Outlaw Cook by John Thorne
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Rather than a single, cohesive memoir, story or thesis, Outlaw Cook is a series of essays, divided into sections by a joining theme. The first part, Learning To Cook, had both an autobiographical and thematic arc, describing how Thorne developed his relationship with food and hunger. It was thus a disappointment when the following sections - Made To Taste and The Baker's Apprentice - diverged into an unordered discussion of various cuisines. The final section - The Culinary Scene - is a bit of a puzzlement with book reviews, but a couple of the pieces here are quite intriguing: the one on Martha Stewart and Cuisine Mecanique, the closing essay. It's an eminently appropriate ending and a perfect summation for the whole book.
Thorne has a distinct way of looking and writing about cooking, centered on a very primal philosophy of its uses. Even when not addressing his primary viewpoint, every essay in the book reflects this thesis. At times, he takes the whole thing to a pretentious degree ... which is ironic when the book argues vehemently against such pretention in the culinary field. Still, whether or not you agree with him as a reader, his discussion will make you think about your attitude towards cooking ... and why you hold it. (I came to the conclusion that my philosophy is almost entirely the polar opposite of his, which might color this review.)
Thorne's discussion of the history and physics of food is absorbing, though, and he takes a deep look at the cultural roots of each dish he considers. There are recipes a-plenty throughout this book, but it's not really a cookbook ... and Thorne would be the first person to tell you to be suspicious of recipes, so they are intended to be jumping-off points / inspiration. (Hand in hand with this, they were too simple for me - I noted only a few.) It's easy to see why Alton Brown was electrified by his point of view - I originally found out about this book from "I'm Just Here For The Food" - even though he took it in a completely different direction.
Even though I don't agree with a lot of this book, it makes for an interesting, thought-provoking read.
View all my reviews
Another blog post that starts with a sample of the internet's finest, one of my favorite bits of humor, which I will title only:
Commas Are Important
This never fails to make me giggle, and is a great illustration of the importance of punctuation ... though unlike most examples, this one distorts the meaning by addition rather than subtraction.
I've always been a stickler for commas - not only where they belong, but where they don't. (Whenever I see a sentence starting with "And," or "But," I cringe.) I'll cheerily confess to overusing my ellipses, my semi-colons and my dashes, especially for effect, but I try to make sure every comma is in its place.
Lately, however, I've noticed an increasing trend of disappearing commas. Some e-publications seem to have style-guides that omit not only standard comma use, but occasionally remove them from places where they're crucial for clarity. I don't chalk this up to poor proofing or ignorance: it seems to be a deliberate choice.
So all right, maybe I'm an old fogey in some regards. Is this sentence really hindered by the loss of its comma?
Earlier that day, she had tea with a dragon.
(I've warned y'all about my examples before, haven't I?)
It's still clear what's being talked about, but I can't help but feel the loss of the beat. On the other hand:
She turned around slowly assessing the beast.
Is she turning slowly, or assessing slowly? The lack of comma makes it muddy.
I think part of the reason commas are something I spend so much energy with is they are the tools of beat, rhythm and accent in language. As a musician, I can't help but notice the flow. As a harp player, I'm particularly attuned to phrases in music. When you work out the fingering for a tune, as long as there is at least one finger on the harp, the notes provide a connected phrase. As soon as you come off, that breaks the connection - the end of the phrase, the pause, the singer's breath mark ... the comma.
My post this week comes as a result of this:
World's Cutest Kid Explains Why He Doesn't Eat Octopus
(For those who might not be in a place to watch a video, basically, it's a young boy declaring he doesn't want to eat animals because he wants them to stay standing. It is pretty adorable.)
When I first saw this, I was struck by the boy's logic and how dismayed he became. I enjoyed this as a clever glimpse into a child's mind and personally, it didn't even occur to me to think, "Oh, sheesh, another touchy-feely plea for vegetarianism." (Yes, I am very much a carnivore, myself.)
Until I read the comments.
Ninety percent of those who commented seemed to ignore what to me is the "story" here to praise or criticize the kid's point of view, point out that he'll change his tune as soon as he has a bacon cheeseburger, etc. I wondered ... why can't people just enjoy this without obsessing over the message?
