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ALUMNI UPDATES

Ian Lendler ’96’s Writing Ranges From An Undone Fairy Tale to Alcoholica Esoterica

By Hannah Selinger ’02

When Ian Lendler ’96 graduated from the College, he did not know exactly what he was going to do. Lendler, who lived in New York until a year-and-a-half ago, when he moved to London and then San Francisco, held many jobs after graduation. “Temping,” he says, “was the main one.”

Ian Lendler ’96

One of those temporary jobs bridged the gap between Lendler’s major, film, and his ultimate career choice, writing. For four months, Lendler was a librarian for the Spice Channel’s video library. “I had access to a lot of funny names,” Lendler says of his time at the pornography station. Essentially, Lendler’s job at the Spice Channel was a research job, and the conflation of information and creativity would eventually prepare him for the research involved in Alcoholica Esoterica, Lendler’s “collection of useful and useless information as it relates to the history of all manner of booze.” Lendler also describes Alcoholica Esoterica, which was released by Penguin Books this month, as “the history of the world as seen through various bottles.”

In June 2004, Lendler moved to London where he waited for his wife, Kusum, to secure an American visa. While abroad, Lendler noticed that “British people pay more attention to alcohol than other people do.” This observation led to the idea that it might be fun and worthwhile to compile a book of alcohol-related facts and stories, later termed “esoterica.” The final product is a 264-page book chock-full of things you may or may not already know. Alcoholica Esoterica covers everything from drinking songs (Roman Emperor Julian is known to have incanted, “Who made you and from what? / By the true Bacchus I know you not. / He smells of nectar. / You smell of goat.”) to notable alcoholics (“The whole world is about three drinks behind,” said Humphrey Bogart) and contains a plethora of interesting factoids in between. And it is not, according to Lendler, difficult to see why the book will strike a familiar chord with many readers.

“Everyone has an opinion on alcohol,” he says. “It’s this thing that everyone understands and comes to grips with. It seemed weird that no one had put it all together.”

The project took Lendler about a year to complete and was borne in some ways, he says, of “one too many nights in The West End.” There was an enormous amount of research involved, and the history of booze, it turned out, was not so easily transcribed. As Lendler writes in the introduction, “The first historical evidence of alcohol is a jug of wine found in the mountains of present-day Iran that dates to about 5400 B.C. The earliest sample of writing found is a Sumerian clay tablet that refers to beer in 3300 B.C.” In short, Lendler had a lot of ground to cover. His research began in libraries, migrated to bookstores, the Internet, and, finally, bars, “in that order.”

Lendler’s other published book is a very different project. It’s a children’s book, An Undone Fairy Tale, published by Simon and Schuster’s children’s department this past August. The fairy tale, which implores young readers not to turn the pages too quickly (not unlike the Little Golden Books classic The Monster at the End of this Book), had been on the back burner; Lendler wrote the book at 27 but did not sell it for several years.

Before writing An Undone Fairy Tale, Lendler had tried his hand at other children’s books, but, despite his attempts, had never succeeded at getting an agent or selling a manuscript. Lendler’s interest in children’s literature, he says, harkens back to his days as an undergraduate: He was editor of Columbia’s humor magazine, Jester, and views himself as a humor writer. “Kids’ literature is the closest you can come to being a humor writer,” he maintains.

But before An Undone Fairy Tale secured Lendler an agent, and long before the book hit bookstores nationwide, Lendler had been writing Alcoholica Esoterica. Why was that project successful? According to Lendler, the subject matter is endlessly interesting. “Any story involving alcohol can be funny, idiotic or tragic — often at the same time,” Lendler says. “Either way, it’s inherently fascinating, because nearly all of us have experienced its effects.”

The book is both fascinating and funny. Where else can one find facts like, “By the law of averages you are more likely to be killed by a flying champagne cork than by a poisonous spider”?

Lendler and his wife — whom he met, appropriately, at a bar — moved from London to San Francisco in August 2005. These days, he is working full-time on another children’s book, which has not yet been contracted. He also is considering writing a book about food-related esoterica, subscribing to the notion that the best kind of reading is “bathroom reading.” In the meantime, Lendler is adjusting to the hardest part of being a successful writer: the follow-up.

Hannah Selinger ’02 earned a B.A. in English and comparative literature and is a freelance writer in New York.

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