner or after, with a morning coffee or a night-cap to hand, sitting comfortably or otherwise, at home or on the bus or in a café or bar, as life goes on all around us. The brief short story, “The Continuity of Parks” (“Continuidad de los parques,” 1964), by Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, warns us against getting lost in our reading, against becoming too settled and comfortable, with its image of a man reading a book while “sprawled in his favorite armchair [. . .] his left hand caress[ing] repeatedly the green velvet upholstery. [. . .] He tasted the almost perverse pleasure of disengaging himself line by line from the things around him” (625). This disengagement from his environment leaves him vulnerable to the text itself, whose protagonist, at the story’s conclusion, is pictured “knife in hand” silently approaching “the high back of an armchair covered in green velvet, the head of the man in the chair reading a novel” (626). Caveat lector, Cortázar is telling us. It is worth checking in with where we are and what we are doing while we read.
- Introduction: Margarita
- Mama Blanca’s Memoirs: Milk
- The Underdogs: Mezcal
- Cartucho: Sotol
- Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair: Gin and Tonic, with Douglas Fir bitters
- Madwomen: White Wine
- Yawar Fiesta: Cañazo
- Macunaíma: Cachaça
- Labyrinths: Mate
- The Kingdom of this World: Rum
- Pedro Páramo: Hot Chocolate
- One Hundred Years of Solitude I: Black Coffee
- One Hundred Years of Solitude II: Aguardiente
- Captain Pantoja and the Special Service: Beer
- The Hour of the Star: Coca-Cola
- Bless Me, Ultima: Herbal Tea
- I, Rigoberta Menchú: Atole
- Distant Star: Whisky
- Yo-Yo Boing!: Piña Colada
- My Tender Matador: Pisco and Soda
- Senselessness: Rioja
- Papi: Mirinda
- Paradais: Bacardi and Coke
- Jawbone: Tequila
- Undiscovered: Dirty Shirley
- Fever Dream: Bottled Water
- The Taiga Syndrome: Vodka
- Conclusion: Negroni Sbagliato
