Plenty of great writers, including the ones on this list, have been whiskey drinkers—and unsurprisingly, whiskey also has a tendency to show up in their books. Here’s a short rundown of some boozy moments in literature, classic and otherwise:
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John Steinbeck
Whiskey makes an appearance in several of Steinbeck’s books, including his magnum opus, The Grapes of Wrath. Tom Joad drains a pint in the early chapters as he makes his way back to the family homestead. His uncle John, meanwhile, has a well-known proclivity for whiskey and “jake,” an infamous Prohibition-era patent medicine that was both mostly alcohol and known to cause nerve damage.
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Cannery Row includes a mention of a fictional brand of whiskey called Old Tennessee, sold at Lee Chong’s grocery. It’s described as “a blended whiskey guaranteed four months old, very cheap and known in the neighborhood as Old Tennis Shoes.”
Ernest Hemingway
James Bond
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William Faulkner
Like his contemporary, Hemingway, the southern gothic master drank constantly; unlike Hemingway, who preferred to write “cold,” Faulkner’s writing was fueled by bourbon, corn whiskey, and mint juleps. Whiskey features in his writing, too: Joe Christmas, a central character in his 1932 novel Light in August, is a bootlegger in the Prohibition-era south.
The Hunger Games
Katniss Everdeen, the heroine of this dystopian YA series, hails from a post-apocalyptic Appalachia, re-designated District 12 by the authoritarian Capital. Besides imagining it as a coal-mining hub, author Suzanne Collins gives another nod to the area’s real-life history: in Catching Fire, several characters, including Katniss herself, are depicted drinking moonshine (referred to as “white liquor” in the book).
