Sunday, January 8, 2012
THE JOY OF COOKING
This piece by Elinore Standard appeared in the Bedford, NY,
"Record Review" as one in an ongoing series -- "My Reading Life."
Works Mentioned: "The American Woman's Cookbook;" "Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking," by Meta Given; "Main Line Classics," "Il Talismano," by Ada Boni; "Alice B. Toklas Cookbook;" "The New York Times Cookbook," by Craig Claiborne; "Moosewood Cookbook," by Molly Katzen; "The Silver Palate Cookbook," by Julee Russo and Sheila Lukins: "The Book of Jewish Food," by Claudia Rhoden.
THE JOY OF COOKING
I have a friend who came to the US from Germany in the late 1930s. The family left everything they owned behind in Munich, along with the cook and the maid. Their first stop was a bed-sit on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. The children – my friend and her brother – were sent to school and their father went off to find work. The children found a copy of “The American Woman’s Cookbook” and gave it to their mother, a smart and organized woman who had never cooked anything in her life. She paged through the book to find recipes within her limited scope and before the children came home for lunch, cooked up the plat du jour. If things went well and if it was received without too much fuss by the children, she served it up again to the whole family that evening.
Later the family settled in LA and she became an inventive and competent cook. Her daughter, my friend, is one of the best cooks I have ever known. So when I think of cookbooks, I think of that family.
I’ve kept my first cookbook, “Meta Given’s "Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking” (Ferguson, 1947), a big, fat thing with recipes for squirrel and possum. I saved the menu of the first meal (ham and scalloped potatoes, endive and radish salad, apple Betty) I served in my own kitchen. I have affection for this tattered book that I consider a poor person’s “Joy of Cooking”.
Those were the days of the sunshine salad, the dump cake and the church ham supper. I have a lineup of cookbooks from churches and local organizations such as the “Main Line Classics” (Saturday Club, 1982) with recipes that make me wince. The Main Line one is heavy on the canapés like sweet and sour canned cocktail sausages.
As times changed and everyday meals became more sophisticated, I began to collect more cookbooks. I remember when my own mother, a woman to whom garlic was unknown, began to slip in a little sherry into the odd casserole, never telling my father who would have gagged.
After college, I got a TV job in Washington and my boss, just back in the States after a post in Europe, considered himself a cosmopolite among the yokels. He wore bespoke suits and shoes and yelled in Italian during his nightly calls to his mama in New York. Along with a bull whip which he sometimes cracked on the vinyl floor of his office, he kept on his desk a copy of Ada Boni’s “Il Talismano” a classic of Italian cookery. From him, I learned about such sublimities as a proper risotto and how to add anchovy paste to practically everything.
Alice B.Toklas was Gertrude Stein’s longtime companion and, as far as I can make out, personal slave. Toklas ran the household and often cooked. She organized their travels and received the guests who came to enjoy the excellent table chez Stein; she cooked for famous people including Picasso and Picabia and, in a fine little cookbook, describes what she gave them. The recipe for “Haschich” Fudge is described as something that “might provide an entertaining refreshment for a Ladies’ Bridge Club or a chapter meeting of the DAR.” Two pieces are quite sufficient, she cautions. Oh, swell, Alice. Call the DEA.
The paradox is that Alice may be longer-remembered than Gertrude because the little “Alice B. Toklas Cookbook” (Harper, 1954) remains a gem. Although it is a memoir more than a cookbook, its mission seems to be to acquaint Americans with French family cooking. Toklas and Stein remained in France during WWII and Toklas describes living (and dining) throughout the Occupation. This is a great book to re-read because it evokes a civilized time long gone. You may even decide to try Madame Louvet’s Asparagus Tips.
“The New York Times Cook Book,” edited by Craig Claiborne, was indispensable to the young New Yorker that I was when it appeared in 1961. We actually served Beef Wellington and Crème Brulée at large dinner parties and thought nothing of the trouble. Cooking back then was a new extreme sport and the Times cookbook was our guide.
“A wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap.” Molly Katzen uses this William Blake quote as the epigram to her “Moosewood Cookbook” (Ten Speed Press, 1977). It is brought to us by Katzen and others who created the Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, New York. This delightful vegetarian cookbook includes delicious recipes that include such previously unheard-of ingredients as tofu, alfalfa and mung sprouts, brown rice, tahini and tamari. I often made Cossack Pie (many kinds of vegetables topped by an egg and cheese soufflé, baked and covered with sour cream).
“The Silver Palate Cookbook,” by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins, came out in the early 1980’s (Workman) and takes it title from the name of their small Manhattan shop -- one of the earliest foodie establishments catering to the crowd that brought expensive take-out to unheard-of heights -- to the “passionate seekers of the good, the better, the best.” I like the recipes in the cookbook and I like the authors’ you-can-do-it tone. Among standbys are Chicken Marbella and their lovely butternut squash soup.
My current favorite, “The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey From Samarkand to New York”, is edited by Claudia Rhoden (Knopf, 1998). The collection is divided into the Ashkenazi and Sephardi worlds, that is, the European and Eastern spheres of Jewish tradition. Occasionally, a recipe will call for preserved lemon, an item not available out here in the sticks, so my friend and collaborator, Laura Furman, recently sent me a jar as a present.
