Well, first things first. Yes, it’s a two fold literary reference. It began in the bible and ended with Cormac McCarthy. His second book by the same name was intended to be the opposite of Faulkner’s Light in August but the novel, Outer Dark also stemmed from The Book of Matthew in the New Testament. Matthew 8:12 to be exact: “But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” There’s many interpretations of this quote which I will spare you with but if I could be so bold to minimize it down to one quip, I would say it was a warning by Jesus that the unbelievers would be cast into hell. Yup, some light stuff this morning…

I like to interpret and analyze biblical quotes, not because I’m religious, but because I find it fascinating and I look at the bible as a sort of mythological old tome with stories and lessons just like anything else.

Outer Dark, literally (at least the way I think of it) is the ring of blackness outside a campfire in the woods. The pitch darkness that surrounds the small circle of protective light. Metaphorically and biblically it’s the path to the devil. Going beyond the light and shelter to the bad stuff, where it’s cold and bleak.

From Milton’s Paradise Lost:

Beyond this flood a frozen Continent
Lies dark and wilde, beat with perpetual storms
Of Whirlwind and dire Hail, which on firm land
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems
Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice,
A gulf profound as that Serbonian Bog
Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old,
Where Armies whole have sunk: the parching Air
Burns frore, and cold performs th’ effect of Fire.

The concept of hell as a cold place, so cold it burns…

Weird aside here…I’ve spoken of the Fatty Crab in the past. One of my favorite restaurants that went under many years ago. I opened my copy of Paradise Lost and a perfectly preserved Fatty Crab postcard was inside.

But that’s not all. I was also wearing my ill fitting and battered Fatty Crab t shirt this morning.

I was trying to explain to one of the younger members of the staff the other day that these weird coincidences can sometimes be looked into as signs or something more but in the end that’s all they are, just weird coincidences. Real life is full of them. Fiction, however, is not. Weird right? The general notion is that you can only write of these things in non-fiction and you cannot make them up or people deem them unbelievable or not authentic.

Anyway…Back to Outer Dark. Yes, it’s a bit absurd to apply this all to something as silly as a cocktail, but, unless you’re as gifted as someone like Austin Hennelly, cocktails need names and even his are named after the classics. I did a post on it once. There’s reason and history behind why we name cocktails and why it’s necessary even though it’s ridiculous.

Outer Dark

1 oz. RC Rum Blend

1 oz. House Spiced Rum

1 oz. Fresh Lime Juice

.5 oz. Figlernum

.25 oz. Macadamia Amazake

.25 oz. Salted Fig Honey

This is shockingly odd and tasty. The honey, fig, and spices really create a zinger here with the hogo of the Jamaican rum we put in the blend.

Let’s face it, fig cocktails normally kind of suck. Figs in general have more texture than actual flavor. The little crunchy seeds inside and the sheer weirdness of them are the draw. To extract anything but color from them for a cocktail is usually what we’re going for but combining them with falernum and funky rum creates this magical sort of weird smokiness that comes from nowhere.

Anyway…Let’s leave it today with a quote from Outer Dark by the man himself where one of the characters sees a thread of lightning and McCarthy attributes it to being a newly hatched creature inside an egg and looking out.

“And as he lay there a far crack of lightning went bluely down the sky and bequeathed him in an embryonic bird’s first fissured vision of the world and transpiring instant and outrageous from dark to dark a final view of the grotto and the shapeless white plasm struggling upon the rich and incunabular moss like a lank swamp hare.”