The day after

For some reason I don't really want to think about too hard, I am not hung over today but Billy Collins, at some point (I think it was yesterday) read a poem called The Hangover which included the most poetic rendering of the children's pool game Marco Polo one could imagine. You should look it up, or better, find a recording of Billy reading it. It's entirely possible you will find such a recording in the near future on Littoral, The Key West Literary Seminar's entirely excellent blog. At least I hope so.

In the meantime I can now recite from memory the poem Bacon and Eggs by Howard Nemerov, like Billy a two-time Poet Laureate and apparently like Billy a funny guy, too. This is the entire text:

The chicken contributes

But the pig gives its all.

It's a good poem and it bore repeated recitation, along with Roy Blount, Jr.'s poem Oysters, of which I cannot recite the entire text though I do know the last lines:

I prefer my oysters fried

That way I know the oyster's died.

A sentiment with which I agree after reading The Big Oyster by Mark Kurlansky, in which he reports that if you have to shuck an oyster, it's alive (once it's dead, it relaxes the ligament holding the two sides of the shell together). I always liked them Florentine anyway, plus that way you don't have to worry about that pesky liver thing that can kill you.

All of which is to say, I learned a lot over the last 10 days and had a great time, too. It was cool to see New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik in action -- if you weren't at his keynote you'll just have to wait for the podcast because there's no way I could possibly describe it except as a cultural history of the concept of taste. My take-home from that talk: E Pluribus Unum, our national motto until 1956 when they replaced it with In God We Trust, came from a recipe. Pretty cool. (June 10 update: It's here! Download now for your auditory enlightenment!)

As usual, the Seminar makes me want to read almost every book by almost every writer who appeared, but this year's Seminar had the added effect of also making me want to eat almost everything described (except the human lung mucus from "Alive" -- thank you, Kate Christensen!) and cook almost everything, too. I had been wavering the entire time about buying American Food Writing, Molly O'Neill's anthology published by the Library of America. I knew we had it in the library collection but I also knew that you don't just check an anthology out of the library for two weeks and read it straight through; you dip in and out as the mood strikes you. The factor that put me over the edge yesterday was that it includes recipes, including James Beard's recipe for Beef Stroganoff, which seemed to come up multiple times. I might even attempt the damned thing.

Here, in no particular order except roughly chronological, are some of my highlights from the second session of the Seminar. Despite having a number of panelists (or seminarians, as Adam Gopnik suggested we call them) in common, it was very different -- but both were excellent.

• "The key to writing is to take the mental task and turn it into a physical task." -- Adam Gopnik, during a panel that compared cooking and writing
• "One advantage pro cooks have over pro writers is they get to yell at people." -- Gopnik again
• "It's a really dangerous moment when you sate the desire in a piece. I always feel like I've lost the reader and it's time to do the dishes." -- Molly O'Neill
• "Obsession is required" in cooking and writing -- Michael Ruhlman. Also, he notes, an immense capacity for repetition, aka practice
• Kate Christensen said she always notices a novel's "prandial plot" and "I hate novels that have no food in them."
• "Our relationship to food is revealing of our characters in the way that nothing else is." -- Christensen again
• On the page, "food isn't a metaphor. It's a thing in itself that explodes in the verbal part of your brain." -- Christensen a third time
• Take This Job and Shove It is "a ditty disappointed in itself" -- from Kevin Young's poem "On Being The Only Black Man At A Johnny Paycheck Concert"
• "Food is what distinguishes us as human beings, cooked food." -- Michael Ruhlman
• "If my peaches are successful, they are no longer mine." -- David Mas Masumoto, organic peach farmer and essayist
• "When you grow thousands of peaches, you don't bother sucking on the pit." -- Mas again
• "Without me, you would never have seen the poem 'Nebraskans eat their weiners.' " -- Mark Kurlansky, discussing "The Food of a Younger Land," the collection of WPA food writing from 1940
• "Locavore is a movement today. It was a way of life then. You had no choice." -- Kurlansky again
• The reason French food culture is so much better than English food culture is red wine, according to Adam Gopnik. "I don't think a beer and whiskey culture will ever have quite that same relationship to its food as a red wine culture."
• Gopnik recommends "The Feasts of Autolycus: The Diary of A Greedy Woman," published in 1900 by Elizabeth Robbins Pennell, saying that "a woman writing about her right to be greedy is writing about her right be sexy, to have sex."
• "Catullus would have loved Facebook. He would have been on there all the time." -- Billy Collins
• "Sometimes you write a poem because you don't want eating alone one night in Pittsburgh to come to nothing." -- Collins again, discussing his poem "The Fish."
• "Fat is good!" -- the refrain Michael Ruhlman had the entire auditorium calling out. "Salt and fat are two of my great passions."
• "Food is about generosity, not about withholding." -- Ruhlman again
• It turns out a buckeye is, in addition to being some kind of hard little nut, a delicious candy made with peanut butter surrounded by chocolate, a big favorite in Ohio. I had no idea.
• In a discussion of, er, food porn, we learned that magazine and cookbook editors demand the "hero shot" of food that presents it at its most, er, appetizing. Ahem.
• "Always pick the thing that is not a chain is one way to save the world." -- Elizabeth Berg, from her story "The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted"
• Favorite recipe: Buy two boxes of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. Make one box of macaroni, use both envelopes of cheese. -- Berg again, from the same story
• "The whole history of America was of gobbling up the continent." -- Mark Kurlansky
• "We don't eat money." -- An Icelander telling Mark Kurlansky why they eat haddock, not cod
• "I have never followed a recipe in my life. I read them and I'm inspired by them but then I just go do what I was going to do anyway." -- Molly O'Neill
• "We think of recipes as instruction manuals but recipes are sheet music." -- Michael Ruhlman
• "There are several generations of people now who think recipes know more than they do." -- Molly O'Neill
• "My overarching goal is to have more people cook for themselves because I think life is better that way. The world is better that way." -- Michael Ruhlman
• Judith Jones is "absolutely the last of the great cookbook editors. Everybody else is just trying to make the sucker fit on the page." -- Molly O'Neill
• The first line of the first edition of The Joy of Cooking: "Stand facing the stove."
• "A great meal in China has themes; it has a narrative arc." -- Nicole Mones
• "Where else can you win an international cookbook medal for a novel that doesn't contain any recipes?" Mones again
• "My childhood was not defined by the grand meals my mother cooked. It was defined by trips to Waffle House with my father." -- John T. Edge
• Recommended reading from Edge: Southern Fried Plus Six by William Price Fox
• And I'll give Billy Collins the last word: "I'm surprised more people don't read poetry. It's so short."

