The Year (of My Blog) in Review

You can hardly pick-up a newspaper or magazine; can hardly turn on the radio or TV, without getting a rundown of the year in review.  Here's mine:  The 2011 Year of the "Books Books Books" Blog in Review – and a few additions to begin the year 2012.

There are only 15 posts on my blog.  I began it in August with the post, “What I’m Planning, more or less” which told a bit about me and my reading history, and what I planned for my Blog. 

What it didn’t say was that I began the blog in a fit of pique over a book I’d been reading called TOLSTOY AND THE PURPLE CHAIR.  It’s a “project” book, and project books annoy me—whether it’s a recipe-a-day or a book-a-day, such projects seem artificial to me, not a natural part of one’s day, of one’s life.

This book’s project was to read a book a day for a year.  And the project had strict rules:  no re-reading books that had been read before; no author could be read more than once; only books “with a width of one inch” (!) would be chosen; mystery books were for Sundays; books must be finished by midnight; and every book read must be written about.

Nina Sankovitch’s book was well reviewed in the New York Times, and it is that which prompted me to read it.   I’d hoped it would provide me with a list of books worth reading; and that I would glean new insights into books and writing.

But much of this book illustrates the author's struggle to justify her project, to give it a plausible purpose; but unfortunately, she does not succeed.    

Sankovitch’s sister died after a short and devastating illness.  As a result, Sanksovitch was 

“caught in a bramble patch of sorrow and fear.  My reading…was pulling me out of the shadows and into the light."

 She tells us that

“Now that [my sister] had died [and my family was devastated], I was doing what I could to recover…for everyone in my family.  I was reading.”

"In reading books, I was finding my sister again.”

And--perhaps most unbelievably!--she identifies her reading project and herself with 

“an impoverished Cuban man," a character in one of the books she’s reading, because they both have “hope for the future.  He has faith in Castro’s revolution; I have faith in the power of books.”

What?  (Or as my children would say, “Puh-lease!”)

Which leads to another problem with this book:  Sankovitch tries to shoehorn every one of the books she reads into a lesson that will ease the pain of her sister’s death.  Sometimes this works, but more often, it doesn’t.

So many books read much too quickly!  Ultimately, we learn little about them other than a bit of the  plot, and how the characters and the lessons they learn feel similar to Sankovitch's own experience;

So many books read so quickly that we, the readers, get little beyond a series of platitudes repeated over and over again in different words, no matter what she happens to be reading, as in:

“We cannot control events around us, but we are responsible for our reactions to those events.”

“The meaning of my life is ultimately defined by how I respond to the joys and the sorrows…”

“[The character] comes to understand then that his own sanity depends upon his accepting what he cannot change.”

OK: we get it!

And although Sankovitch states that “the purpose of great literature is to reveal what is hidden and to illuminate what is in darkness,”(?) when she does spend some time describing and analyzing her one-day–to-read-it books, she uses words and phrases that tell us nothing: 

“This book is perfect, a genuine communication from the heart.”

“[We are] connected to the rest of humanity...by the size of our hearts."

“The world shifts, and lives change.

“I would find...the always within never.”

Here, once again I must ask—“What?”

I know how difficult it is to write, so I hate to say it, but I think that the New York Times was wrong:  this is not a good book.  Sankovitch is probably a good reader and a good writer, but I think that here—perhaps because she turned reading into a “project” and read the books too quickly, chose some of them too poorly—she couldn’t do the books (or herself) justice.

So my blog was to be an antidote to this approach:  I would read books over and over again, I would write about books and film and theater; and as a slow reader, I wouldn’t predict how frequently I would post.

And that’s how it began:  Analyses of WAR AND PEACE, books of food writing; a review of Jude Law as HAMLET; a reflection on the difference between Live in HD and Live at the Met, etc.

And then, the Blog took on a life of its own.  I'd posted my musings about book auctions and books as objects, and these generated a huge—and surprising—interest from readers in many parts of the world.  So, the discussion continued:  of private libraries and public libraries; a bit about literary analysis which used the films of Woody Allen for its examples; thoughts about the rising fear that books—and bookstores—would soon be a thing of the past…  And here we are.

As these thoughts continued to reverberate, readers sent me suggestions for posts, and even sent me things to post.  Here are some of them:

Danny wrote,  “Here's a magnificent blog I thought you'd enjoy:  <NeglectedBooks.com>
I do enjoy it.  And it’s the perfect companion to the book I’ve been reading and which I highly recommend:  SECOND READING. NOTABLE AND NEGLECTED BOOKS REVISITED, by Jonathan Yardley.

