"Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life"

When I read reviews of "Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life: A Memoir" (Riverhead, 2010), by Kim Severson, my interest was immediately piqued. It's a memoir, it's about the "foodie" world, and it's by a former food writer for the San Francisco Chronicle (my daily newspaper) who currently writes about food for the New York Times. What's not to like, right? And on the whole, I enjoyed this book quite a bit. Severson has a straightforward, if a bit wordy and occasionally repetitive, style, and an honest voice. She tells of her insecurities, her earlier alcoholism and drug use, and her difficulties in coming out as a lesbian. The conceit of the book is that she has learned lessons from each of eight women cooks, most of whom she met through her work as a food writer. The cooks are her mother Anne-Marie Zappa Severson, Marion Cunningham, Alice Waters, Ruth Reichl, Marcella Hazan, Rachael Ray, Edna Lewis, and Leah Chase. This does provide a good framing device for Severson's story, although at times the frame seems a little forced. Severson's relationships with these women range from lifelong to a couple of meetings. She does provide some intriguing, even gossipy, insights into some of these cooks; on the whole they are an admirable, even inspiring, if very human, group of women who made successful careers for themselves, and educated and helped many others, often at a time when women faced many obstacles in the working world (most of the women are or were in their 60s, 70s, and 80s). I was rooting for Severson's success and happiness, and fortunately, with the help of these women, Severson has achieved a successful and enjoyable career, a happy marriage to her wife Katia, and equally happy motherhood of a young daughter.

In Praise of a Very Determined Reader

When Canadian professional writer of detective fiction and avid reader Harold Engel's ability to read was taken away by a stroke, he could see letters, but "they looked like Cyrillic one moment and Korean the next." Engel couldn't accept this result, and very very slowly, with the help of a lot of therapy and trial and error, he taught himself to read again by tracing the letters in the air with his finger, or on the roof of his mouth with his tongue. Something about those movements reactivated his sense of the meaning of the letters and words. It is an awkward, slow process, but it has allowed him to read and write again; he has since published a novel and two memoirs. Oliver Sacks, the psychiatrist who has written about so many oddities of the human brain (most famously in his book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat"), tells Engel's story in the current (6/28/10) issue of The New Yorker (see http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/28/100628fa_fact_sacks for a summary of the article). I am in awe of Engel's dogged determination, and see it as a testament to the crucial importance of reading -- far beyond its practical necessity -- to those for whom reading is a sort of life's blood. Engel says that he persisted because "Reading was hard-wired into me. I could no more stop reading than I could stop my heart....The idea of being cut off from Shakespeare and company left me weak." His experience -- along with the experiences of those who are blind or illiterate -- serves as a reminder to the rest of us not to take for granted the great privilege and pleasure of being able to read easily and at will.

"Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal"

"Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal" (Hyperion, 2009), by Julie Metz, tells the story of a 40ish woman whose husband suddenly dies, and of what she finds out after his death about his complicated secret life and his many affairs. Metz is shocked and devastated by her husband's early and sudden death, and shocked and devastated again when his many betrayals come to light. Only her young daughter, her friends and family, and time can help her rebuild her life and her faith in other people, and help her let go of at least some of her bitterness. I don't think I am giving too much away by revealing that the story has a happy ending. I realize as I type this summary that it sounds like the plot of a weepy bestselling "women's" novel. But Metz's writing, although sometimes veering a bit toward the overly dramatic, is convincing, and we feel for her. She makes her story compellingly readable, and I have to confess that I read it all in one day. And I admire her (seeming, at least) honesty and openness even about aspects of the story that put her in a less than ideal light. There is always a slight feeling of voyeurism in reading a memoir like this one, but I think we learn about the human condition from such stories as well. (I admit that it is possible that the second half of that sentence may just be a rationale or excuse for the first half, but I am not going to go there today....)

"Walks with Men"

In contrast with the hefty "The Lacuna" (507 pages), which I posted about yesterday, "Walks with Men" (Scribner, 2010), by Ann Beattie, is a little slip of a novel (1-2 pages and measuring just 5" by 7"). I have read Beattie's stories and novels for years, including the many stories she has published in The New Yorker; in fact she, along with John Updike and a few others, seems the quintessential New Yorker short story author. This new book is, like much of her work, understated, with her usual low-key style, but packs a punch. Recent Harvard graduate Jane moves to New York in 1980 and becomes involved with Neil, who as a writer 20 years older seems to Jane the epitome of worldliness, sophistication, and knowledge of "how to live." (Don't we all, when young, long for someone to instruct us in how to live well?) His advice, which he pronounces with great authority, ranges from the very specific ("Wear only raincoats made in England") to the very general ("Time changes everything"). Jane has her own tentative and erratic career, but her life is organized around Neil and his authoritative pronouncements. Their relationship is bumpy, with betrayals and reconciliations and a surprise ending, near but not at the actual end of the novel. Jane learns to put her life with Neil in perspective, and the novel ends with another surprising and counter-intuitive scene, quiet, a little sad, but lovely. This novel will speak to many who look back on their early adulthood, seeing with the clearer perspective of age the people who attracted and influenced them, and the sometimes inexplicable decisions they (OK, we!) made.

