In the book I'm reading, Michael Connelly's Echo Park from 2006, the main character, Harry Bosch, an LAPD detective, is getting drunk on vodka and ice after he's learnt that he made a very costly mistake in an investigation 12 years before. He calls his former partner to let him know about it, hangs up and there follows this bit in the novel:
- He got up off the floor and hung the phone on the wall. Before returning to the back deck he educated the ice in his glass once more with vodka. (p.89)
I've checked for meanings of educate that could account for its use here, but I couldn't find any. I wonder what it means.
Here are the other passages involving the vodka and ice before the one that baffled me:
- He was drinking vodka sprinkled liberally over ice, the first time he'd gone with hard liquor since coming back on the job the year before. (p.85)
- He shook the ice and vodka and took another deep drink until he finished the glass. How could anything so cold burn so intensely hot on the way down? He walked back inside the house to put more vodka on the ice. (p.85)
- Bosch shook his glass and took a drink before answering. The ice tumbled against his mouth, and vodka spilled down his cheek. He wiped it with the sleeve of his jacket and then brought the phone back to his mouth. (p.86)
Best Answer
I think it's a mistake to look for a way for that sentence to make sense. I would say instead that it's supposed not to make much sense.
Evidently the narration is in a very close third-person point of view, and it's describing the character's actions with the words he would use himself -- and in this case it seems clear that it's words he actually thinks.
The borderline-nonsensical choice of "educate" serves to characterize the character as an alcoholic who's trying to tell himself he's not. He's pouring vodka over the ice, but he's pretending that he's doing that to do the ice a favor (education is a good thing!), rather than drinking because he's addicted.
The bizarre phrasing also lets him feel clever about having invented such a colorful metaphor (and clever people are too smart to let themselves slide into alcoholism; he's clever; ergo he's not an alcoholic. Phew!)
The metaphor isn't really all that clever (for one thing, it doesn't make sense), but he's already drunk enough to be unable to see that.