The Wrath of Grapes: A Complete Hangover Cookbook & Guide to the Art of Creative Suffering

By Patrick Meanor

XOXOX PRESS 2004

$10.00 127 pages

With the holidays upon us and the stress and tension they bring many of us will imbibe of alcoholic spirits to celebrate and take the edge off. Too much imbibing, though, could lead to a hangover. The hangover is a word that fills the heart with angst, dread and guilt, while the brain moans over and over like a mantra, "Oh God, never again, never again, never again..."

Whether one is down on their luck quaffing boiler-makers in some back alley seedy dive, or playing quarters and having ice cube tray races while dressed in bed sheets at a ‘come as your favorite ancient decadent Roman’ dorm party, or sipping champagne while rubbing shoulders and hobnobbing with the paparazzi in the lofty spires of the Trump Tower; or just partaking in a fifth or sixth (who can keep count?) Perfect Manhattans while watching an I Love Lucy Marathon in the comfort of one’s own home; the hangover is a great global-socioeconomic equalizer.

Patrick Meanor’s book the Wrath of Grapes is a wonderful foil for the literary and artistic person’s hangover. Calling Wrath a cookbook is misleading as well as limiting, because it is so much more. Meanor writes: "We use the term "cookbook" as it applies not only to an activity that takes place in the kitchen of your home but, more importantly, as a psychological, mental, and spiritual "kitchen" in which the imagination does the cooking...Since the imagination is, obviously, a kitchen in which we "cook up" ideas, schemes, plans, and remedies for both "physical and metaphysical" hangovers, we are employing the word "cookbook"...And since present day "consumption" comprises not just food and drink but also media of diverse kinds, we offer gentle guidance in choices of music, literature and televised spectacle---imaginative "food"--to ameliorate the effects of overindulgence of other substances."

Wraths compact but packed 127 pages, begin with a cleverly annotated Table of contents of the books seven humorously titled chapters. The seven chapters are: Chapter 1: The Wrath of Grapes--Morning Dread and what NOT to do, Chapter 2: More Wrath—What TO Do, Chapter 3: The Media—Distracted from Distraction by Distraction, Chapter 4: From Muse—Sick to Music, Chapter 5: The Reading Readiness Test, Chapter 6: Exorcise with Exercise—Imaginative Calisthenics and Chapter 7: The Saint Lawrence Memorial Recipe—Stations of the Course. Meanor creates amusing plays on words and book titles, for example The Wrath of Grapes is obviously a play on the title of John Steinbeck’s famous novel The Grapes of Wrath. Some of his other "plays on words" are not so obvious and would escape most non-literary people. For example, a subtitle in chapter one called: Caring for the Mind: Don’t Speak Memory! Or, Looking for Mr. Lobotomy. This title is hilarious, but what makes it even funnier is that it is a play on the memoir Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov, which is also full of word play and puns.

Meanor uses The Wrath of Grapes as a subtle platform to share his knowledge and express his opinions about the arts and includes some mouth-watering recipes and suggested foods to soothe the hangover divided up into the following categories, B&S-Beverages and Soups, MP&E-Meats Poultry and Eggs, F&S-Fish and Shellfish, V&S-Vegetables and Salads, F-Fruits, and D-Desserts. An example in the D category, "Peach cobbler or peach pie with plenty of sugar. You might pour some rich cream over it and a dash of cinnamon." Wrath instructs on how to combine the culinary with a film, some excellent music or a good book to create a kind of homeostasis for the hangover afflicted. Meanor states in Chapter 7., "Those of you familiar with traditional cookbooks will notice that ours includes limited number of offerings and few specific directions or measurements. We truly believe that the simpler the directions the better, because most victims are in no shape to choose from among the many offerings or engage in measuring activities...Or selective recipes require minimum of action, thought, analysis, or measurements. Just do it!"

PatricK Meanor, Ph.D is a Distinguished Teaching Professor of English at the State University of New York, College of Oneonta where he has taught for thirty years. Dr. Meanor has edited or co-edited five volumes of the Dictionary of Literary of Literary Biography Series: American Short Story Writers Since WWll (Gale Press). He has written two books: John Cheever Revisited (1995:Twane—Macmillian) and Bruce Chatwin (1997: Twane—Simon&Schuster). He is presently writing a book on British satirist, Will Self.



Lee Gooden 12-27-2004