Less than a decade had passed since the murder, but a world had died. All that violence to protect a way of life, and in the end, it just crumbled to… - Wright Thompson

people in urban America aren’t Shakespearean characters with free will but actors in a Greek tragedy,

wasn’t there for the best bourbon-fetish bar moment. Once, in New York, Preston leaned against a bar and ordered a Van Winkle how he drinks it, as Julian drinks it, as Julian Jr. and Pappy drank it: on the rocks with a twist. The bartender snootily told him he didn’t feel right serving such fine bourbon like that. Preston grinned. He paused, for dramatic effect, and then delivered the kill shot: Well, sir, that sure is disappointing, given that’s how my grandfather and father taught me to drink it, and my family made the stuff after all. Hi, I’m Preston Van Winkle. . .

Most every man competes with his father and imitates his father, lives in fear of disappointing, and craves approval, and on the extreme ends of this potentially fraught relationship, a man often spends his entire adult life trying to be exactly like his father or nothing like him.