How to Live, Eat, and Drink Like Your Favorite Writers

From a book excerpt on lithub.com headlined “How To Live, Eat, and Drink Like Your Favorite Writers”:

Live Like Philip Larkin

My life is as simple as I can make it. Work all day, cook, eat, wash up, telephone, hack writing, drink, television in the evenings. I almost never go out. I suppose everyone tries to ignore the passing of time—some people by doing a lot, being in California one year and Japan the next. Or there’s my way—making every day and every year exactly the same. Probably neither works. –From Paris Review, 1982.

Drink Like Hunter S. Thompson

3pm – Rise 3.05 – Chivas Regal with the morning papers, Dunhill cigarette 3.45 – cocaine 3.50 – another glass of Chivas, Dunhill 4.05 – first cup of coffee, Dunhill 4.15 – cocaine 4.16 – orange juice, Dunhill 4.30 – cocaine 4.54 – cocaine 5.05 – cocaine 5.11 – coffee, Dunhills 5.30 – more ice in the Chivas 5. 45 – cocaine 6pm – grass to take the edge off 7.05 – Woody Creek Tavern for lunch – Heineken, two margaritas, two cheeseburgers, two orders of fries, a plate of tomatoes, coleslaw, a taco salad, a double order of onion rings, carrot cake, ice cream, bean fritter, Dunhills, another Heineken, cocaine, and for the ride home, a snow cone (a glass of shredded ice over which is poured three or four jiggers of Chivas) 5pm – cocaine 10pm – drops acid 11pm – Chartreuse, cocaine, grass Midnight – Hunter ready to write 12.05–6am – Chatreuse, cocaine, grass, Chivas, coffee, Heineken, clove cigarettes, grapefruit, Dunhills, orange juice, gin 6am – in the hot tub, champagne, Dove Bars, fettucine Alfredo 8am – Halcion 8.20 – sleep. –From E. Jean Carroll, Hunter: The Strange and Savage Life of Hunter S. Thompson, 1993.

Eat Like Patricia Highsmith

Novelist Patricia Highsmith ate the same thing for virtually every meal: bacon and fried eggs. She began each writing session with a stiff drink—”not to perk her up,” according to her biographer, Andrew Wilson, “but to reduce her energy levels, which veered towards the manic.” Then she would sit on her bed surrounded by cigarettes, coffee, a doughnut and a saucer of sugar, the intention being “to avoid any sense of discipline and make the act of writing as pleasurable as possible. –”From Killian Fox, The Gannet’s Gastronomic Miscellany, 2017/

Excerpted from Everyday Play: A Campaign Against Boredom, edited by Julian Rothenstein.