Flight of Fantasy: New Perspectives on Inner Emigration in German Literature, 1933-1945 Book

Reading most of this small book is like bumping into a friend one afternoon and them saying, "hey, if you're not busy, you should come and meet my uncle" and then you find yourself in a large drawing room in an English country manor house where dear Uncle Ceddy, already into his second glass of port, tries to teach you how to make drinks while proving himself to have an encyclopedic knowledge of quotes from Dickens' novels, while also interrupting himself with personal anecdotes from the War or that time he went to South Africa or that time he went boating on the Thames, all with absolutely no context because he assumes you know everyone he does, and before you know it you're both absolutely sozzled and it's 3 AM and who knows where your friend disappeared to and Uncle Ceddy is your new best friend and yes, it makes perfect sense that drinking a bottle of champagne before flying and drinking 1/4 bottle every hour on the hour thereafter is the PERFECT cure for jet-lag.

That is to say that I had assumed the "Dickens" in the title was Charles, but realize that maybe it should have been Cedric. This is neither a recipe book, a memoir, a book of quotations, or a historical investigation of Dickens' relationship to alcohol. Perhaps one needs to have a few glasses of something to appreciate it.

I did enjoy reading about the contents of Dickens' Gads Hill cellars, though. Holy cow did he ever have a LOT of alcohol. I bet he (and Cedric for that matter) threw great parties.