Read, Ramble

TBR: Books from The Cookbook Library by Anne Willan

Almost finished reading The Cookbook Library: Four Centuries of the Cooks, Writers, and Recipes That Made the Modern Cookbook by Anne Willan, with Mark Cherniavsky and Kyri Clafin (University of California Press, 2012) .  . . Review forthcoming, soon I hope. Meanwhile, here is a sampling of a reading list assembled from the bibliography, end notes and footnotes. My interest lies in food history and social history. A cookbook collector could make entirely different choices. A reader more interested in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance would choose another set of books. I realize that even this pared-down reading list represents an impossible challenge. I will never read all of these books but can keep chipping away at the stack. The ones  I already own but have not read are marked with an asterisk. A few of the oldie cookbooks are available here and there online as free ebooks.

Brillat-Savarin, Jean Anthelme. The Physiology of Taste or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy, translated by M.F.K Fisher. (Everyman’s Library, 2009).

Coe, Sophie D and Coe, Michael D. The True History of Chocolate (Thames and Hudson, 1996).

Davidson, Alan. The Oxford Companion to Food. (Oxford University Press, 1999).

Field, Carole. The Italian Baker. Harper Collins, 1985. New edition came out recently. I bake from the older edition. A classic.

Freedman, Paul H. Food: The History of Taste (University of California Press, 2007).

Garrett, Elizabeth Donaghy. At Home: The American Family 1750-1870. (Harry N. Abrams, 1990).

Girouard, Mark. Life in the French Country House. (Knopf, 2000) and Life in the English Country House* (Yale University Press, 1978).

Glasse, Hannah. First Catch Your Hare: The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747).

Wikipedia: "Hannah Glasse's (1708–1770) The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy represents one of the most important references for culinary practice in England and the American colonies during the latter half of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th. It was the dominant reference for home cooks in much of the English-speaking world during its original publication run, and it is still available (in somewhat limited quantity) and used as a reference by those doing food research and historical reconstruction."

Goldstein, Darra. The Gastronomica Reader. (University of California Press, 2010.) DG edited The Cookbook Library.

Hess, John L and Hess, Karen. The Taste of America. (Grossman Publishers, 1977.)

Kiple, Kenneth F. and Omelas, Kriemhild Conee. The Cambridge World History of Food. (Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Okakura, Kakuzo. The Book of Tea, 1906. Available in a free Kindle edition. You do not need to own the device to read an ebook but can download the free software and read on your computer.

Randolph, Mary. The Virginia Housewife: Or Methodical Cook (1824).

Riley, Gillian. The Oxford Companion to Italian Food. Oxford University Press, 2007.

Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery transcribed by Karen Hess. Columbia University Press, 1981.

Wheaton, Barbara Ketcham. Savoring the Past: The French Kitchen and Table from 1300 to 1789.* University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983. 

Visit Beth Fish Reads for links to Weekend Cooking posts by other bloggers. These range from book reviews to recipes to some scrumptious food photography and usually a few surprises.

Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1967)

My introduction to Tom Stoppards’s play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead came not from a staging of it or a reading of it but from the filmed version with Tim Roth and Gary Oldman. Then I read it, and now re-reading it again years later has been a pure pleasure. The usurper king of Denmark and his queen have called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to court to spy on Hamlet and to jolly him along and take his mind off his troubles. So far, we are following the plot of Shakespeare. Readers familiar with Hamlet already know the duo meet their doom by the last act of that play. Meanwhile, the audience watches them spin their wheels and considers the futility of their inept actions.

It was surprising to go to Netflix and find the film listed as a comedy. Well, yes, it is funny, of course, but reading it this time I see more of the dramatic elements than the comedic. The dominant madcap humor lays down a thin veneer over dark undertones. The chilling aspects of the play make the humor all the more intense, although Stoppard also allows himself to be just as silly as he pleases, much in the manner of Shakespeare’s fools. Many laughs.

