A Biography in Beverages

The New Yorker, an American magazine founded in 1925, is a kaleidoscope of comic and satirical texts by some of America’s finest writers. For all who’d like a glimpse on the magazine’s history, here is a true classic: a tongue-in-cheek autobiography by F. Scott Fitzgerald who was among the first to work for The New Yorker from 1929 to 1937.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

A Short Autobiography

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1913

The four defiant Canadian Club whiskeys at the Susquehanna in Hackensack.

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1914

The Great Western Champagne at the Trent House in Trenton

and the groggy ride back to Princeton.

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1915

The sparkling Burgundy at Bustanoby’s. The raw whiskey in White Sulphur Springs, Montana, when I got up on a table and sang “Won’t you come up,” to the cowmen. […]

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1916

The apple brandy nipped at in the locker-room at the White Bear Yacht Club. […]

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1918

The Bourbon smuggled to officers’ rooms by bellboys at the Seelbach in Louisville. […]

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1920

Red wine at Mollat’s. Absinthe cocktails in a hermetically sealed apartment in the Royalton. Corn liquor by moonlight in a deserted aviation field in Alabama. […]

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1922

Kaly’s crème de cacao cocktails in St. Paul. My own first and last manufacture of gin.

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1923

Oceans of Canadian ale with R. Lardner in Great Neck, Long Island.

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1924

Champagne cocktails on the Minnewaska,

and apologizing to the old lady we kept awake. […]

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1925

[…] Champagne cocktails in the Ritz sweatshops in Paris. Poor wines from Nicolas. Kirsch at Burgundy inn against the rain with E. Hemingway. […]

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1927

Delicious California “Burgundy-type” wine in one of the Ambassador bungalows in Los Angeles. The beer I made in Delaware that had a dark inescapable sediment. Cases of dim, unsatisfactory whiskey in Delaware. […]

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1929

A feeling that all liquor has been drunk and all it can do for one has been experienced, and yet Garçon, un Chablis-Mouton 1902, et pour commencer, une petite carafe de vin rosé. C’est ça-merci.”

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Note: Fitzgerald’s politically incorrect autobiography appeared in The New Yorker on May 25, 1929. Prohibition in the US remained in place until 1930.


Source

F. Scott Fitzgerald: “A Short Autobiography”. In: Fierce Pajamas. An Anthology of Humor Writing from the New Yorker. Ed. By David Remnick and Henry Finder. New York: Modern Library, 2002, p. 191ff

 

Illustrations

⋅ Adaptation of Cupid in a Wine Glass, oil painting by Abraham Woodside, 1840s, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Signature of F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1934.

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