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Book Lush 101: Drink your way through English literature, a course for alcohol and literature fiends
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A match made in Heaven
Book Lush 101 Course Description
In the beginning was the word. And, for the most part, it was pretty good.
Man, being the insufferable blabbermouth that he is, covered every clay tablet, every stone wall, every bit of papyrus around him with love letters, bad poetry, and crude graffiti from the moment that his four fingers and opposable thumb wrapped themselves around a stylus.
Literature was born. But something was missing. The words needed some spark, some divine fire, some oomph to elevate them from mere scratches on the earth to the rarefied heights of immortality. Writing needed a helpmeet; it found it in the unlikeliest of places: the fermentation and distillation of lowly plant matter -- alcohol.
The marriage of literature and alcohol is the most harmonious and prolific union of all time. From them have sprung, as from the head of Zeus, the most memorable and influential novels, ideas, and poetry Western Civilization has to offer.
Writers throughout time have been profuse in their praise of the divine liquid – who would know better what magic a bit of ethanol lubricating the literary endeavors of the grey cells can produce? Consider William Faulkner who said:
Civilization begins with distillation.
Or Mark Twain:
Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.
Or William Butler Yeats:
The problem with some people is that when they aren’t drunk, they’re sober.
Or the venerable Dr. Samuel Johnson:
There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.
Astonishingly, college English programs neglect to highlight the remarkable synergy of literature and alcohol (perhaps from the fear that too many are experimenting rashly with the combination as it is).
The Book Examiner is proud to step into this void and to unleash on the unsuspecting world the lectures that should have been taught to impressionable young minds at every hallowed institution of higher learning – Book Lush 101: Drink your way through English Literature, the ultimate experience for lovers of books and lovers of alcohol.
Take a gander at the Course Syllabus and inspect Lectures 1 and 2 for an idea of what delicious adventures lie ahead:
Book Lush 101 Course Syllabus
Drink Your Way through English Literature
Professor Michelle Kerns, Book Examiner
Let the lit flow freely
In this course, you will trace the path of the adult beverage through the great works of English literature. You’ll read what the authors drank, what their characters drank, and sample a bit (or perhaps more than is strictly necessary) for yourselves.
Homework will be minimal, though a well-stocked bar complete with cocktail shaker and a variety of assorted glassware is a must.
Hangover cures available on request.
Lecture schedule:
Lecture 4: “I would give all my fame for a pot of ale”: Shakespeare and other Elizabethan drinking buddies
Lecture 5: Drunk on the Lord: John Donne, John Milton, and the KJV
Lecture 6: Getting back to the basics of the bottle with the Restoration writers
Lecture 7: Dr. Johnson & company and the Green Man Public House
Lecture 8: A taste of “the true, the blushful Hippocrene” with the Romantics
Lecture 9: Dickens, Wilde, and other Victorian lushes
Lecture 10: All’s fair in drink and war: alcohol-shocked writers before and during the Wars
Lecture 11: Angry young men getting nasty drunk
Lecture 12: “I have always smoked and drunk and loved too much”: drinking and writing in 1960s to 1980s England
Lecture 13: Who’s buying the rounds now? Alcohol in modern English lit
Become a Book Lush:
Is your thirst for the written word only excelled by your thirst for a well-timed adult beverage? Join literature and alcohol enthusiasts everywhere: sign up for Book Lush 101 and drink your way through hundreds of years of literary masterpieces.
Slake your thirst until the next lecture with some alcohol-drenched bookish suggestions:
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