Stoppard makes the two bland, minor characters the stars of his play. In personality, the two are indistinguishable from one another; at one point Rosencrantz forgets his own individuality and introduces himself as Guildenstern. The queen cannot tell them apart. In bringing these two nonentities forward as the central characters, Stoppard makes a sour, sardonic, hilarious commentary on Everyman marching toward inevitable demise. The shameless wordplay and self-conscious theatricality of the play add another dimension of fun to the atmosphere of gallows humor. In places, the rat-a-tat exchanges between the characters establish an energetic rhythm. Stoppard uses single syllables to great effect or switches to Shakespearean iambic pentameter when portraying a scene of regal pomp. He works the language masterfully, another entertaining aspect of the play.

I have been reading Samuel Beckett lately and watching his plays on dvd. The echoes of Beckett in this play are unmistakable; you might even view the play as a tribute to Beckett, a worthy one. It is a quick read and a rewarding read. I still think a live performance or the filmed version would be the best introduction to the play. Then read it and enjoy all over again.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard (1967).
Grove Press paperback, 1967.
126 pages.
First performed at the Old Vic, London, 1967.

Blues: Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, "Tight Like That" (1928)

In Deep Blues (1981), Robert Palmer sometimes resorts to lists of musicians and their important recordings, which is ok for a reader like me who keeps Spotify turned on as I go through this history of the blues. Record collectors probably also consult these lists. Palmer made a valuable contribution in cataloging all of this music, although the string of names might be tiresome to a reader who does not have instant access to most of the songs. For example, on one page you find these references:

Tampa Red (Hudson Whittaker) and Georgia Tom (Tommy Dorsey)
     "Tight Like That" (1928)

Muddy Waters and Little Walter
     "I Want My Baby" (1948)

Lonnie Johnson

Blind Willie McTell
     "Statesboro Blues" (1927-28)

Mississippi Sheiks
     "Sittin’ on Top of the World" (1930)

Memphis Minnie
     "Bumble Bee" (1929)

Charley Patton
     "Pony Blues" (1929)

Bessie Smith

Even posting one song per day--faster than my current rate--it could take over a week to cover these two paragraphs of Palmer's book, and if I pick up the pace of posting music, my book reviews could get lost among the blues posts. A separate music blog looks like the answer. I do not want general readers to see too many music history posts here that do not interest them and which may seem like clutter. Likewise, the blues people may not be interested in the book reviews.

Still thinking this through. Stay tuned for news of a new blog.

Blues: Ruthie Foster Live at Antone's

The fabulous Ruthie Foster took home two awards this week at the  33rd annual Blues Foundation Music Awards in Memphis, Tennessee: the Koko Taylor Award  for Traditional Blues Female Artist of the Year and Best DVD for Live At Antone’s. Here is a track from the DVD; the whole album is available on Spotify. What can I say? Greatness.

 

Lean on Pete by Willy Vlautin - IMPAC Dublin Shortlisted Novel

A novel about an impoverished teenager who hangs out at the stables of a local racetrack does not sound like my usual reading style, but Lean on Pete has been shortlisted for the 2012 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, piquing my curiosity about the book. Willy Vlautin follows a 15-year-old boy through his experiences as the neglected, hungry child of an affectionate but n’er-do-well father; as a low-paid worker at a Portland, Oregon racetrack; and then as a wanderer on the road during a dangerous period of homelessness.

The book shines a light on poverty in America as seen through the eyes of an adolescent narrator whose Huck Finn sweetness and ingenuity win the reader’s good will from the start. Vlautin remembers what it feels like to be a kid, from the sublime moments of hope and longing to the everday–every hour–appetite of the teen-aged male. Charley, who had been an athlete at his last high school, usually manages to find a meal, even if it means stealing a can of soup from a convenience store and eating it cold, but the instability of his food supply is a source of continuous worry.

Unlike other teens, Charley does not belong to a tribe of peers. Before his dad picks up and moves from Spokane to Portland to take a job in a warehouse, Charley had felt the sense of belonging that jock culture can give a young man. Now he is in a strange city where neither he nor his father knows anyone, school is out of session in summertime, and he is on his own. Sometimes his father gives him a meal or money for food, but usually the boy must fend for himself. Thus, he ends up working at the track, where he cares for some horses, including one he develops an affection for named Lean on Pete.