The posts on Personal Libraries prompted Johanna to alert me to an astonishing and rather depressing article in the New York Times called “Selling a Book by Its Cover” which talks about “book solutions” and expresses surprise that there are people who want “more than pretty bindings: [they] wanted the option of being able to read [their] books.”  (Imagine that!)

The article tells of “books wrapped in silver paper to match the silver hardware in the room….

You think that’s bad?  It gets worse:  

“For the spa in Phillipe Stark’s Icon Brickell, the icy glass condo tower in Miami, 1,500 books [were wrapped] in blank white paper, without titles, to provide a ‘textural accent’ to the space.”  They bought “mass-market hardcovers that flood the used book outlets — titles by John Grisham and Danielle Steel, or biographies of Michael Jackson— because they are cheap, clean and a nice, generous size.”

And worse:  

“A TV news program wanted linen-wrapped books chopped in half to fit the shallow, faux-shelves of a political interview program.”

Moreover, the writer of this NY Times article thinks "book lovers" should be grateful that physical books are being “kept alive” by the “library artist” who is more “than a mere book dealer.”  (“Mere book dealer?”  That would be me…)

A not-to-be-missed slide show is included in this article, and the last 2 items in it are “books” that have been used as a medium for the creation of “art.” 

Which brings me to Andre, who wrote to me about this very subject:  “I thought these very beautiful and mysterious sculptures [made from books] which have been turning up anonymously in honor of libraries and books around the world was worth a look....”

I took a look, and here are photos of some of those sculptures:

 

Staying on theme by having a Tyrannosaurus Rex bursting from Doyle's LOST WORLDS

I don’t know what to make of this or quite how I feel about it.  Some of these are, indeed, beautiful:  but are they “art” or are they the destruction of books by other means?  Do they “honor” libraries or make a mockery of them?

I'm curious to know what you think about this.

So that was my Blog in 2011: behind us now. 

Now it's the year 2012, during which you have 365 (make that 363) days to: 

Read. 

Make art using any medium you like. 

Write to me as much as you want; I will always reply. 

            And most importantly:

Visit your local booksellers:  we are not and never have been “mere!”

- - - - - - - - - - -

Postscript: 

Apologies to those of you who receive blog posts via email for receiving an unfinished post.  I simply pressed the wrong button -- publish instead of preview -- and off it went.  (Could this have been the result of too much celebrating?)

The internet is an unforgiving medium; but I hope that you will be forgiving...

Thank you, and have a very Happy New Year.

Food Writing

I’m not a great cook, but I nevertheless love to read books that include a fair amount of food-writing. By that, I don’t mean cook books – I can’t “taste” food by reading a recipe the way some of my “foodie” friends can. And I also don’t mean books like Gwyneth Paltrow’s, which are essentially recipe books with some background about why the author is interested in food, family and healthy life-choices….

The food books I love are novels, memoirs, travel books, etc., in which food helps drive the plot; or in which food is the vehicle which illuminates the characters, or is shown to “form” their personalities, or describes their relationships with others; or which illustrate how food and cooking can serve to comfort or empower.

This is a large and varied genre.

WOMEN WHO EAT is a collection of essays by women in which they describe their various relationships with food. Some are professional cooks, but most are writers who tell of their feelings and memories of food. It’s a celebration of food and of women who enjoy food without shame or apology.

There are lovely essays about bonding with grandparents while working in the kitchen together; there are reflections about the pleasure of making a meal, because it is one of the few activities in which there are no “loose ends,” as a meal “has a beginning, middle, and end.” Simple and clear.

Because I'd had similar experiences, I especially enjoyed the essay by Pooja Makhijan, whose mother would put exotic “aloo tikis” into her lunch box, so unlike the “American” food her classmates had in theirs – and theirs were the kind of lunches she'd always longed for!

With the same good intentions, my mother would often pack my brown paper bag with a [healthy] whole tomato to bite into like an apple (juice running down my chin and neck) and a sandwich on rich rye bread. And oh, how I, too, longed for a sandwich on real “American” white bread!

Most of the essays in this book were entertaining, though none felt entirely "new."  And I hope you'll excuse me if I say that they're a bit like appetizers before the main course....

In Ruth Reichl’s memoir, TENDER AT THE BONE, the former restaurant critic and editor of the now defunct GOURMET magazine remembers a childhood that prepared her for a future in the food world. Reichl describes in sometimes hilarious detail, her early and strange connection with food.

Her "manic-depressive" mother loved to entertain, and depending on her mood, or on the latest “bargain” of ready-for-the-garbage food, or whatever decaying carcass she found in her larder, she often served food that was spoiled or moldy. Before the age of 10, Reichl understood that “food could be dangerous” and saw it as her “mission…to keep Mom from killing anybody who came to dinner.” She sometimes stood in front of guests to prevent them from getting to the buffet; and bluntly told her own friends, “Don’t eat that,” as they unsuspectingly plunged their spoons into dishes like bananas in green sour cream.

