Geoff Nicholson writes New York Times piece on the rules of drinking and writing—but not at once

In this New York Times essay, Riverhead author Geoff Nicholson reviews Bernard DeVoto’s recently reissued classic The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto, a 1940’s guide to drinking in America. Nicholson grapples with DeVoto’s remarkably severe commandments—the martini and a “slug of whiskey” are the last cocktails standing under DeVoto’s withering gaze—and wonders if more appropriate rules for drinking might, in fact, be derived from the classic rules for writing. Nicholson’s book The Lost Art of Walking, a cultural history of walking, is out in paperback from Riverhead Books. More…