If the boy’s grit and determination keep you cheering for him, the sorry parade of adults through Charley’s solitary life can drive the reader to despair. The flawed, sometimes depraved, adults can be self-indulgent and clueless, like the boy’s father, or abusive and exploitative like the series of low-lifes Charley meets on the road. Representing their unruly lives involves graphic depiction of amoral, immoral, criminal, or downright disgusting behavior.

By no stretch of the imagination can this book be considered a "Young Adult" novel. Booklist put it on their 2010 list of "Adult Books for Young Adults," a good placement that I can agree with completely. Some teens may be mature enough to read the book. The Young Adult Library Services Association (of the American Library Association) nominated it for their Best Young Adult Fiction award but did not place it among their top ten. I would guess the grim and adult content kept it off the librarians’ suggested reading list; it is hard to believe ten other novels were superior in literary merit to Lean on Pete.

The novel won the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction and the Readers’ Choice Award in the 2011 Oregon Book Awards. Vlautin is keeping good company there; the 2012 Fiction winner was Patrick deWitt for The Sisters Brothers. To land on the Dublin IMPAC shortlist, Lean on Pete competed with 147 nominees from 45 countries and bypassed some celebrated writers on the longlist who did not make the cut: Gary Shteyngart, Kim Scott, Per Petterson, David Mitchell, Andrea Levy, Yan Martel, Nicole Krauss, David Grossman, Gail Godwin, Paul Auster, Howard Jacobson, Isabel Allende, and other famous names.

Vlautin writes in a large-hearted way about a boy’s struggle to survive rough conditions and establish a life for himself. With grace, tenderness, compassion, and unflinching realism he tells this dark but necessary story about a stolen childhood. Despite the sad context of Charley's struggle, Lean on Pete is a beautiful book, and although I have only read one other book on the IMPAC Dublin shortlist, it would not be surprising to see this gem of a novel take the prize.

NOTE: Lean on Pete is Vlautin’s third novel. He is the songwriter and singer for the Portland, Oregon band Richmond Fontaine.

Blues Foundation Awards 2012

The Blues Foundation announced their annual awards last night and Samantha Fish won the Best New Artist Debut of the Year for Runaway. She sings, yeah, but she also plays a very clean blues guitar. Congratulations to all the winners.

B.B. King Entertainer of the Year: Tab Benoit

Band of the Year: Tedeschi Trucks Band

Contemporary Blues Female Artist of the Year: Susan Tedeschi

Contemporary Blues Male Artist of the Year: Tab Benoit

Soul Blues Female Artist of the Year: Denise LaSalle

Soul Blues Male Artist of the Year: Curtis Salgado

Koko Taylor Award (Traditional Blues Female of the Year): Ruthie Foster

Traditional Blues Male Artist of the Year: Charlie Musselwhite

Album of the Year: Revelator by The Tedeschi Trucks Band (Sony)

Historical Album of the Year: Smokestack Lightning: The Complete Chess Masters, 1951-1960 by Howlin' Wolf (Hip-O Select)

Song of the Year: "The Lord Is Waiting, the Devil Is Too" by Johnny Sansone from The Lord is Waiting and the Devil Is Too by Johnny Sansone (self-released)

Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck

In her short novel Visitation, German writer Jenny Erpenbeck places a country house outside Berlin at the center of the action and follows the comings and goings of its inhabitants over a hundred-year period of turbulent history. As much as I admire this brilliant book, it should come with a warning label for painful, disturbing content. Numerous devastating passages, especially those about the Holocaust victims, were unbearable to read. She reports the unthinkable as matter-of-fact history, which it was, and the coolness of tone only magnifies the horror.

Erpenbeck adopts a detached, fairy-tale style, assigning types to her characters–The Architect, The Cloth Manufacturer, The Girl. As events drive waves of inhabitants from their house, one character stays on scene throughout most of the book: The Gardener. This man silently labors to plant and prune, keep the bees, maintain the outbuildings, and to effect whatever changes each new owner demands. The horticultural detail injects into the novel a lush sense of ongoing life, while the routine actions of the gardener also appear as a banal backdrop to the upheavals in the lives of the house’s owners.