Like book recommendations, friends send recipes by email, or -- less often these days -- through the mail. I file these shared recipes in folders and keep them on a kitchen shelf along with the black and white marbleized school composition book that contains my mother’s recipes, handwritten on the wide-lined pages with index tabs she cut out and pasted on to create divisions. Her collection, with its hefty pastries and one-dish meals, is definitely pre-Whole Foods. One of the few vegetable recipes is for “Spinach Strata” that requires two cups of cheddar cheese, some canned cream soup, tons of mayo, four eggs, a lot of buttered bread cubes plus a pack of frozen chopped spinach.
My cookbooks and family recipes are treasures, but more for browsing than for actual use. I am a scratch cook and for everyday fare I make do with whatever happens to be around.
* * *
Tell me about your own favorite cookbook: ehstandard@gmail.com
LONGITUDE, COD, and FRIED CHICKEN
This piece by Elinore Standard appeared in the Bedford, NY "Record Review" as one in an ongoing series "My Reading Life."
LONGITUDE, COD and FRIED CHICKEN
Mentioned below: "Longitude," by Dava Sobel; "Cod" and "Salt" by
Mark Kurlansky; "Hiroshima" and "Blues" by John Hersey; "A Cow's Life," by M.R. Montgomery; "The Secret Life of Dust," by Hannah Holmes; "Coal," by Barbara Freese; "Sweetness and Power," by Sidney Mintz; "Sex," by Madonna; "Fried Chicken" and "Apple Pie," by John T. Edge; "Spam," by Carolyn Wyman.
Dava Sobel surprised everybody, including herself, when her popular account of the 18th Century measuring of Longitude (Walker, 1995) became a bestseller. I remember taking the little paperback version on a cross-country flight and by the time I landed in California, I had gained appreciation of the marine chronometer or clock that would keep precise time at sea.
Not far behind “Longitude” came “Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World” (Walker, 1997) ” and “Salt: A World History” (Walker, 2002), both by Mark Kurlansky. (Notice that Walker appears to have got the early lock on publishing these successful one-subject books).
Although “Cod” got better reviews, to me “Salt” is more interesting. Think about salt as a source of wealth, state monopoly and means of exchange. See it as a preservative: salted fish, cheese, meat, and vegetables (think: pickles) were main staples in practically every culture. Know that salt is as essential to the everyday cook as it is to the chef at Nobu. A first century A.D. recipe from Apicius begins: “Pluck the flamingo, wash it, truss it, put it in a pot; add water, salt, dill and a bit of vinegar…”
In this genre of one-subject titles John Hersey got there early on with “Hiroshima” (1946) and then with “Blues” (Knopf, 1987) a loving tribute to fishing and to the less-than loveable bluefish (around our house known as “the rat of the sea”). Hersey includes poems about fish and fishing by Homer, and by modern poets including James Merrill, Elizabeth Bishop, Ted Hughes and Marianne Moore. Since knowing what to do with a bluefish once you’ve caught it is important, he provides several recipes (heavy on the garlic, rosemary and mayo—anything to subdue the nasty taste) that offer hope for making your bluefish palatable. The real trick to cooking a bluefish is to cause it happen within minutes of it being caught and gutted.
Maybe try “A Cow’s Life: The Surprising History of Cattle and How The Black Angus Come To Be Home On The Range” by M. R. Montgomery (Walker, 2004). This little book traces the evolution of domesticated cattle and, among other things, walks us through a day in the life of a Montana cow.
Perhaps you’d be interested in “The Secret Life of Dust: From The Cosmos To The Kitchen Counter, The Big Consequences of Little Things”, by Hannah Holmes (Wiley, 2001) and dedicated to “My big, fat muse, P. Earth." Holmes, who says she grew up in a household with a microscope on the kitchen table, concludes the universe is growing dustier with every passing million years. She says that ultimately dust will insulate the stars and the night sky will darken. “And then, like an old newspaper in the attic, the worn-out universe will gradually disappear under the thickening dust.”
“Coal: A Human History” by Barbara Freese (Perseus, 2003), takes us into another dimension, into the seams of coal beneath the earth. This is not so much a history of coal mining as it is a social, political and environmental history and explication of the world-changing essence of coal. Freese quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote about coal in the mid-19th Century: “Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta; and with its comfort brings its industrial power.” Freese thinks we may go back, someday, to using coal that, “for all its faults, brought us through a sort of prolonged industrial childhood and ultimately gave us the power to build a world that no longer needed coal.”
Digging deeper, there are the classic academic works on commodities such as Sidney Mintz’s ambitious work, “Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History” (Penguin, 1985). Most of these one-topic books can be found in the 500 section at your library, a repository of the esoteric, the exquisite, the obsessional. Go in there and you’ll emerge with an armful of books on subjects you never thought for a minute about and then spend happy hours reading about cows or coal, or maybe even dust.
One book you probably won’t find in the 500 section is “Sex” by Madonna, a coffee table-sized book (Ediciones B, 1992) whose first printing sold out in a week. A photo album about Madonna’s sex rather than, well, just sex, the book is long out of print and now collectible with prices at Amazon starting at $125 and going to more than $350. The only copy in the Westchester Library System had been at Mt. Vernon and, no big surprise, it is listed in the catalogue as “missing.”