But is it literary?

The Key West Literary Seminar is underway -- we just wrapped up the first session; there's still room in the second session and if you're a literary foodie at all, this is one of those rare opportunities for your passions to combine. One topic that keeps coming up, as it has since we began discussing food as a theme for the Seminar, is the question of literariness (if that's a word). One of my fellow board members, whom I respect a lot and like even more, dislikes it when the writers get off the topic of writing and literature and just start talking about food. I disagree. And here's why:

First of all, there is plenty of talk about writing itself and to be honest, a diet of just that gets to be too much for me, especially since we're dealing with a double session here.

Second, we have gathered some of the smartest, most articulate people in the country who know from food. Why on earth would we NOT want them to talk about this subject, about which they are passionate and knowledgable -- and often quite funny. Not just the known funny people like Calvin Trillin, Roy Blount and Billy Collins, but Julia Reed was a revelation to many of us -- the woman should have her own standup act -- and even an eminence such as Madhur Jaffrey had the auditorium laughing out loud many, many times. Isn't their foodiness the very reason we brought them, along with their proven literary chops? When the subject is "more literary," say a genre like memoir, we don't object when the writers discuss some topic that is the focus of their work, do we? The whole point of the Seminar, to me, is to hear directly from the writers telling stories, about themselves, their own work and about other people, stories that are funny or sad or significant in some way. It's stuff you just wouldn't hear otherwise and it is very different hearing spoken by the writer herself than it is reading on the page.

I may be a bit oversensitive, having come from journalism and feeling like nonfiction generally is considered a literary stepchild compared to the exalted realms of fiction and poetry. And there were a few times when I agreed that the discussion veered a bit too far into the purely topical -- once about America's current crises in obesity and diabetes -- but in most cases that was driven by questions from the audience and I don't see what either the Seminar planners nor the writers can do about that.

So overall -- a rousing success, I must claim on my own behalf and that of the people who did most of the work putting this thing together, namely Miles Frieden and Arlo Haskell. There's still room to sign up for the second session, which I'm excited about -- it's going to be interesting to hear the new voices in the mix, especially the novelists (Kate Christensen, Elizabeth Berg and Nicole Mones) as well as a more historical perspective from Mark Kurlansky. And I'm excited to hear more from Madhur Jaffrey -- she's one of those people you could listen to all day even when she's just describing how to create a simple rice dish.

And here, to whet your appetite, are some of my personal highlights from the first session:

"It took a long time for American writers to feel comfortable admitting that they were actually writing about food."

and,

"It's ironic that, just as people stopped cooking they started reading cookbooks."