"The Lacuna"

Reading "The Lacuna" (Harper, 2009), by Barbara Kingsolver, was for me like climbing a steep mountain: long (over 500 pages), arduous, breathtaking (in both senses of the word), and worth the effort. (Not that I have climbed any mountains lately, but it seems like an apropos if not very original metaphor.) I initially resisted reading this novel, but since it was chosen for my next Reading Group meeting, highly recommended by one member, I tackled it. It took me almost a month to read, and I read a few other (shorter and less arduous) books during this time. I started reading it in large print, got tired of that (see my 5/31/10 post on large print), continued in regular print, and finished the book on CD (read very effectively by the author herself) during two recent car trips. The main character is Harrison Shepherd, a young man born in the U.S. of a Mexican mother and American father and raised in Mexico, a classic bicultural person, so common in the 20th century. In the 1930s, he works for Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and then for Trotsky in exile, before returning to the U.S. and becoming the author of bestselling novels about ancient Mexican history. He tries to live a quiet life in Asheville, NC, but is blindsided by the anticommunist McCarthy era, which targets him for having associated with Communists and accuses him of being anti-American, using distorted and completely false "evidence." This is ironic, as he is actually very pro-American, and tragic, because it destroys his life and career. Kingsolver's portrayal of the viciousness and mindlessness of this witchhunt era is powerful and frightening, especially in view of some present-day echoes of this mentality. Kingsolver's writing has always been admirable not only for its literary quality but also for engaging with important social/political events and issues; "The Poisonwood Bible," for one outstanding example, is unforgettable. There are other rewards of this book, including the evocative portrayals of the main character, his assistant Violet Brown, Kahlo, and Trotsky; lovely and detailed descriptions of the various locales; and the way the author gives readers a vivid sense of history, both ancient and recent.

Will I Ever Read All of the "Great Books"?

Forty-plus years ago, my parents bought the 54-volume "Great Books of the Western World" set (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), and these impressive volumes have been a fixture on my parents' various living room bookshelves over all these years. This set was edited by Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mortimer Adler, and was based on their educational theory that all college students should read these classic books; the program was implemented at the University of Chicago and elsewhere. Over the years my late father and I and other family members read some of the volumes. It has always been understood that eventually the Great Books would pass to me (as the English major and biggest reader in the family). I love the idea of the books, I love how they look on the shelf, and I love taking volumes down and browsing through them. I love what it shows about my parents' priorities that they spent a considerable sum of their hard-earned money on this set (as well as the Classics Club set and many other wonderful books). My vague idea when I was younger was that "someday" I would read all 54 volumes. Now, older and more realistic, I realize that it is highly unlikely that I will ever have the time or - more crucial - the inclination, if I am honest with myself, to read Euclid, Plutarch, Ptolemy, Thomas Aquinas, Gibbon, etc. I am probably almost as unlikely to re-read some of the authors I read in college classes: Euripedes, Rabelais, Milton, Hegel, Goethe, etc. As I am mainly a novel reader, the volumes I am most likely to read, or re-read, are the novels by Swift, Fielding, and Tolstoy. However, even if I have to relinquish the grand vision of myself reading my way through those 54 volumes, I love the idea of them, with their solidity and their embodiment of hundreds of years of history, literature, science, and culture. Of course the fact that they are from the "Western World" means they are limited culturally, and nowadays - appropriately and fortunately - we are much more aware of global and multicultural knowledge and literature. But that doesn't mean we can't continue to treasure these glorious "Great Books."

"Romancing Miss Bronte"

As "Jane Eyre" is one of my all-time favorite and often-read books, I have read a lot about the lives of Charlotte Bronte and her sisters and brother as well. I read Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of Charlotte, as well as later books and articles and at least one fictionalized version of her life. I have just completed another fictionalized version: "Romancing Miss Bronte" (Ballantine, 2010), by Juliet Gael. Although it sometimes veers a little into the "romance novel" genre, and has touches of the portentous and overwrought style you might expect in that genre, it is generally well-written. It recaps the sad but compelling story of the very bright children of a parson in the small, isolated town of Haworth on the Yorkshire moors, the precocious fantasy stories they write together, the diseases that take them one by one, the difficult path to publication by the three surviving sisters, and finally the late marriage to a curate by the sole surviving sister, Charlotte. Where the book is strong is in its exploration of Charlotte's psyche. An enjoyable if often sad read.