You might want to try, “Fried Chicken: An American Story” by John T. Edge (Putnam, 2004) which lists 34 “favorite chicken houses” in 14 states with commentary on their specialties. You can read about Cape May Onion-Fried Shore Chicken, for example, and even try out a recipe for it. KFC, eat your heart out! For something to go with your chicken, Edge has also written “Apple Pie”.
Perhaps you’d care to dig into “Spam: A Biography” by Carolyn Wyman (Harvest, 1999). This is spam the ham product in a can, not the junk e-mail. Try to think of something nobody else has done, which is about as tough as finding a subject for a biography or a dissertation. I can think of a couple of topics I wouldn’t mind spending time writing about – amber, for example. Amber is so Baltic, so organic, so ancient.
It might be interesting to write about boxcars. Yes, boxcars might be good. Think of all the logos on those long lines of boxcars, hundreds of them, that took forever to trundle through the railroad crossing as you watched from the back seat of your father’s DeSoto. I Googled “boxcars” and found 99,000 entries, so figure it has, alas, as editors are so fond of saying, “ been done.” For the fun of it, go to HYPERLINK http://www.nonotuck.us./kens/boxcars / and you’ll see pictures of all sorts of railroad freight cars, a handy reference for all your trainspotting needs.
Then, I Googled “amber” and found myself on Page One of 6,420,000
entries. Pretty daunting for the would-be writer of a small book on a single interesting topic.
* * *
Elinore Standard is the editor, along with Laura Furman, of
“Bookworms: Great Writers and Readers Celebrate Reading. (1997. Carroll & Graf).
Friday, January 6, 2012
CUTTINGS
CUTTINGS
The comfrey from Martha Dana
Thrives below the back stone wall.
Bees love the modest flowers
And the lavish greenery has
Many healing abilities.
Cousin Tom gave me creeping violet
From his rock garden and now it is
Among the stones, above the comfrey.
Lady's mantle swapped with Charlotte
for Hosta Elegans fights for space
With silvery artemesia
From Stella, a constant gardener,
And the mother of my husband.
Years ago, walking with Virginia,
Before she lost her mind,
I pulled up some nice ivy
From a vacant lot
And trained it to climb.
Yellow iris from Susie's place in Fly Summit
Has survived, unhappy where it is.
Bishop's Weed from Loomis Street
Has taken over by the shed.
I've carried a shovel in the trunk of my car
And dug daylilies and asters from ditches.
Betty Ann and Helen poached
My white jonquils by moonlight
From somebody's front yard.
Rhubarb from Julia French is going crazy
Out on the compost
And Julia herself, well over 90,
Is in a nursing home over near Corning.
I treasure all these cuttings.
And watch for them each Spring,
Knowing exactly where each originated
And when it was planted.
When I'm gone, there'll be no remembering.
The next people
Will never understand rhubarb.
And the comfrey will be
Just another weed.
Elinore Standard
From Uptown Dogtown
DESPERATE
DESPERATE
"I want to go home," my
mother shouted
As we drove north, away from the
place
Where she used to live.
Angrier, she became, and panicked.
Huddled in my old winter coat,
Against the door
As far from me as possible.
The New Jersey turnpike was choked
Over the horizon and beyond.
I clunked the automatic locks.
This is terrible, I thought --
Explaining why, for the hundredth
time,
The journey was taking so long.
I felt like the biggest rat in the
world
And a liar, too, telling her we'd
be home soon,
Meaning my home, not hers.
As we traveled through the rain,
she read
Road signs that made her giggle:
"Whippany!"
"Parsippany!"
She said Mahwah was really funny,
And Ho Ho Kus a total scream.
Elinore Standard
From Uptown Dogtown
DUMPSTER
DUMPSTER
For a long time, I was obsessed with fixing my sister’s life. In addition to
enbattled family relationships and nasty fallings-out, she lived in a mess.
There were piles of old fashion magazines and closets full of clothing with original sales tags, never worn. The one useable bathroom cupboard had so many beauty products stacked in it, the nails were pulling out of the shelves. Nobody was allowed to use the darkened living room except the dogs, who peed on the rug. The kitchen cabinets were like booby traps: open the door and canned goods would shoot out at your head like missiles. The ovens were used for storage. The cellar flooded. and everything down there was moldy. The roof leaked and the windows
were painted shut. The toilets couldn’t be flushed and the washing machine drain emptied out over the front lawn.
I’d lie in my bed 500 miles away and obsess about how I’d sort her out. Over and over, I’d dream of pulling up a dumpster under her bedroom window and throwing all the junk down into it. I was resentful that my sister, the squeaky wheel, got not only attention from our mother but handouts of thousands and thousands of dollars. The fact is I also gave her money every month for years. I paid her dentist. I paid off her credit card. My silent little mantra went: “How come nobody ever helped me?” I knew she shopped for stupid stuff and I knew she was getting botoxed. All the while, I was getting burned up.