(Now, I'll admit the end of the video is a bit more blatant - the comment that he's doing something beautiful - but I still don't think that undermines my overall point.)
This is my problem with fiction writing - I feel like some people, both writers and readers, miss the delights of the story because they're fixated on the message. Now, that isn't to say that the message can't enhance the story, or that many stories don't have some kind of organic message even if the writer has no conscious intent ... but there is a matter of focus and priority here.
To me, the first priority is always the integrity of the story. I think this is in good part because a good story feels real to me - as if the writer is a travelogue writer in another realm, not an inventor. When story elements are excessively shaped to portray something specific, it robs me of the verisimilitude. The Cave People of Shri should be superstitious about people flying because that's how they are, not as a metaphor for shortsightedness.
(One of these days, I should cull all my terrible examples in these posts and attempt to write a story from them. It would be epic ... in the worst sense.)
So when writing, at least in novel length, I always start with worldbuilding - and once that's in place, I rarely change it to the convenience of the story. (I can't say never, but I would be extremely reluctant.) To me, the reality of the world is not negotiable for the advancement of plot.
Scylla and Charybdis, which I'm in the process of final editing right now, does a lot with gender dynamics. I decided very early on that I didn't want to make some specific statement about how men and women interact - but rather that I wanted to use the situation to set up some interesting (and rather broken) societies and then explore them, and gender interaction happened to be the experimental variable. If there is a central message in SaC, it's less about gender and more about the hazards of concealing things from others "for their own good" ... but I didn't set out to say that. It's just a statement (one of many) that you could make from the events of the plot.
So when I watch the video above, I'm not thinking too much about the ethical dimensions of vegetarianism. I'm thinking about the boy's choice of words. I'm amused by the mother referring to the "chopped little legs" of the octopus. I'm thinking about octopus gnocchi and where can I get some of that - and where was this filmed that it's an appropriate food for a three year old?
I'm coming up with a horror story where the food comes back to life ... all right, maybe not. However, I did write a story once from the point of view of an animated servitor comprised of foodstuff ...
It's been an eventful week, most of which I spent on the east coast - traveling to Baltimore to visit with my folks, and from there into Virginia wine country. Got to tour Monticello (and Jefferson's more private retreat, Poplar Forest), saw so many gorgeous views, dabbled in wine-tasting, and tried duck for the first time. As always, it wasn't long enough and I'm reluctantly easing back into the daily routine, but I did miss my puppies.
On the writing front, I wrote a poem - free verse - got the germ of an idea for another, and pondered expanding a third ... but as to the last, I've looked at it multiple times and it seems to resist being turned from its current state - a single cinquain, a snapshot of imagery - into something with enough meat to submit. I also finished Nesting Instinct, which at 17,700 words and a little change has a lot of heft of it ... and still has that, "Yes, but ..." ending I love to wirte. Oh, boy, does it ever. I think an immediate sequel to this work would have to be a novel: the implications are too broad even for another novella.
... and if there's one thing I learned from writing Nesting Instinct, it's that I don't think I could survive writing an entire novel from the first person perspective of a blind woman. The tactics I used in a shorter (relatively) work would begin to wear thin and leave a reader unsatisfied in book-length fiction, I think. On the other hand, maybe I should take that as a challenge ...
My next project is the final editing pass for Scylla and Charybdis, a focused, "cramming style" readthrough. I found this immensely helpful with Butterfly's Poison (even if Harper Voyager didn't agree) and I'm looking forward to a similar clean sweep.
Forward march!
The subject on my mind this week is stories inspired by or reinterpreting various myths, fairy tales, ballads, and so forth. I'm going to arbitrarily set what I'm talking about apart from retellings that are relatively faithful to the source material - that's not the topic I'm interested in. Obviously, there are grey areas, but for the purposes of this, let's say that a retelling would relating part or all of Snow White from the point of view of the huntsman; a reinterpretation would be a story where Snow White is a werebear and she's hibernating, not sleeping. (I never promised to provide good examples. On the other hand, I would read that story.)
