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A review by lkedzie
Malort: The Redemption of a Revered and Reviled Spirit by Josh Noel
5.0
This book is a history of the digestif known as Jeppson's Malört.
To discuss anything related to Malört is fraught, and not just because I had to learn the Unicode for Swedish letters. Malört is a sort magical potion that creates jokes. Immediately after imbibing it, a profane poetry arises as the drinker tries to describe the taste, the experience, of the drink. Indeed, this truth is central to the narrative told here.
The problem, then, is that every review and comment section about this book is going to be flush with tight fives on the stuff. So I guess here's my audition:
Jeppson's, which is either a malört or the Malört™, is a type of besk, a Swedish herbal liquor. Its main ingredient is wormwood, which is the same as in its cousin, absinthe, except the fairy looks like Bill Swerski.
Malört is the headlight fluid of Chicago. It is a hazing ritual enacted with the utmost seriousness. Chicago is notorious about gatekeeping who is or is not a Chicagoan. Malört is the countervailing energy of the City. It is the open membership secret society. No one is from Chicago; you can only let being from Chicago happen to you. Just drink this shot. Quickly.
The book has several levels. Much like the alcohol itself, there are flavors that only hit after its conclusion.
It is a Chicago fairy tale. It is the story of immigrants bringing their own unique cultural contributions and finding a more unique way to express them in the interest of turning a coin. It is the story of people refusing to quit, not out of any conventional emotion like hope or anger but because quitting would be the rational choice. It is the story of turning brash honesty into money and making feeling bad about it into a virtue. In this story, following your bliss manifests into a dream job. Repeatedly.
Like all Chicago stories, it is about gentrification. It is about the creative destruction of business. It is about appropriation, refracting so much that no one is clear on who stole what from whom. It is coolness as a business. It is about selling out, which is odd, because no one in the book sells out. But the dilemmas of the concept of selling out, the question of what is true identity and how best that identity is served is to the core of the book.
Like I said, it is a fairy tale. But it is the dark, ambiguous sort of fairy tale, the after credits shot of Queen Snow looking stale at a state dinner. This is the aspect that gives the book its most Malört-like attribute. It is not the taste that gets you, but the aftertaste that floats around like a lousy lover. That's what gets you. The narrative is a success story. So why do I feel sad?
It is also a great business history. The story here is a case study in how an outsider brand can be successful, including the debates over the core principals and who the business is meant to serve. This is scholarship of the 100+ year arc of a personality-driven business, and how that intersects with the modern business world. There is much to learn in the study here.
There are a number of points of contention about Jeppson's Malört , so when I first picked up the book, I was worried that this would be a piece of access journalism set to follow the party line. And it is, or it does, but I do credit the author for stating opposing views clearly enough that I feel none were slighted. Some may disagree.
And unlike some histories, the story is functionally at its beginning, with the play into national distribution. As much as a book of a hundred years of history, it is a book for the future hundred years to see how it all plays out.
I recommend it to any reader as the sort of real life happy story, with bite, that is far too rare to find. I do not need to recommend it to fans of Chicago history, as they all already have it on order.
My thanks to the author, Josh Noel, for writing the book, and to the publisher, Chicago Review Press, for making the ARC available to me.
To discuss anything related to Malört is fraught, and not just because I had to learn the Unicode for Swedish letters. Malört is a sort magical potion that creates jokes. Immediately after imbibing it, a profane poetry arises as the drinker tries to describe the taste, the experience, of the drink. Indeed, this truth is central to the narrative told here.
The problem, then, is that every review and comment section about this book is going to be flush with tight fives on the stuff. So I guess here's my audition:
Jeppson's, which is either a malört or the Malört™, is a type of besk, a Swedish herbal liquor. Its main ingredient is wormwood, which is the same as in its cousin, absinthe, except the fairy looks like Bill Swerski.
Malört is the headlight fluid of Chicago. It is a hazing ritual enacted with the utmost seriousness. Chicago is notorious about gatekeeping who is or is not a Chicagoan. Malört is the countervailing energy of the City. It is the open membership secret society. No one is from Chicago; you can only let being from Chicago happen to you. Just drink this shot. Quickly.
The book has several levels. Much like the alcohol itself, there are flavors that only hit after its conclusion.
It is a Chicago fairy tale. It is the story of immigrants bringing their own unique cultural contributions and finding a more unique way to express them in the interest of turning a coin. It is the story of people refusing to quit, not out of any conventional emotion like hope or anger but because quitting would be the rational choice. It is the story of turning brash honesty into money and making feeling bad about it into a virtue. In this story, following your bliss manifests into a dream job. Repeatedly.
Like all Chicago stories, it is about gentrification. It is about the creative destruction of business. It is about appropriation, refracting so much that no one is clear on who stole what from whom. It is coolness as a business. It is about selling out, which is odd, because no one in the book sells out. But the dilemmas of the concept of selling out, the question of what is true identity and how best that identity is served is to the core of the book.
Like I said, it is a fairy tale. But it is the dark, ambiguous sort of fairy tale, the after credits shot of Queen Snow looking stale at a state dinner. This is the aspect that gives the book its most Malört-like attribute. It is not the taste that gets you, but the aftertaste that floats around like a lousy lover. That's what gets you. The narrative is a success story. So why do I feel sad?
It is also a great business history. The story here is a case study in how an outsider brand can be successful, including the debates over the core principals and who the business is meant to serve. This is scholarship of the 100+ year arc of a personality-driven business, and how that intersects with the modern business world. There is much to learn in the study here.
There are a number of points of contention about Jeppson's Malört , so when I first picked up the book, I was worried that this would be a piece of access journalism set to follow the party line. And it is, or it does, but I do credit the author for stating opposing views clearly enough that I feel none were slighted. Some may disagree.
And unlike some histories, the story is functionally at its beginning, with the play into national distribution. As much as a book of a hundred years of history, it is a book for the future hundred years to see how it all plays out.
I recommend it to any reader as the sort of real life happy story, with bite, that is far too rare to find. I do not need to recommend it to fans of Chicago history, as they all already have it on order.
My thanks to the author, Josh Noel, for writing the book, and to the publisher, Chicago Review Press, for making the ARC available to me.