Tag: Drinking Games

Drinking Games for Readers

Biblioklept4 Comments

At Jezebel, a list of drinking games for readers. Some witty, some not so witty. Here’s the list:

Thomas Pynchon: Drink every time someone has a stupid name, like “Eigenvalue.”

David Foster Wallace: Drink every time a sentence has three or more conjunctions.

William Faulkner: Every time a sentence goes on for more than a page, drink the entire bottle. Then make out with your sister.

Joyce Carol Oates: Drink every time there is a home invasion.

Jane Austen: Drink every time someone plays whist, goes riding, or gets married.

J.D. Salinger: Every time there is a symbol of lost innocence, drink a highball. Then spit it all over someone you love.

Emily Bronte: Drink every time you see the word “heath” (Heathcliff counts).

Gabriel García Márquez: Drink every time someone’s name is “Aureliano.” (Note: this only works for A Hundred Years of Solitude)

Virginia Woolf: First, go buy some flowers. Then, if you have time left over, drink.

Sappho: Drink every time you can’t tell if something is hot or disgusting.

Ernest Hemingway: Drink every time Ernest Hemingway is boring and overrated. Man, I am so wasted right now.

Raymond Chandler: Drink every time someone drinks.

Dashiell Hammett: Drink every time someone drinks.

Homer: Drink every time someone drinks gross diluted wine.

Stephenie Meyer: Drink every time someone drinks blood.

Dylan Thomas: Drink until you are in a coma.

I think you can apply the rules for the Chandler and Hammett games to Bukowski if you wanted. Use Kingsley Amis’s signature cocktail the Lucky Jim if you wish. You might also be interested in David Foster Wallace’s drinking game “Hi Bob.”

“Hi Bob,” David Foster Wallace’s Drinking Game

Biblioklept1 Comment

In David Foster Wallace’s first novel The Broom of the System, protagonist Lenore Beadsman’s brother and his friends play a drinking game based on The Bob Newhart Show. Here are the rules–

On television was ”The Bob Newhart Show.” In the big social room with LaVache were three boys who all seemed to look precisely alike. . . . ”Lenore, this is Cat, this is Heat, this is the Breather,” LaVache said from his chair in front of the television. . . .

Heat and the Breather were on a spring-sprung sofa, sharing what was obviously a joint. Cat was on the floor, sitting, a bottle of vodka before him, and he clutched it with his bare toes, staring anxiously at the television screen.

”Hi Bob,” Suzanne Pleshette said to Bob Newhart on the screen. . . . La Vache looked up from his clipboard at Lenore. ”We’re playing Hi Bob. You want to play Hi Bob with us?” He spoke sort of slowly. Lenore made a place to sit on the luggage. ”What’s Hi Bob?” The Breather grinned at her from the sofa, where he now held the bottle of vodka. ”Hi Bob is where, when somebody on ‘The Bob Newhart Show’ says ‘Hi Bob,’ you have to take a drink.”

”And but if Bill Dailey says ‘Hi Bob,’ ” said Cat, tending to the joint with a wet finger, ”that is to say, if the character Howard Borden on the show says ‘Hi Bob,’ it’s death, you have to chug the whole bottle.”

”Hi Bob,” said Bill Dailey on the screen.

This text was originally cited in Caryn James’s 1987 review of The Broom of the System in The New York Times. Here’s our review.