-- Ruth Reichl in the opening keynote address

Jonathan Gold said he hates the term "ethnic" when applied to restaurants. "Nobody ever calls French cooking ethnic."

We had Julia Child impressions from at least four the panelists -- the best by far was from Judith Jones; the worst was Roy Blount, Jr.

Diana Abu-Jaber describing the adoption of dishes from different cultures into the American diet, such as hummus with roasted red peppers in the grocery store: "There's fusion and I guess you'd call it confusion."

"The reason there's a taboo against cannibalism is that it must have been a powerful temptation."

-- Jason Epstein, after quoting a chef who says chefs cook for other people "so they don't eat us."

Someone asked Madhur Jaffrey if we should travel to India or if it's been ruined. She replied that India is like an onion with many layers existing together, from medieval to 21st century. "It is a rich, irritating, uplifting experience to go to India," she said. She recommends it.

A check-outable feast

There's just a month to go before the next Key West Literary Seminar and just in time, we at the Key West Library have received a shipment of books by writers appearing at the Seminar. This year's subject is The Hungry Muse: Food in Literature and the offerings are indeed appetizing. (It's not, by the way, the much-feared "cookbook seminar" and it's not just straight-up food writing, either -- our panelists will include novelists and poets and historians as well as some of the finest food writers in the nation.) We already had a bunch of books by these writers in our collection but the new ones are most welcome, including Eating by Jason Epstein, Ratio by Michael Ruhlman and At Home with Madhur Jaffrey. Jaffrey, by the way, will be at both sessions, as will be Calvin Trillin, Roy Blount, Jr., and Billy Collins. If you're interested in attending, there are still spots left in the second session -- and if you're in Key West, don't forget the Sunday afternoon panels and readings are always free and open to the public. Bon appetit!

And if you're wondering what's up with the slide show below -- well, I'm not much of a cook, to be honest. Given a couple free hours I will invariably spend my time reading instead of shopping for and preparing food. But these are some recent culinary creations of mine worth note -- the Swedish family recipe cake I made for our Stieg Larsson Book Bites session at the library, two pies I made for Thanksgiving (the inevitable pumpkin and the always popular apple-cranberry-raisin from the Fanny Farmer Cookbook), a batch of liebkuchen from another family recipe (and my favorite Christmas treat of the many, many kinds of cookies my grandmother used to make every year) and a cocktail, a Pisco guava punch prepared at the long-distance direction of Embury Cocktails impresario and New York Times-certified cocktail expert Jason Rowan. And all of them turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. Recipes available on request.

[slideshow]

March madness

No not that kind of March madness. But somehow, during this last month, I managed to read a lot. Not sure if I'll be able to keep this up but I've decided to take a more traditional book blogging approach and start posting reviews/opinions on my reading as I go. I'll use the grading system of my alma mater, the University of Massachusetts, where we did not mess around with plus and minus signs:. So here's a roundup of my March reading, starting with the most recent (technically finished April 1 but it was 3 a.m. and I read most of it in March so there): The Ghost by Robert Harris -- political thriller, which I checked out from the Key West Library. I started reading this on my lunch hour last Saturday, got half way through very quickly then realized that we planned to see the Roman Polanski movie based on the book, currently playing at The Tropic -- and that the point of movies like this is suspense. So I stopped reading and saw the movie, then returned to the book. I thought the movie was good, though not necessarily worth the rave reviews it received -- I think people are just thrilled to see a thriller that's not a shoot 'em up or that bears some resemblance to reality. In general, I preferred the book -- the characters were more nuanced, especially Adam Lang, and the big reveal felt more obvious and silly in the movie. I've read Pompeii by Harris and plan to read more of his historical fiction. AB

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins -- young adult fantasy/dystopia fiction that I checked out from the library. The second in her Hunger Games series, which I picked up because of a rave review on Citizen Reader and because I'm scouting dystopia lit for a future Literary Seminar -- and I think it would be particularly cool to get some YA writers in there, since fantasy including dystopian fantasy seems to be huge in that area now. Maybe it always has been (LeGuin, L'Engle, even Tolkein and Lewis and Pullman if you want to extend the boundaries). Anyway it was GREAT -- now I'm lining up with all the others waiting for the third installment in the trilogy, Mockingjay, which is to be published this summer. A