When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I wrote a short piece I called “Dumpster,” in which I described in detail the purge I’d conduct. Though I never showed it to anyone, somehow producing it got me off the hook. I quit thinking about the mess and I realized there was absolutely nothing I could do about it anyway.
I decided to stop trying to fix her life.
I also changed the script. Any story I ever told about her used to begin, “My poor sister…” I being, of course, the one who wasn’t ”poor”. It took years for me to realize how patronizing and condescending this actually was. It dawned on me I was doing the old routine: “Make them look bad so by comparison I’ll look good.”
I began describing my sister as a hero. Instead of talking about her loono boyfriend and joyless life, I described how she took care of our mother. Instead of saying what a manipulative scammer I thought she was, I’d talk about her devotion to our demented parent and her loyalty to someone from whom she got less than zero in return.
The more often I told the story in this new way, the easier I felt in my actual conversations with my sister. I told people about her hilarious ability to mimic anyone (including me, no doubt) and her great sense of humor. Instead of commenting on her lack of friends, I described how close she was to her three children and their families.
During a prolonged and frightening sickness, my sister lived alone. She took care of her animals and she visited our mother often. She constantly battled with the health care establishment and she recovered enough to put in a glamorous appearance at her son’s wedding. She drove around in a fancy car. She shopped.
As she was dying, she kicked out a social worker she couldn’t stand. She admitted the hospice people about two days before she died and she summoned the strength to say goodbye to her children and to tell them who (and who not) was to attend the funeral. She died in her home, a place she loved, and she did not die alone.
My sister, the hero.
For a long time, I was obsessed with fixing my sister’s life. In addition to
enbattled family relationships and nasty fallings-out, she lived in a mess.
There were piles of old fashion magazines and closets full of clothing with original sales tags, never worn. The one useable bathroom cupboard had so many beauty products stacked in it, the nails were pulling out of the shelves. Nobody was allowed to use the darkened living room except the dogs, who peed on the rug. The kitchen cabinets were like booby traps: open the door and canned goods would shoot out at your head like missiles. The ovens were used for storage. The cellar flooded. and everything down there was moldy. The roof leaked and the windows
were painted shut. The toilets couldn’t be flushed and the washing machine drain emptied out over the front lawn.
I’d lie in my bed 500 miles away and obsess about how I’d sort her out. Over and over, I’d dream of pulling up a dumpster under her bedroom window and throwing all the junk down into it. I was resentful that my sister, the squeaky wheel, got not only attention from our mother but handouts of thousands and thousands of dollars. The fact is I also gave her money every month for years. I paid her dentist. I paid off her credit card. My silent little mantra went: “How come nobody ever helped me?” I knew she shopped for stupid stuff and I knew she was getting botoxed. All the while, I was getting burned up.
When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I wrote a short piece I called “Dumpster,” in which I described in detail the purge I’d conduct. Though I never showed it to anyone, somehow producing it got me off the hook. I quit thinking about the mess and I realized there was absolutely nothing I could do about it anyway.
I decided to stop trying to fix her life.
I also changed the script. Any story I ever told about her used to begin, “My poor sister…” I being, of course, the one who wasn’t ”poor”. It took years for me to realize how patronizing and condescending this actually was. It dawned on me I was doing the old routine: “Make them look bad so by comparison I’ll look good.”
I began describing my sister as a hero. Instead of talking about her loono boyfriend and joyless life, I described how she took care of our mother. Instead of saying what a manipulative scammer I thought she was, I’d talk about her devotion to our demented parent and her loyalty to someone from whom she got less than zero in return.
The more often I told the story in this new way, the easier I felt in my actual conversations with my sister. I told people about her hilarious ability to mimic anyone (including me, no doubt) and her great sense of humor. Instead of commenting on her lack of friends, I described how close she was to her three children and their families.
During a prolonged and frightening sickness, my sister lived alone. She took care of her animals and she visited our mother often. She constantly battled with the health care establishment and she recovered enough to put in a glamorous appearance at her son’s wedding. She drove around in a fancy car. She shopped.
As she was dying, she kicked out a social worker she couldn’t stand. She admitted the hospice people about two days before she died and she summoned the strength to say goodbye to her children and to tell them who (and who not) was to attend the funeral. She died in her home, a place she loved, and she did not die alone.
My sister, the hero.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
DOGS! DOGS! DOGS!
This column originally appeared in the Bedford, NY "Record Review" as one of Elinore Standard's "My Reading Life" pieces.
Works Mentioned: "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight," by Alexandra Fuller; "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime," by Mark Haddon; "The Dog Fighter," by Marc Bojanowski; "The Dogs of Babel," by Caroline Parkhurst; "The Incredible Journey," by Sheila Burnford.
DOGS! DOGS! DOGS!
I am spacing out the chapters, dragging my feet, not wanting it to finish Alexandra Fuller’s memoir, “Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight” (Random House, 2001). It is the story of her girlhood on various remote farms in post-Colonial, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe Nyasaland/Malawi and Northern Rhodesia/Zambia. and Fuller has taken me right there with her, as part of her unruly, unprotected life.
