Martini, Straight Up

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 2 NOV. 1998

It is the drink of businessmen, alcoholics and the social elite--a cocktail so iconographic that it merits its own glass. In this scholarly study, Edmunds (a classics professor at Rutgers) examines the martini's prominent place in American culture and the wealth of distinct, at times contradictory, messages that the drink has come to convey. Invented in the U.S. in the 1870s, the martini soon aligned itself with the upper-class, adult male drinker: either the Ivy League WASP or the top-ranked executive at lunch. Yet, Edmunds argues, the martini is also a notoriously tricky drink to pin down: it's an emblem of both restraint and excess, an aphrodisiac and the solitary drinker's companion, a classic cocktail that people are constantly trying to perfect. Edmunds analyzes references to the elixir, from the writings of Dorothy Parker and Jack London to New Yorker cartoons, TV movies and M*A*S*H. In the process he marshals some compelling trivia, such as the origin of the name (most likely the city of Martinez, Calif.) and the ways in which some people strive to obtain the driest possible martini (e.g., merely whispering the word "vermouth" over the gin). But Edmunds, who relishes the label of "martini elitist," makes no secret of his disdain for the current retro martini craze with its "specialty martinis" and youthful swingers, and his refusal to give the movement more than passing mention seems a glaring omission. Ultimately, he fails to delve below these cultural signifiers to reveal anything particularly original about why it is that we, as a society, so love the martini. Despite the author's extensive research, the academic tone makes this curiously dispassionate work as dry, and as rarefied, as the martini itself--but without the buzz.