Her role as “guardian to the guests” made her aware of food in a way that might not have occurred otherwise. She began “sorting people by their tastes” and finding that she could learn a lot about people from the foods they chose and the places in which they liked to eat. And she continued to observe and learn about food as she made her way from New York to a French boarding school in Montreal and a commune in Berkeley; as she came under the wings of people like Alice Waters and James Beard.

Liberally sprinkled with recipes, this adventure in food has a happy ending, as Reichl got to live her passion of cooking and eating and teaching people about food.

Nora Ephron’s HEARTBURN is a slyly fictionalized account of her divorce from journalist Carl Bernstein. The novel’s heroine, Rachel, is a food writer, and Ephron uses food and recipes as the conceit with which to describe Rachel’s relationship and marriage, from its beginning to its end.

Seven months pregnant at the time that she discovers that her husband is having an affair, Rachel reviews the trajectory of their marriage:

When first in love, [she] prepares labor-intensive and time-consuming “crisp potatoes;” when they settle into a married life busy with a child and home improvements, it’s the complacency and self-assuredness of “peanut butter and jelly on white bread.” (Yum!) With the knowledge of her husband’s affair, it’s “heartburn” and a punishing refusal to give him her wonderful vinaigrette recipe. Then it’s self-pity and the comfort of mashed potatoes…. Finally, she accepts that she can do without him, and expresses that acceptance by throwing a pie in his face – and by her willingness to give him that vinaigrette recipe after all: in essence, she is saying, “You can have it, and I’m out of here!”

Forget the Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson film of the same name; this is a delicious, insightful, and wickedly funny book. And the great recipes are an added bonus.

More and more common in the food-writing genre are the books that tell of people moving to a “foreign” country and navigating their way through that new landscape. And food is a major player in these journeys.

In Marlena De Blasi’s A THOUSAND DAYS IN VENICE, American restauranteur and cookbook writer De Blasi tells of her love-at-first-sight romance with a Venetian man she sees across a crowded room – really! – and of her move to Venice to be with him. And for all its beauty, it’s an inhospitable Venice she comes to, steeped as it is in old traditions which have no room for newcomers.

But De Blasi haunts the local food markets at 5:00 AM each morning, and with her knowledge and love of food, she seduces the locals and becomes “one of them.” Then, she repeats this feat in her sequel, A THOUSAND DAYS IN TUSCANY, where she eats at the small local restaurant to which everyone in the neighborhood – including she – brings food for communal dining. Soon, she is one of them there, too.

Passionate about food, De Blasi describes the local produce and the markets and the centuries’ old food traditions with eloquence and ease. You read these books with mouth-watering pleasure – and a longing to become an “insider” in Italy, too!

Finally, there’s the food-writing in travel books that have no plots to speak of, but which describe food’s connection to the land, the landscape, the city, the town, the community. These books give you a sense of the rhythm of life there; and you are like a voyeur, looking through the windows of the folks who are living the dream.

Peter Mayle’s A YEAR IN PROVENCE and Frances Mayes’ UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN are two such books. In these, we watch the British Mayle and the American Mayes (with their very similar names!) as they renovate fabulous houses with seemingly unlimited funds. Here, too, we see them prepare the local foods of the season, and discover the bounty of the land.

These are books you can dip into, reading a passage here and there, now and then. And sometimes, you’re rewarded with an unforgettable description of the connection between food and nature and the life cycle, as in this excerpt from UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN:

“The fig flower is inside the fruit. To pull one open is to look into a complex, primitive, infinitely sophisticated life cycle…. Fig pollination takes place through an interaction with a particular kind of wasp about 1/8 of an inch long. The female bores into the developing flower inside the fig. Once in, she delves with her…needle nose, into the female flower’s ovary, depositing her own eggs. If she can’t reach the ovary, she still fertilizes the fig flower with the pollen she collected from her travels. Either way, one half of this symbiotic system is served – the wasp larvae develop if she has left her eggs, or the pollinated fig flower produces seed. If reincarnation is true, let me not come back as a fig wasp. If the female can’t find a suitable nest for her eggs, she usually dies of exhaustion inside the fig. If she can, the wasps hatch inside the fig and all the males are born without wings. Their sole, brief function is sex. They get up and fertilize the females, then help them tunnel out of the fruit. Then they die. Is this appetizing, to know that however luscious figs taste, each one is actually a little graveyard of wingless male wasps? Or maybe the sensuality of the fruit comes from some flavor they dissolve into after short, sweet lives.”

It’s fig season: enjoy them!