During the 1970s and 80’s, the parts of these countries Fuller’s parents inhabited were geographically and physically inhospitable, and to hard-luck white farmers, scratching an existence out of tick-bitten cattle and low-grade tobacco in remote places, it was also dangerous. Land mines and trigger-happy juvenile soldiers were among the outside hazards sometimes too fantastic to take seriously when everyday life was so full of its own pressing danger.
While it instructs the reader about the contemporary geopolitical realities of region, Fuller’s book is as much the story of her alcoholic, bi-polar mother, a gorgeous, overburdened farmwife, horsewoman, barefoot doctor and veterinarian, big reader and major dog-lover. Somehow, Fuller writes about this amazing character with affection and candor. Both parents were racists as were most whites during that time and in that place. They were the “bosses”, yet they were dependent on local people for practically everything, including security, during long years of civil war and general upheaval. Of herself, Fuller says, “I am African by accident, not by birth. So while soul and heart, and the bent of my mind are African, my skin blaringly begs to differ and is resolutely white.”
As you go through Fuller’s chaotic childhood with her, you wonder how anybody in that family ever survived in the thick, swampy lands where they settled. And the fact is, three didn’t. Three of the Fuller children died early: one a baby, of meningitis, the next a toddler, by drowning, the third at birth. Nicola Fuller blamed the deaths of her children on “bloody Africa” and this rage and sorrow helped drive her mad. “All of us are mad, but I’m the only one with a certificate to prove it,” she observes.
Alexandra, “Bobo”, and her older sister, Vanessa, “Van”, accepted Nicola’s emotional peaks and troughs and despite Nicola;s haphazard parenting and the gruffness of their quixotic father, the sisters seemed to have managed the resilience needed to withstand the general craziness and ever-present danger surrounding them.
The book takes its title from lines by A.P. Herbert:
“Don’t let’s go to the dogs tonight,
For mother will be there.”
“The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time” is about a whole lot more than a curious incident. The narrator of Mark Haddon’s first novel (Doubleday paper (2003) is Christopher Boone, a 15-year-old autistic savant who calms himself by doing advanced mathematics in his head. Christopher’s compulsive everyday behavior is usually so impossible it would drive a saint crazy. People who come in contact with him lose patience and their own loss of control triggers Christopher’s fear-driven violence.
Haddon understands exactly how Christopher’s mind works and the unique point of view he produces is so realistic and elaborately interior, it makes you marvel at Haddon’s capacity for empathy. In addition to his clever line drawings, Haddon includes simple and complicated math problems (with solutions) and, best of all, he lays out on a simple grid an clear way to determine prime numbers. After you read “Curious Incident” prime numbers need never again be a mystery!
Were it not for the occasional strong language, “Curious Incident” could easily replace the overtired “Catcher in the Rye” as required reading in the high school curriculum. Some schools will be brave enough to adopt it and the book’s real concerns about loyalty, honesty, tolerance, and equality will provide a platform for interesting classroom and reading group discussion.
You know the saying, “I wouldn’t wear it to a dog fight”? Two dogs fighting each other is troubling enough to watch but think about a dog fighting a man when the fight is to the death. Vicious. And people watch and make bets and cheer. This is outlawed cockfighting carried to extreme -- and what, exactly, do you wear? The young women at the fights in Marc Bojanowski’s “The Dog Fighter” (Harper, 2004) wear dresses and pearls and they smell good, and they attend as ornaments, hanging on the arms of powerful men.
Set in Baja Mexico during the 1940s, this disturbing and brutal first novel introduces characters who could be described as “evil” if that word weren’t recently so degraded. The narrator, a dog fighter, writes about his life looking back over many years, and uses choppy sentence fragments, run-on sentences, misspellings, and he makes all the mistakes in grammar and usage made by a badly-educated, inexperienced, but talented and articulate writer. Reading this book requires effort. The reader gets stalled, has to re-read, and often has to stop and interpret the meaning. Occasionally, it requires paging back to sort out characters and events. Some readers will have no patience with this kind of annoyance but after finishing sixty pages or so, I found I was into it and had gotten used to the narrator’s voice.
The unsatisfying ending confounds the reader and leaves her wondering what, exactly, happened. I stuck with this book, often compelled by its brutality. I won’t go back to figure out the ending. Enough is enough.
I admire the confidence and daring of this first-time novelist and it will be interesting to see what critics say about Bojanowski when the book is formally published in August, 2004.
Enough is also enough with “The Dogs of Babel” a first novel by Carolyn Parkhurst (Time Warner, 2003). A beloved wife climbs to the top of a backyard tree and falls/jumps. She leaves behind signs and symbols that will help her grieving husband unravel the mystery of her death. He decides to teach the family dog, Lorelei, the only witness to the accident, to talk. There is a lot in here about real experiments with talking dogs, some involving appalling cruelty (see “Dog Fighter” for more animal cruelty) to the animals. The husband toils along with flash cards, and so on. Dear me. Poor Lorelei. Call the Humane Society.
So much for a spate of reading on a single topic: such an artificial and hokey effort is bound to produce disappointment. It did bring me to “Let’s Go to The Dogs Tonight,” an experience well worth plugging away for. If you want a real dog story, go read “The Incredible Journey.”
