A botched introduction to beer

I've just started in on a volume of The Complete Novels of Flann O'Brian, one of the pen names for the Irish writer Brian O'Nolan, a contemporary of James Joyce. (Fellow fans of the TV series Lost likely are familiar with his novel The Third Policeman). The first book in the collection is At Swim-Two-Birds, which the introductions says pokes a bit of fun at the Ireland of O'Brian's time and at traditional Irish characters. So it makes sense that the book quickly broaches the subject of beer.

The narrator, Orlick Trellis, tells readers all about his first sips of alcohol. He prefaces the story with a recounting of all the bad things about drink he heard in his childhood, including its impairment of the mind. Then, while he's in college, a friend proposes stopping at a pub for a pint of porter.

"The mind may be impaired by alcohol, I mused, but withal it may be pleasantly impaired. Personal experience appeared to me to be the only satisfactory means to the resolution of my doubts."

From there, Trellis recounts developing a taste for "brown stout in a bottle" in place of black porter. Then he mock-delicately relates "leaving" an evening's drinking on the pub floor and stumbling home, where he laid in bed hung over for three days, his soiled clothing under the sheets with him.

Personal experience indeed.

I'll share more of young Orlick's experience with beer as I read on. I'll also share other worthy references to beer as I encounter them in books, film and television. Feel free to comment, and to share the beer references you come across.

EDIT: The next installment on cultural references should come soon. Netflix tells me The Simpsons movie should be in my mailbox when I get home. Mmm ... beer.