The Gardener gets a chapter in between each of the sections about the other characters, establishing a rhythm of both continuity and change, while anchoring the history of the house in one man, who has almost nothing to say throughout the entire novel. He says "Thank you" once when someone offers him more potatoes at dinner, but otherwise we see him through his work or through reports of what others claim he has said. The rest of the cast of characters constantly changes, but The Gardener stays on through the Nazis, the Russian occupation, the Stasi repression, and the reunification of East and West Germany.

Michel Faber, writing in The Guardian, credits the translator Susan Bernofsky with an important contribution in bringing the book successfully to English-speaking readers. The translation, he says, changes the linguistic style full of bulky Germanic vocabulary and involuted grammar to a more simple and direct presentation in English. Bernofsky has apparently remained true to the tone of the language without making it sound ponderous.

Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck. Susan Bernofsky, translator.
German publication 2008.
English translation, Portobello Books, London, 2010.
Paperback edition, Portobello, 2011.
150 pages.
ISBN: 9781846271908

Blues: Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell (1928)

In his 1981 book Deep Blues, Robert Palmer says pianist Leroy Carr and and guitarist Scrapper Blackwell had a best-seller with their 1928 recording of "How Long--How Long Blues."

 

Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking now in James Beard Hall of Fame.

The James Beard Foundation has given the 2012 Cookbook Hall of Fame award to Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen and More Home Cooking by late food writer, fiction writer, editor and translator Laurie Colwin (1944-1992). I first read Colwin's short stories out of curiosity, after preparing one of her recipes that Molly O'Neill included in her 1992 New York Cookbook. Since cookstr.com posts the recipe, I will not re-type it here, but follow the link for an easy and delicious dish: Laurie Colwin's Baked Chicken. Here is the description as it appears in the New York Cookbook.

For eight years, the late novelist Laurie Colwin made this chicken for every dinner party she hosted. Eventually, she said, her guests “asked me to cool it.” Nevertheless, this chicken is what the writer’s mission in the kitchen is about: “It’s good, simple cooking,” she said. People, she claimed, “scream uncontrollably at the idea of baking the chicken for 2½ hours, but this is what makes it crusty and luscious.”

 

As always, there are some treasures among the James Beard Foundation winners. I see several interesting books and websites, including Individual Food Blog winner, Poor Man's Feast, and the winner for Reference and Scholarship, Turning the Tables: Restaurants and the Rise of the American Middle Class, 1880-1920 by Andrew P. Haley (The University of North Carolina Press). As always, the cookbook winners are inspiring. By the way, a good place to start with Laurie Colwin's fiction is her short story collection The Lone Pilgrim (1981).

For links to other bloggers' recent food posts, check out the Weekend Cooking feature at Beth Fish Reads.

Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) by George Orwell

Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) by George Orwell is an outrageously bitter and funny story about a man, nearing age 30, who gives up his job in an ad agency, in order to devote his life to poetry. He abandons the "money world," and he pays the consequences.

Working in a used bookstore in London for 2 pounds a week he sometimes cannot afford cigarettes, a beer at the pub, or a cheap restaurant dinner with his girlfriend. He lives in a run-down rooming house, where he is not allowed to have female visitors. His clothes and shoes are shabby. He lacks the means to participate in the ordinary social interactions of his fellow Londoners.

In an ironic twist, his effort to escape from bourgeois society condemns him to an existence in which every detail and every human interaction is defined by his lack of money. His constant awareness of his poverty overshadows the psychic energy he can devote to writing poetry.

In this book about a starving artist, the focus is on the starving. There are times when Orwell seems to be writing a parody of The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. This does not sound like it would be a very entertaining book, but Orwell is shameless in his humor. It is a skewering style of humor, acidic at times, and he never misses.

This novel is considered one of Orwell's minor works. It's not a Great Novel of the 20th Century, but it's a good read. Orwell is working in a style here that I enjoyed, but some readers may not have much patience for the (anti-)hero, will not appreciate Orwell's sense of humor, and will not be interested in reading about the travails of this young fool who quit a "good job" to live in self-imposed misery. Yes, the protagonist is a pill, but Orwell's sour approach is very funny. For me, it was a delight.

Keep the Aspidistra Flying  by George Orwell.
Original publication: Victor Gollancz Ltd., London (1936).