Elinore Standard is the co-author with Laura Furman of Bookworms: Great Writers and Readers Celebrate Reading (NY: Carroll&Graf, 1997.)
E-Mail her about your favorite Dog Books: ehstandard@gmail.com
Works Mentioned: "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight," by Alexandra Fuller; "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime," by Mark Haddon; "The Dog Fighter," by Marc Bojanowski; "The Dogs of Babel," by Caroline Parkhurst; "The Incredible Journey," by Sheila Burnford.
DOGS! DOGS! DOGS!
I am spacing out the chapters, dragging my feet, not wanting it to finish Alexandra Fuller’s memoir, “Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight” (Random House, 2001). It is the story of her girlhood on various remote farms in post-Colonial, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe Nyasaland/Malawi and Northern Rhodesia/Zambia. and Fuller has taken me right there with her, as part of her unruly, unprotected life.
During the 1970s and 80’s, the parts of these countries Fuller’s parents inhabited were geographically and physically inhospitable, and to hard-luck white farmers, scratching an existence out of tick-bitten cattle and low-grade tobacco in remote places, it was also dangerous. Land mines and trigger-happy juvenile soldiers were among the outside hazards sometimes too fantastic to take seriously when everyday life was so full of its own pressing danger.
While it instructs the reader about the contemporary geopolitical realities of region, Fuller’s book is as much the story of her alcoholic, bi-polar mother, a gorgeous, overburdened farmwife, horsewoman, barefoot doctor and veterinarian, big reader and major dog-lover. Somehow, Fuller writes about this amazing character with affection and candor. Both parents were racists as were most whites during that time and in that place. They were the “bosses”, yet they were dependent on local people for practically everything, including security, during long years of civil war and general upheaval. Of herself, Fuller says, “I am African by accident, not by birth. So while soul and heart, and the bent of my mind are African, my skin blaringly begs to differ and is resolutely white.”
As you go through Fuller’s chaotic childhood with her, you wonder how anybody in that family ever survived in the thick, swampy lands where they settled. And the fact is, three didn’t. Three of the Fuller children died early: one a baby, of meningitis, the next a toddler, by drowning, the third at birth. Nicola Fuller blamed the deaths of her children on “bloody Africa” and this rage and sorrow helped drive her mad. “All of us are mad, but I’m the only one with a certificate to prove it,” she observes.
Alexandra, “Bobo”, and her older sister, Vanessa, “Van”, accepted Nicola’s emotional peaks and troughs and despite Nicola;s haphazard parenting and the gruffness of their quixotic father, the sisters seemed to have managed the resilience needed to withstand the general craziness and ever-present danger surrounding them.
The book takes its title from lines by A.P. Herbert:
“Don’t let’s go to the dogs tonight,
For mother will be there.”
“The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time” is about a whole lot more than a curious incident. The narrator of Mark Haddon’s first novel (Doubleday paper (2003) is Christopher Boone, a 15-year-old autistic savant who calms himself by doing advanced mathematics in his head. Christopher’s compulsive everyday behavior is usually so impossible it would drive a saint crazy. People who come in contact with him lose patience and their own loss of control triggers Christopher’s fear-driven violence.
Haddon understands exactly how Christopher’s mind works and the unique point of view he produces is so realistic and elaborately interior, it makes you marvel at Haddon’s capacity for empathy. In addition to his clever line drawings, Haddon includes simple and complicated math problems (with solutions) and, best of all, he lays out on a simple grid an clear way to determine prime numbers. After you read “Curious Incident” prime numbers need never again be a mystery!
Were it not for the occasional strong language, “Curious Incident” could easily replace the overtired “Catcher in the Rye” as required reading in the high school curriculum. Some schools will be brave enough to adopt it and the book’s real concerns about loyalty, honesty, tolerance, and equality will provide a platform for interesting classroom and reading group discussion.
You know the saying, “I wouldn’t wear it to a dog fight”? Two dogs fighting each other is troubling enough to watch but think about a dog fighting a man when the fight is to the death. Vicious. And people watch and make bets and cheer. This is outlawed cockfighting carried to extreme -- and what, exactly, do you wear? The young women at the fights in Marc Bojanowski’s “The Dog Fighter” (Harper, 2004) wear dresses and pearls and they smell good, and they attend as ornaments, hanging on the arms of powerful men.
Set in Baja Mexico during the 1940s, this disturbing and brutal first novel introduces characters who could be described as “evil” if that word weren’t recently so degraded. The narrator, a dog fighter, writes about his life looking back over many years, and uses choppy sentence fragments, run-on sentences, misspellings, and he makes all the mistakes in grammar and usage made by a badly-educated, inexperienced, but talented and articulate writer. Reading this book requires effort. The reader gets stalled, has to re-read, and often has to stop and interpret the meaning. Occasionally, it requires paging back to sort out characters and events. Some readers will have no patience with this kind of annoyance but after finishing sixty pages or so, I found I was into it and had gotten used to the narrator’s voice.
The unsatisfying ending confounds the reader and leaves her wondering what, exactly, happened. I stuck with this book, often compelled by its brutality. I won’t go back to figure out the ending. Enough is enough.
