NYT Look at Pub Literature

Speaking of literature, booze, and bars, Jonathan Miles has an interesting article in The New York Times about pub literature. He writes:

In many American towns and cities, zoning ordinances decree that churches and bars be buffered from one another by upward of a thousand feet. Among some drinkers, this is known as the ”non-compete clause,” because, they insist with a blasphemous grin, churches and saloons serve some of the same functions for their congregations. They’re not without their similarities. In some churches, people overfilled with the spirit start speaking in tongues; in bars, people have been known to overfill on spirits and swallow their tongues. The man serving you wine, in some churches, will patiently hear your confession; ditto in bars. Off-key singing is permitted in both places. The architecture of each is more or less circumscribed, from town to town, and both adhere to longstanding rituals and rites.

In the piece, he examines the recent works of Gwendolyn Bounds and J.R. Moehringer. Check out the article here.