People have been asking me for reading recommendations for a while.  Other than pimping my own book, I’ve been lax in responding for one simple reason – I tend to give books away when I’m done with them.  Terrible habit, I know.  And, of course, it’s impeded my ability to easily offer suggestions.  In the spirit of providing a list for the holidays, however, I’ve made an inventory of what I recall, dug through the moving boxes of yellowing texts still sitting in the basement, and scoured the bookshelf in the living room.  Here’s why I came up with – the first of the three part catalog of books you might like reading.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People – Toby Young

Young is a whiny, socially ambitious English fop – the sort of character I’d every reason to loathe.  And yet I loved every page of this book; didn’t want to reach the end.  As comedic memoirs go, this is the gold standard.  The stories are so ludicrous (ordering strippers for a Conde Nast executive’s birthday gathering, crashing the Vanity Fair Oscar party after your boss, Graydon Carter, explicitly bars you from the event) and the narrator so clueless and impenetrable, you find yourself laughing at every page.  I assume there’s a tremendous amount of embellishment here, as no one could be as much of a fool as Young makes himself out to be (some scenes come off like a hybrid of Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Three Stooges).  It’s welcome, however, and perfectly placed, enough to make a book about a slice of society I’ve almost zero interest in not only appealing, but utterly fucking hysterical.  And as bonus, in the spaces where Young pulls back and gets serious, his cutting observations on New York media professionals, and in particular, Carter, are as astute as they are amusing.

Snowblind – Robert Sabbag

Forget about Scarface or the myriad sagas written and filmed about Carlos Lehder or Pablo Escobar.  This is the mother of all drug smuggling stories, and one you’ll never see produced into a movie.  Why?  Because it’s true, and the main character, a Hamptons born silver-spooner turned smuggler, Zachary Swan, gets away with it all in the end.  Where comfortable, reinforcing narratives give us failures like Blow’s George Jung doing decades in federal prison, Swan beat the prosecution, walked away from the business and lived out his days as a farmer in North Carolina.  But it’s not just the challenging ending, or the harrowing circumstances Swan found himself in, or the fact that he didn’t have to smuggle for a living and seems to have done it primarily out of boredom, that make the book so riveting.  Sabbag’s impeccable attention to detail, flawless prose and nuanced storytelling make the text an absolute masterwork.  Where most of these stories offer cheap blood and guts portrayals of hideous, malevolent actors, Sabbag draws us a cast of neophytes – real, normal human beings from more than stable backgrounds – learning the world’s most dangerous trade on the fly. If Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is “the best book on the dope decade,” Snowblind is easily the best on dope smuggling.

The Ginger Man – J.P. Donleavy

This is one of the best developments of a character ever committed to print.  Every inch of Sebastian Dangerfield, the appalling anti-hero, is drawn in excruciating detail.  Drunkard, spendthrift and recidivist delinquent debtor… Absentee father and husband, deviant and abusive leech… There’s nothing to like of this lout and yet still, somehow, Donleavy makes him hilarious – charming in his endless grotesqueries, a razor-tipped wit in his cups.  You won’t find insight in this book, nor will find much action.  But that was never the point.  This isn’t a plot-driven page-turner, and it’ll frustrate, if not infuriate, anyone coming to it from the “story trumps delivery” perspective.  The magic here’s all in the prose, and those who simply want to get to the end might be better served by a Yugo headed down a straightaway, where the writing here is more along the lines of a Ferrari doing donuts.  Part poem, part stage comedy, part novel, I’d struggle to find a better styled text, or better timed jokes in dialogue.  Just remember to read it carefully.  The back and forth between the characters is fast, and if you miss a set-up quip, the punchlines might be obscured.

Class – Paul Fussel

Reared upper middle class in a depressed state, I’ve always be fascinated by class and status neuroses.  The envy, the angst, the displaying and comparing of our wares to one another… that endless, cringe-inducing black comedy driving our absurdist economy.  Fussel nails it all in spades, with a subtle but merciless wit – an encyclopedia of nasty bon mots delivered from a pitch perfect, staring-down-his-nose-at-the-aspirant perspective.  Be forewarned, however.  I doubt there’s a reader alive who won’t find himself in the cross-hairs of at least a handful of Fussel’s sarcastic barbs. I’ve never held any pretensions about my upbringing or station, but it wasn’t until I finished this book that I realized just what a middle minded boor I very well might be.

The Modern Drunkard – Frank Kelly Rich

Here’s the obligatory disclaimer: Yes, the author of this book provided a blurb for the back of Happy Hour is for Amateurs.  But that’s not why I’m lauding his work.  And really, considering what’s in my book, why wouldn’t the author of both a book and magazine with that title give me a quote?  It’s only consistent, right?  Well, not exactly. Modern Drunkard’s unique.  It’s not a Gonzo narrative, and it doesn’t rely on any shock for its humor.  If anything, it’s a retro comedy – a half-satiric look back at a form of drinking culture sadly vanishing from our nation, banished by Puritan scolds, corporate taskmasters and health-nuts… People telling us the three martini lunch was an abomination, college binging is a “national health emergency” and that anyone downing more than three beers a night is a borderline alcoholic.

Where a book like mine revels in mocking the hypocrisies of this teetotaler revolution, Modern Drunkard pretends it never even came into being, rewinding the historical record to the days when booze wasn’t a vice.  When a Manhattan with lunch was standard.  When every office had a bar, and not just for use at Christmas.  With its vintage Early-60s graphics and copies of classic liquor ads woven through the jokes, the book’s almost reminiscent of Mad Men.  And as it celebrates a lifestyle deemed unhealthy, you can’t help asking, “Why?  With who’s set of eyes?”  Sure, the hooch might  kill you early.  So might a lot of other things.

But the best of The Modern Drunkard isn’t wrapped up solely in its message.  The book’s delivery is just as important, with its litany of genteel set-ups followed with uppercut punchlines. Frank Kelly Rich is a superb prose stylist, entirely unfit for the “dick-lit” tag affixed to this or anything else he’s authored. If Man Men is an apt comparison, and it is, Modern Drunkard’s what Don Draper would sound like doing stand-up.  Half in the bag, but smooth… unnervingly rational and utterly unapologetic:

The book you hold in your hands will not only show you how to behave once you’ve had a few, it is also a rallying cry for a large – and largely scattered – tribe. It is the embodiment of the inevitable backlash against the army of self-appointed nannies who believe any manner of fun shouldn’t interrupt the long, grey lockstep toward the prison of death.  Those who have codddled and browbeat society into believing that everything must be done in exact moderation (and that extends to happiness), under penalty of social osctracism.  That anything that makes us feel good must inherently be bad.

This book seeks to alleviate that misplaced guilt, to affirm the notion our grandfathers held to be true: It is perfectly fine and normal to want to get outside of one’s head, to take a vacation from oneself.

Of course, critics will attempt to diminish this fine escape by rather smugly stating that our troubles will still be there when we wake up.  Which makes as much sense as canceling your vacation in Cancun because, hey, your job will still be there when you get back.  They’re failing to grasp two very fundamental truths: 1) even a temporary escape is better than no escape at all, and 2) alcohol is very cheap in Mexico.

And that’s just from the Introduction.

Buy this book.  It’ll make you a better person.  Or at least a better drunk.

Part II later this week.

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