I admire the confidence and daring of this first-time novelist and it will be interesting to see what critics say about Bojanowski when the book is formally published in August, 2004.
Enough is also enough with “The Dogs of Babel” a first novel by Carolyn Parkhurst (Time Warner, 2003). A beloved wife climbs to the top of a backyard tree and falls/jumps. She leaves behind signs and symbols that will help her grieving husband unravel the mystery of her death. He decides to teach the family dog, Lorelei, the only witness to the accident, to talk. There is a lot in here about real experiments with talking dogs, some involving appalling cruelty (see “Dog Fighter” for more animal cruelty) to the animals. The husband toils along with flash cards, and so on. Dear me. Poor Lorelei. Call the Humane Society.
So much for a spate of reading on a single topic: such an artificial and hokey effort is bound to produce disappointment. It did bring me to “Let’s Go to The Dogs Tonight,” an experience well worth plugging away for. If you want a real dog story, go read “The Incredible Journey.”
Elinore Standard is the co-author with Laura Furman of Bookworms: Great Writers and Readers Celebrate Reading (NY: Carroll&Graf, 1997.)
E-Mail her about your favorite Dog Books: ehstandard@gmail.com
...TO MY LOVELY WIFE, HELEN
This piece is one in a series "My Reading Life" first appearing in
The Record Review of Bedford, New York.
Works mentioned in this piece: "Middlemarch," by George Eliot "
"Beggars" and "Daffodils" by William Wordsworth; a poem by Lynn
Peters; an essay by Jenny Diski; "The Honorable Schoolboy" by John LeCarre; "Cold Granite" by Stuart MacBride;
TO MY LOVELY WIFE, HELEN
“…and to my lovely wife, Helen, without whose patience in typing countless manuscripts, this book would not have been possible.”
Are these some of the most pathetic words in literature? The wife (or female secretary) has long been an Acknowledgement cliché but happy to say, you don’t see it (much) any more. What you get now are those interminable blurbs where the author takes up a couple of pages at the beginning or at the end of the work, thanking anyone who has ever even answered the phone, plus the dog and the cat and everybody in the fifth lunch, for their unstinting support -- and, in the course of this yak, you learn everything there is to know about the person who wrote the book.
In fiction as well as in real life, the genius and amanuensis have been around for a long time. Think about Dorothea Brooke in George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” (1871) who helps her dithering ass husband to organize his futile “Key To All Mythologies.” Here is an interesting story that goes beyond organizing papers and taking dictation. Dorothea Brooke’s nutty desire to serve the awful Mr. Casaubon, “selflessly” produces a situation where the man allows the woman to step aside while he takes the credit.
A real-life Dorothy, Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855), the sister of William, has been the subject of speculation about the extent to which she influenced her brother as intellectual companion. Eventually, he married her best friend but she didn’t attend the wedding because she knew she would be too upset; the post-marital ménage included Dorothy. She was a constant keeper of journals, most of which have been preserved, and in them one can find concordances with poems written by William. Her brother’s poems, such as “Beggars” and “Daffodils” use her precise descriptions
As often is the case when two lives are so intertwined, “Oh, William, William! You drive me to the very edge of distraction!” (Journal, Easter Sunday, 1802) it is difficult to tell where one mind takes up and where the other one leaves off. There are thousands and thousands of Google references to Dorothy and to William Wordsworth and by accident, I found this one in a site called “Purple Elephant” which I can’t locate again because there are more than two million purple elephants.
Why Dorothy Wordsworth is Not as Famous as her Brother
by Lynn Peters
(For Poetry Week -- April, 2005)
"I wondered lonely as a ...
They're in the top drawer, William,
Under your socks –
I wondered lonely as a -
No not that drawer, the top one.
I wondered by myself -
Well wear the ones you can find.
No, don't get overwought my dear,
I'm coming
"One day I was out for a walk
When I saw this flock -
It can't be too hard, it had three minutes.
Well put some butter in it.
- This host of golden daffodils
As I was out for a stroll one -
"Oh you fancy a stroll, do you?
Yes all right, William, I'm coming.
It's on the peg. Under your hat.
I'll bring my pad, shall I, just in case
You want to jot something down?"
As a favorite writer, Jenny Diski, points out in “My Word, Miss Perkins” (London Review, August, 2005) a review of a book about literary secretaries, “…these days the author and writer are one and the same. Obviously we have to make an exception for industrial novelists like the late Robert Ludlum, who has a team who writes the books as well as others who type them before they add their authorial name, so that there are three layers to the finished manuscript – or possibly four if you include the ‘ideas’ officer…”
In 1977, John Le Carré, concluding the Foreword to “The Honorable Schoolboy” (Knopf), said: “And for Miss Nellie Adams, for her stupendous bouts of typing, no praise is enough.”
And here is a beaut from 2005: “Most of all, thanks to my naughty wife, Fiona; cups of tea, grammatical pointers, spelling, refusing to read the book in case she didn’t like it, and putting up with me all these years.” Stuart MacBride “Cold Granite” (St Martin’s). Naughty?
Nowadays, most writers key their own manuscripts on the computer, the re-casting and re-drafting made easy by word programs, so there isn’t all that much for Miss Adams to do. When the work is finished, it can simply be fired off to the publisher by pressing “Send.” No more need to put the manuscript in the refrigerator for safekeeping.