I'm fascinated with the opportunities provided by this source material. Much of it has a primal depth to it, and you can offer a number of variations before you start to dilute the core. The story (or stories) that got me thinking about this was a (series of) retellings from a shared world where I decided to use the ballad The Cruel Sister as partial inspiration for a character's background.
(It's a common story with a lot of variations. One version is here: The Cruel Sister. Loreena McKennit also has an - overly prettified - version, The Bonny Swans.)
Since my character was a harp player - ironically, this was before I came to the instrument; ancient history, that - obviously, he came into play as the musician of the piece. I decided he and the lady-harp developed a romance, one that is shattered in the fallout of the revelation that ends the ballad. (We never find out what happens after, at least not in any versions I've seen.)
This was a fantasy land created by someone else outside of the bounds of story or ballad, so some changes / disguise of the original narrative were inevitable. Still, I made a few direct references: the title of one of the stories was "So Coal Black Grew The Other One" (another version of a line in the first verse, above).
As I start thinking about rewriting it, I ask questions that aren't in the original narrative. One I've already indicated - what happens after the harp reveals the murder? What happens to the beloved after the younger sister drowns? Why / would the older sister really think she could just be given the beloved like a prize? (Not that women haven't been treated like this in old stories so often it almost doesn't bear mentioning.) What kind of love is that?
I think this is another powerful lure of these old stories - so often, we're left to ourselves to fill in the gaps, ask the questions ... or be content with the mysterious and nebulous impression that it would all make sense if we pulled back the curtain. The authority of these stories is such that we don't always feel we have to ... and a fiction writer drawing them can sometimes get away with the same trick, sometimes not.
When dealing with these sources, though, the question (or a question; there are numerous) is how much to disguise them. Does one maintain names, settings, even specific lines? Some tales are practically public consciousness; others are more obscure, such that only a student / scholar / geek would recognize even extensive references. Then there's the story where the author conceals the recognizable elements, only to reveal them at the end, with an, "aha" moment for the reader. The infamous example of this is the two people who crashland on a planet and turn out to be named Adam and Eve. Writing this story will get you retroactively blacklisted back to the point your parents met.
I'll plead guilty to writing love letters to Greek myths ... a lot of them. We're having quite the steamy affair. Mythocraft is essentially a reintepretation of Greek mythology with a clockwork (we'll call it proto-steampunk) angle. A story I haven't sought publication for yet, Inside The Box, imagines that Pandora was trapped in the box after she opened it (there's another myth / tale where I don't think we really find out what happens after) and leads her through a series of dream-encounters with other mythological figures.
Then there's the simple substitution method: X, only with Y. A writers' challenge to take a fairytale and use a subgenre with which I wasn't comfortable led to a tale I simply had a blast writing: a steampunk retelling of The Six Swans (or Seven - fairytales seem to have difficulty counting higher than three). And, of course, The Naming Braid combines multiple Lais of Marie de France.
All of these are pretty transparent: anyone who is familiar with the source material should recognize it quickly, if not immediately. One of the major projects I've contemplated writing down the line is a fantasy reinterpretation of the Helen of Troy myth, really utilizing and treating the gods as they were in the source material: flawed, larger-than-life meddlers. I've been in continuous debate how much to obscure the original. Does it lose power if too subtle - or contrary-wise, if one is slapped in the face with it? But mythological research has already suggested some interesting variants, not all of which the purists will be happy with ... so I don't want to stay so strictly in the lines that people will pick at inaccuracies. (For instance, my Odysseus is a woman in disguise, and while I have multiple mythological tidbits that made me decide it was appropriate ... oh, there could be uproar. Confessedly, part of my reason for doing it was also that I hate Odysseus and it's interesting to justify "his" behavior as the effects of trying to conceal gender.)
But enough about me ... finally ... and this is by far the longest post I've done in a while, at that. What's your favorite myth variation scheme? How much do you think a reinterpretation or inspired-by story should be disguised?
