The Independent (UK)

24 June 2003

In vino veritas

America's weirdest lifestyle magazine will soon be here. If you're a proper boozer, brace yourself, says Edward Docx

The first thing you should know about the American magazine Modern Drunkard is that it is always published late. Whereas the July edition of, say, Cosmopolitan habitually appears at the newsagents in June, the July edition of Modern Drunkard is unlikely to make it into circulation much before late August. Not that much readership-crossover between the titles is likely - though I can't help but believe that the world would be a better place if smart girls read Modern Drunkard every once in a while.

By way of giving you a little taster of what we're dealing with here, these are just some of the features in the May issue (out now - more or less). On page 32: "The Solutions to All of Life's Problems - Using Alcohol to Overcome Life's Many Obstacles" (oddly compelling). On page 38, "Boozing with the Bible" (curiously insightful). On page 37, "The Six Circles of Hangover Hell - A Dantean Journey Through the Morning After" (epic). Then there are the regulars. "Booze News" from around the world: "Brits Make Us Look Like a Bunch of Zina-Swilling Pussies" - a piece about Tessa Jowell launching a Bill to change licensing legislation in favour of 24-hour drinking (did you know about that? I didn't). And "Wino Wisdom": "Every shot of whiskey I drink is like poison in Bin Laden's eyes. And before I go home tonight we are both going to be as blind as bats."

The publisher and editor-in-chief of Modern Drunkard is Frank Kelly Rich. His father was a cab-driver. He was born in Las Vegas, and, now 38, he works in Denver, Colorado. "The office is awesome," he says. "There's crap all over the walls, and, yep, we have our own bar down here. But it's hell trying to keep it stocked." His editorial (double) vision is "to unite the drinking tribe and to give the modern drunk a voice. And not just the light drinkers, but the heavy drinkers. It's time people knew about us. All the great movers and shakers of history were drunks - Churchill, of course; FDR - all the good guys, anyway. Hitler was almost teetotal."

You might be forgiven at this juncture for falling off your stool with laughter. But Rich is actually a purposeful proprietor: "People don't realise we're damned serious. We're a lifestyle magazine. I guess our target audience is the functional alcoholic. It's a personal life-choice. Here in Denver, we're at 40,000. But we're establishing ourselves bit by bit in one city after another - Chicago is next - and pretty soon we're going to be in all of the major US towns. Circulation is building. We're even making a decent profit now. Advertisers love us, and then there's all the internet merchandising. It's a really clear and defined target customer-group. And they spend a lot of money." All their money, surely.

In any magazine, though, the most important thing is, of course, the writing. And here, I think, is a second reason to take Modern Drunkard seriously: in all honesty, it is refreshingly well written. The whole publication is infused with a literary sensibility - imagine the staff of the TLS and Viz getting wrecked together and then printing the results.

There are plans for a British edition. "But", says Rich, "you guys just don't seem to get the whole happy-hour thing in Britain - we need bars going head to head, competing for business."

He has a point. But now, I think, a gin sling.

Edward Docx's novel 'The Calligrapher', in which a fair bit of drinking goes on, is published this month by Fourth Estate, priced £10.99