Diski says, “Learning shorthand and typing was once a way for a young man to have an exciting career as a journalist, or, like Dickens and his shadow, David Copperfield, to become a parliamentary reporter.” During the First World War, an army of clerks went to war and an army of women took over their office jobs, at lower wages than the men had been getting, of course. As Tillie the Toiler, the working girl either married the boss or, if she was Katharine Hepburn, or Melanie Griffith, wound up in an office with a window and a secretary of her own.
Elinore Standard
ehstandard@gmail.com
The Record Review of Bedford, New York.
Works mentioned in this piece: "Middlemarch," by George Eliot "
"Beggars" and "Daffodils" by William Wordsworth; a poem by Lynn
Peters; an essay by Jenny Diski; "The Honorable Schoolboy" by John LeCarre; "Cold Granite" by Stuart MacBride;
TO MY LOVELY WIFE, HELEN
“…and to my lovely wife, Helen, without whose patience in typing countless manuscripts, this book would not have been possible.”
Are these some of the most pathetic words in literature? The wife (or female secretary) has long been an Acknowledgement cliché but happy to say, you don’t see it (much) any more. What you get now are those interminable blurbs where the author takes up a couple of pages at the beginning or at the end of the work, thanking anyone who has ever even answered the phone, plus the dog and the cat and everybody in the fifth lunch, for their unstinting support -- and, in the course of this yak, you learn everything there is to know about the person who wrote the book.
In fiction as well as in real life, the genius and amanuensis have been around for a long time. Think about Dorothea Brooke in George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” (1871) who helps her dithering ass husband to organize his futile “Key To All Mythologies.” Here is an interesting story that goes beyond organizing papers and taking dictation. Dorothea Brooke’s nutty desire to serve the awful Mr. Casaubon, “selflessly” produces a situation where the man allows the woman to step aside while he takes the credit.
A real-life Dorothy, Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855), the sister of William, has been the subject of speculation about the extent to which she influenced her brother as intellectual companion. Eventually, he married her best friend but she didn’t attend the wedding because she knew she would be too upset; the post-marital ménage included Dorothy. She was a constant keeper of journals, most of which have been preserved, and in them one can find concordances with poems written by William. Her brother’s poems, such as “Beggars” and “Daffodils” use her precise descriptions
As often is the case when two lives are so intertwined, “Oh, William, William! You drive me to the very edge of distraction!” (Journal, Easter Sunday, 1802) it is difficult to tell where one mind takes up and where the other one leaves off. There are thousands and thousands of Google references to Dorothy and to William Wordsworth and by accident, I found this one in a site called “Purple Elephant” which I can’t locate again because there are more than two million purple elephants.
Why Dorothy Wordsworth is Not as Famous as her Brother
by Lynn Peters
(For Poetry Week -- April, 2005)
"I wondered lonely as a ...
They're in the top drawer, William,
Under your socks –
I wondered lonely as a -
No not that drawer, the top one.
I wondered by myself -
Well wear the ones you can find.
No, don't get overwought my dear,
I'm coming
"One day I was out for a walk
When I saw this flock -
It can't be too hard, it had three minutes.
Well put some butter in it.
- This host of golden daffodils
As I was out for a stroll one -
"Oh you fancy a stroll, do you?
Yes all right, William, I'm coming.
It's on the peg. Under your hat.
I'll bring my pad, shall I, just in case
You want to jot something down?"
As a favorite writer, Jenny Diski, points out in “My Word, Miss Perkins” (London Review, August, 2005) a review of a book about literary secretaries, “…these days the author and writer are one and the same. Obviously we have to make an exception for industrial novelists like the late Robert Ludlum, who has a team who writes the books as well as others who type them before they add their authorial name, so that there are three layers to the finished manuscript – or possibly four if you include the ‘ideas’ officer…”
In 1977, John Le Carré, concluding the Foreword to “The Honorable Schoolboy” (Knopf), said: “And for Miss Nellie Adams, for her stupendous bouts of typing, no praise is enough.”
And here is a beaut from 2005: “Most of all, thanks to my naughty wife, Fiona; cups of tea, grammatical pointers, spelling, refusing to read the book in case she didn’t like it, and putting up with me all these years.” Stuart MacBride “Cold Granite” (St Martin’s). Naughty?
Nowadays, most writers key their own manuscripts on the computer, the re-casting and re-drafting made easy by word programs, so there isn’t all that much for Miss Adams to do. When the work is finished, it can simply be fired off to the publisher by pressing “Send.” No more need to put the manuscript in the refrigerator for safekeeping.
Diski says, “Learning shorthand and typing was once a way for a young man to have an exciting career as a journalist, or, like Dickens and his shadow, David Copperfield, to become a parliamentary reporter.” During the First World War, an army of clerks went to war and an army of women took over their office jobs, at lower wages than the men had been getting, of course. As Tillie the Toiler, the working girl either married the boss or, if she was Katharine Hepburn, or Melanie Griffith, wound up in an office with a window and a secretary of her own.
Elinore Standard
ehstandard@gmail.com
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