WHEN HE WAS YOUNG, Matthew developed an affection for the martini well before he ever drank one, an affection that came in part from watching William Powell and Myrna Loy down them in the Thin Man movies and in part from his careful study of Esquire, the text from which he hoped to learn sophistication. The martini seemed to be an essential item among the equipment of a sophisticated adult. When Matthew began drinking them, at Harvard, he was still only an aspirant to adulthood, and by the time he had actually attained adulthood the martini had become something of an anachronism. For quite a while the young didn’t drink them, didn’t even aspire to drink them, as, perhaps, they no longer aspired to sophistication or adulthood. Matthew began to wonder whether, if the martini was an anachronism, sophistication was also an anachronism, adulthood wasn’t, too, and Matthew as well. Now, however, according to what Matthew reads in newspapers and magazines, the martini is making a comeback, and the testimony of his own eyes tells him that it’s true, but his ears tell him that the martini revival is something of a joke. People always seem to be ordering gag martinis, with a jalapeño pepper or a cornichon instead of an olive or a twist of lemon, and when he orders a martini with “an olive” he usually gets three, but at least he no longer feels as conspicuous ordering one. He wouldn’t feel conspicuous at all if he didn’t think that his graying hair marks him as a member of an earlier generation of martini drinkers, a humorless bunch.
In Topical Guide 416, Mark Dorset considers Drinking: Cocktails: The Martini; and Sophistication: Youthful Efforts to Acquire It from this episode.
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🎧 416: When he was ...