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins -- first in the series above, and also good especially at creating a believable world and a believable voice for its protagonist -- the book is first person from the perspective of a 16-year-old girl who has taken responsibility for her family after her father's death in a mine accident. I'll admit at first I had a little trouble warming to the story and was irritated by the misuse of "I" in the objective case a couple times, which is silly because people especially youngsters do it all the time now and hey this book is in the future so by then it could be the accepted usage. It's just a dumb grammar peeve of mine. But by the middle of the book I was there with Katniss as she attempts to navigate survival for herself and her family and deal with the weirdnesses of the world she's born into. AB

Unicorn's Blood by Patricia Finney -- historical fiction, Tudor thriller (Elizabeth again), sequel to Firedrake's Eye and even better -- perhaps because it has Elizabeth as what appears to be a real character -- and provides a sensible explanation for her vacillation and then reaction to the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. Finney's really good and I look forward to the last (so far) in this series, Gloriana's Torch, and hope she's writing more though she's got a couple other series going, too. I did give myself a start by looking her up on the Internet and seeing an online biography in which her politics are described as "right-wing." Huh? Conservative, sure, but right wing from my left wing perspective is Glenn Beck/Sarah Palin/teabagger territory. This upset me for a couple days until I decided 1) this website was far from definitive and 2) who cares since I'm reading her for entertainment and not political insight. Still, it did make me think about what baggage I'm bringing to my reading and my opinion of writers. AB

Chef by Jaspreet Singh -- literary adult fiction, picked up an ARC at the library, interested because we're doing food as our topic for the 2011 Literary Seminar. It's one of those nice, slim novels and I thought it was really good. A young man, son of a Sikh officer who is killed in the disputed Kashmir region between India and Pakistan, winds up there himself as an assistant chef to the commanding officer. Really well done and I love discovering a new writer. A

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore -- literary adult fiction, read an advanced review copy that I can't remember how I got hold of, was disappointed possibly because my expectations for Moore are impossibly high. Her previous work, the short story collection Birds of America, is one of my favorite books. This one seemed to walk the line between realism and satire, not always perfectly, and stretched plausibility in some of its events (no spoilers but one or two of the plot points, OK, but ALL of them? Really?). Still, Moore is a fantastic writer and it kept me going. I'm going to give it a B.

Incarceron by Catherine Fisher -- young adult fantasy fiction, got it from the public library, loved it. In an alternate future world, the haves live in a sort of Amish fantasy land while the have-nots are in a prison that, as far as they know, constitutes the entire world (Incarceron). A young woman, the daughter of the warden, catches on that Incarceron is not the paradise she has been told and makes contact with a young man inmate attempting to escape. First of a planned trilogy, natch. AB

Dissolution by C.J. Sansom -- historical fiction, Tudor thriller (Henry VIII), got from interlibrary loan via the public library, liked it very much. It may have suffered by comparison to my recent reading of Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel -- I'm still thinking of Thomas Cromwell as a sympathetic or at least understandable character whose POV I was inhabiting there so having him as the remorseless puppetmaster seems a little simple. B

Firedrake's Eye by Patricia Finney -- historical fiction, Tudor thriller (Elizabeth I), got it from the public library, liked it very much. First in the series followed by Unicorn's Blood (see above). A little complex with sections narrated by a crazy person, but I enjoyed the challenge of figuring out what was going on. AB

My YA kick looks to continue -- I've gotten hold of the third installment in Linda Buckley Archer's Gideon trilogy, called The Time Quake, and also came across a book called Beautiful Creatures which Amazon called one of its best of 2009 -- that looks to be more paranormal than dystopian -- I'm looking forward to it because in one online review, the writer was castigating herself for reading the Twilight series before this because this was so much better. It justifies my procrastination in reading Twilight; I suspect the writing will irritate me too much. Also high on my current TBR pile is The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian -- in May the library's Book Bites Book Club will be viewing "The Great Gatsby" and reading Gatsby and this book, which features characters and settings from Fitzgerald's novel. On the nonfiction side, I've picked up The Possessed by Elif Batuman and so far like it very much.

Oh yeah, and that library school thing, too, including a final research paper.

Poetry! We got yer poetry here!

In Key West, when the weather cools and the wind picks up it's time to start thinking about the Literary Seminar. The upcoming seminar focuses on poetry, honoring longtime Key West resident and two-time Pulitzer winner Richard Wilbur. Happily, amazingly, the Seminar is a sellout -- quite a feat in these uncertain times -- if you are planning to attend or just want to read along at home, the Key West Library has books by just about all the panelists and workshop leaders (and it's an impressive bunch). So stop by, check them out and, you know, check them out. There's a lot to read! (And it's never too early to start thinking about 2011 -- when the Literary Seminar will be looking at food in literature -- yummmmmmmmmmm .... )