PROOF POSITIVE

Few would consider the alcohol-soaked merriment of New Year’s Eve in New York worthy of scholarly investigation. Eric Burns just might. The “Fox News Watch” host recently gave a talk on his book “The Spirits of America: A Social History of Alcohol” (Temple University Press) at Fraunces Tavern in Lower Manhattan.

Mr. Burns, who describes himself as a “nonacademic historian,” described the Founding Fathers as a remarkable generation with nary a teetotaler among them. He offered several examples: Thomas Jefferson had a great early American wine cellar; Samuel Adams worked with his father at the family brewery; John Adams was fond of a tankard of hard cider, and Patrick Henry once tended bar. Drinking, Mr. Burns said, was the first national pastime.

Early in America’s history, its citizens enjoyed imbibing at events as diverse as quilting bees and cornerstone layings. Colonials liked their bacon fried in rum and were not even averse to throwing back a pint during public meetings or in courtrooms. Colonial justice may not have been blind, Mr. Burns said, but it could have suffered from “double vision.”

Mr. Burns talked about political candidates who offered rum or hard cider at election time. Voters would take liquor from their preferred contender’s vat. Someone should have been able to predict the winner, Mr. Burns said in a humorous aside, from that candidate who had served up the most liquor. “Booze,” he said to audience laughter, “as a precursor to the modern exit poll. How much worse could that be?”

“Why did those who first settled this nation drink so much?” Mr. Burns asked. He said firstly, Americans believed that alcohol had medicinal value. Mr. Burns said there was even an example of an insurance company raising its rates for nondrinkers. Since alcohol exhibited powerful effects on those who partook in it, colonial America thought it had the power to vanquish diseases.

Secondly, alternate beverages were less safe than they are today. Water was impure and milk lacked pasteurization.

Thirdly, tea – given its role in the fight against taxation without representation – “had an image problem.”

Fourthly, Mr. Burns said, Americans drank for comfort. Many colonists were isolated from family members across the ocean in England – and psychological counseling was not an option as it is today.

Given that booze was seen as medicinal and therapeutic, Mr. Burns asked how America arrived at Prohibition, which he said was “never the will of the majority.”

He began by discussing the Anti-Saloon League, which existed between 1893 and 1933. The league, Mr. Burns said, was a forerunner of the modern political action committee. They played hardball politics, he said, and even bought off legislators. It didn’t matter whether they themselves drank or not – voting the “right” way was the only thing that counted, he said.

He discussed Prohibition’s downsides: For example, he said, “there is no such thing as quality control” of illegal products. He gave the example of a drink called “coroner’s cocktail.”

In his entertaining delivery, Mr. Burns discussed the advantages of moderate intake of alcohol. “It turns out that the Founding Fathers were right after all,” he said. “Even dogs can improve their lives with alcohol.” Mr. Burns said research showed that canines that consumed modest amounts of dark beer – specifically, Guinness Extra Stout – had fewer clots and lower instance of heart attacks.

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BOOZE & BOOKS

A number of books relating to alcohol have lately poured off printing presses and onto bookshelves. Anthony Giglio, who contributes to the Sun’s Food and Drink pages, has written “Cocktails in New York: Where to Find 100 Classics and How to Mix them At Home” (Rizzoli International Publications).

For a more literary take on that swig, readers can try “Booze and the Private Eye: Alcohol in the Hard-Boiled Novel” (McFarland & Company) by Rita Elizabeth Rippetoe. Ms. Rippetoe examines what types of spirits writers such as Mickey Spillane or Dashiell Hammett have had their tough-talking characters imbibe.

Due for release in 2005 is a scholarly book called “Drunk the Night Before: An Anatomy of Intoxication” (University of Minnesota Press) by Marty Roth. The book promises to “illustrate altered consciousness from myth to contemporary life.”

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EXISTENTIAL PHILOLOGY

No, this item is not about the philosophical theories postulated by the likes of Friedrich Nietzsche or Jean-Paul Sartre, who examined the meaning of existence. Rather, it focuses on the lesser-known subject of “existential philology.”

At a symposium called “Petrarch at 700,” a professor from Columbia University, Teodolinda Barolini, gave an opening talk on Petrarch. Her lecture considered the crossroads at which interpretation meets philology (the study of language as used in literature).

She listed instances in the long history of interpreting Italian medieval works where “existential philology” – or “letting respect for what actually exists trump other hypothetical considerations” – was required.

Studies of Dante boast many examples of existential philology, Ms. Barolini said: The debate over the remaking of the end of the “Vita Nova,” where a “philologically nonverified second ending” was created; Michele Barbi’s invention of chapter divisions for the “Vita Nova” not attested in the manuscripts, now corrected by Guglielmo Gorni, and “the debate as to which of Dante’s lyrics were intended for the Convivio,” with certain labels referring to “such and such book of the Convivio, all speculative but presented with the passing of time as factual.”

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SESQUICENTENNIAL MILESTONE

Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” will be the focus of a 150th anniversary conference at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln beginning on March 31. Poet and New York University English professor Galway Kinnell will be among the participants along with the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, Ted Kooser…In other 150th celebratory news, New York Review Books is set to publish its 150th title next month: “The Singapore Grip” by J.G. Farrell (1935-79).The book is a historical novel and trenchant satire of corporate power and imperial arrogance.