DOTD For Thursday, September 25, 2025

Another Drink To Celebrate Great Drunk American Writers

Today’s DOTD - Drink Of The Day - is an Absalom’s Retreat, inspired by the birthday of yet another drunk & famous American writer, William Faulkner.

For those who may be unfamiliar, William Faulkner was a famous American author who, like President Obama (and unlike Trump), also won a Nobel Prize. Born September 25, 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, Faulkner spent most of his life living in Mississippi, the setting for much of his work.

Faulkner, well-known for smoking a pipe, also drank to excess like other Nobel Prize winning American authors, most notably John Steinbeck (Jack Rose), F. Scott Fitzgerald (the Daisy, the drink we had yesterday), and Ernest Hemingway (Green Isaac Special or Death in the Afternoon).

William Faulkner, having a drink and smoking his pipe, via Serendipity Books

Faulkner wasn’t always considered a great writer. He initially did well in elementary school, but around fourth or fifth grade he reportedly became withdrawn and indifferent to schoolwork. He ended up repeating the 11^th and 12^th grades, and never actually graduated from high school. Somehow, he enrolled at the University of Mississippi in 1919, and attended for three semesters before dropping out. He received a D grade in English while he was there, though some of his poems were published in campus publications.

Faulkner’s best known for his complex novels and short stories set in a fictional county in Mississippi called “Yoknapatawpha.” Faulkner published 13 novels and many short stories between the early 1920s up to the outbreak of World War II. His work The Sound and the Fury is considered one of the best novels published in English. Other works of note include Light in August, As I Lay Dying, The Wild Palms, and Absalom, Absalom!, where we get the title for today’s DOTD.

Absalom, Absalom! along with The Sound and the Fury were instrumental in Faulkner winning the Nobel Prize. The title of the book refers to the Biblical story of Absalom, a son of David who rebelled against his father. The novel is about three families in the American South before, during and after the Civil War, and like Absalom himself, the protagonist of Faulkner’s story brings about his own demise.

Amusingly, the Guinness Book of World Records notes that Absalom, Absalom! contains the longest sentence in English literature at 1,238 words. That’s long. You could finish a cocktail before that sentence.

But first, we’ll have to make that cocktail…

Ingredients

Here’s what you’re going to need for this drink: