Alcohol Drunk in Hemingway's Fiesta

Above, l. to r.: Hemingway, Harold Loeb (model for Robert Cohn), Lady Duff Twysden (model for Lady Brett Ashley), Hadley Hemingway, Don Stewart, Pat Guthrie

The page numbers below are from the the Jonathan Cape edition of Fiesta (below), which was Hemingway's favorite. Fiesta was Hemingway's original title, much better than The Sun Also Rises, which was used in the States because his editors felt American readers wouldn't know what a fiesta was.

"several fines" - p. 6
"whisky and soda" - p. 11
"apertif" - p. 13
"pernod" - p. 14
"bottle of wine" - p. 16
"liquers" - p. 19
"beer" x2 - p. 20
"cognac" - p. 20
"fine a l'eau" - p. 21
"brandy and soda" - p. 33
"beer" - p. 38
"Jack Rose" - p. 42
champagne - pp. 61-63 (3 bottles)
"brandy" - p. 64
"pernod" - p. 75
"whisky and soda" x2 - p. 77
"fine" - p. 78
"another" - p. 85
"beer" - p. 92
"plenty of wine" p. 97
"bottle of wine" p. 101
"wine of the country" - p. 105
"wine-skin" - p. 107
"drinks" (4) - p. 109
"hot rum punch" - p. 114
"wine" (several bottles) - p. 114
"wine" (2 bottles) - p. 132
2 bottles wine - p. 132
"another bottle" - p. 133
"poisonous things" - p. 150
"much wine" - p. 151
"too much brandy" - p. 154
"vermouth" - p. 156
"sherry" - p. 158
"wineskins" - p. 162
"a drink" - p. 162
"absinthe" - p. 170
"fundador" (amontillado brandy) - p. 181
"fundador" - p. 186
"fundador" p. 188
"cognac" - p. 194
"fundador" - p. 197
"beer" (6 bottles) - p. 209
"beer" - p. 211
"beer" (6 bottles) - p. 212
"fundador" - p. 212
"beer" - p. 213
"another beer" - p. 213
"wine" - 219
"several bottles of beer" - p. 230
"absinthe" - p. 231
"another absinthe" - p. 231
"bottle of fundador" - p. 238
"whisky and soda" - p. 238
"whisky and soda" - p. 239
"another round" - p. 239
"another drink" - p. 239
"another drink" - p. 240
"bottle of wine" - p. 243
"vieux marc" - p. 243
"second marc" - p. 243
"whisky and soda" - p. 246
"two martinis" - p. 255
"two martinis" - p. 256
"two martinis" - p. 257
"rioja alta" (3 bottles) - p. 257
"rioja alta" (2 bottles) - p. 258 (Following this last spree, which starts on p. 255, during which Jake drinks six martinis and five bottles of wine, Brett tells him: "Don't get drunk.")

Some Literary Humor

G.K. Chesterton (pictured) was an enormous man. A woman once asked him why he wasn't out at the Front. His reply: "If you go round to the side, you will see that I am." On another occasion, he told George Bernard Shaw: "To look at you, anyone would think there was a famine in England." Shaw's reply: "To look at you, anyone would think you caused it."

Oscar Wilde on George Bernard Shaw: "An excellent man: he has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends."

"Meredith is a prose Browning, and so is Browning. He used poetry as a medium for writing in prose."  — Oscar Wilde

"I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing it is that they never try to talk English."  — Saki

"In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language."  — Mark Twain

"I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I’m not feeling so well myself."  — Mark Twain

"An Englishman wouldn't bother to attend a reading even if the author in question was his favorite living writer, and also his long-lost brother — even if the reading was taking place next door."  — Martin Amis


Headline of a review of Exit Ghost by Philip Roth: "Do Not Go Gentile into That Good Night."

My wife, on finding I'd eaten all the Doritos: "Is this the face that munched a thousand chips?"