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.
Issue Number 12 of The Babbington Review is now on Substack.
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.
You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)
At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of Little Follies and Herb ’n’ Lorna.
You’ll find overviews of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy (a pdf document) and at Encyclopedia.com.
Share this post