One of the most important things mothers do for us is introduce us to the world, answering the limitless questions we have - even after we leave the infamous "Why?" stage. The closest I've come to this personally is as a teacher, and I've found that sharing knowledge with other people is a heady thing. There are times, however, when it has to get wearing for a parent. Here's a bit from Taming The Weald. Keryn has brought Verdant to her home in the space station's living quarters after years in a small, artificial wilderness:
Keryn almost needed a cargo lift to get Verdant into the shower, but once the girl got used to it, she laughed, splashed and used far too much soap. She reached for her plant-cloak when she came out. Keryn intercepted her with a towel.
Keryn almost needed a cargo lift to get Verdant into the shower, but once the girl got used to it, she laughed, splashed and used far too much soap. She reached for her plant-cloak when she came out. Keryn intercepted her with a towel.
"It's better than the waterfall," Verdant chirped.
"Of course it is," Keryn said. "You're no longer in the Weald." Was there running water in the Weald? There must be - she had heard plants needed it.
"You call my home the Weald?" Verdant asked.
"Yes."
"What do you know about it?"
Keryn had the uncomfortable feeling she was being tested. She knew children did this. "No one knows its exact origins," she said. "It was part of the original station. Much larger, at one time, but cut down when the need for it passed. The rest remains out of a sense of tradition."
"What was the need?"
Keryn was embarrassed how little she knew about the Weald. "I don't know," she said, "but the station has grown immensely since then. There are a lot of things we don't need. Most have been forgotten, but the Weald stays."
"That's sad," Verdant said. "Everyone should remember their roots."
The clothing arrived via chute that afternoon. Verdant adored it - until she had to put it on.
"It's heavy and slimy," she complained.
"It's not slimy, it's smooth," Keryn said. "No rough edges, unlike the -" she stopped herself before she could describe the girl's old attire as trash. "You'll get used to it."
"Is this what living in your world is like?" Verdant pursed her lips in a frown.
"It's your world, too," Keryn said, "even if - somehow - you were ripped out of it. You can't go outside dressed in anything else."
"It's not cold," Verdant said. "Why not?"
She found herself explaining modesty and that led into other social norms, things she had always taken for granted and never been terribly good at. There was so much to be explained she would have wondered if she was making the right decision, but the girl was avid, attentive, drinking it in ...
***
(Check out the full story here: Taming The Weald)
Of course, at least most mothers don't have to explain to their children what clothing is ... do they?
Icons of American Cooking by Victor W. Geraci
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book offers twenty-four mini biographies of important figures in the popular culture of cooking. It offers an interesting range, individuals important not just for their careers as chefs or cookbook authors but reviewers (Ruth Reichl, the Zagats), television personalities (Martha Stewart, Rachael Ray), a kitchen supplier (Chuck Williams of Williams-Sonoma) and even a few entitites that aren't people at all (Betty Crocker and the Culinary Institute of America). It spans a good range of the modern era, with a bit of a paucity in the last two decades - but I guess it's hard to say which currently prominent chefs will endure as icons. I do think that this book isn't properly complete without Alton Brown, however. I'd argue the man is more of a modern institution than Mario Batali is.
These biographies cover a lot of ground, from history to critique to the personalities of these famous faces. I particularly loved how almost every entry surveyed how the individual became acquainted with food and what their childhood relationship to it was. (The obvious exception being the fictitious entity in the list above.) I was very surprised by the Betty Crocker "bio" - it's fascinating. Who knew an imaginary figure had such a backstory?
Unfortunately, the fact that this book is written by multiple authors makes it somewhat uneven. Some of the bios are slight; some are overly consumed with lists and dates; some don't talk about the personality of the chef, which was one of my favorite parts; others don't make sufficient effort to present events chronologically, which requires the reader to stop and retread. I was particularly disappointed by the brevity of the James Beard bio here, and the Culinary Institute of America "bio" is a particular mishmash of trivium. In some cases, I think the bios aren't much more detailed than you could find on Wikipedia.
Overall, though, the biographies that are good here are fascinating, and there are definitely people in here I hadn't heard of before (and am hunting down now). There are plenty of moments of, "So that's what happened with XYZ" ... and even a bit of dirty laundry. And if you're a foodie follower, you'll be entertained by references to other figures in the field - there's a great story about Tom Colicchio in here, and Rick Bayless comes up several times. This book is definitely worth checking out as a kickstart into culinary figures.
View all my reviews
