I first became aware of Lawrence Osborne through his memoir of living in Bangkok-Bangkok Days, that was entertaining and painfully true while displaying a fine style of writing that made the mundane seem compelling. I suppose many of these same attributes can be said of Osborne’s The Wet and the Dry (2013) a hard book to categorize. I suppose on one level it is a memoir about Osborne’s life living in the Middle East as a lush, a person who enjoys a good drink in a place where alcohol can be hard to find in countries that see it as a great sin. But it is also a mediation on the allure of alcohol and how important it can be to someone like Osborne. And on a third level it is a travelogue with bits and pieces about he cultures of the places he drinks-Lebanon, Dubai, Oman, Pakistan, Egypt, the Muslim majority south part of Thailand, and surprisingly Scotland among other places. He has great wit and style inscribing his escapades as the following examples will display:
“But the scent of distilled liquor and spilled beer that defines a bar of this kind cannot be avoided. A Muslim friend in Dhofar once told me that, for him at least, it was like the smell of a roasting pig: appalling and beckoning, and irresistible on the level not of appetites or mental desire but on the level of dopamine and the hormonal mysteries. “And therefore more dangerous, “ he said with the utmost gravity, “than you can possibly imagine.”
And: “…I found Dubai grimly interesting. Brash, unnerving, and false but not dull, not starved of identity, as if identity were a nutrient that never failed to deliver.” Another thought provoking and entertaining memoir from a virtuoso of the genre.
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