When Miss Edith was just a little girl, she spent her summers at a house in New Hampshire. The original owners of the house left all their furniture behind when they sold the house, and so Miss Edith played with chairs that had been clawed by cats she’d never met; she played games that had been purchased for children she’d never met; and she read books purchased for children she’d never met. Among those books was a jacketless, Prussian blue picture book called Eloise in Paris. This was a magical book to Miss Edith, and while everyone raves about the author of this book, Kay Thompson, easily 80% of the magic of Eloise is in the drawings, which were done by Hilary Knight.
Miss Edith, as a youngster, spent hours and hours and hours absorbing these drawings, wanting to be able to draw just like Hilary Knight. And she learned to recognize that distinctive line, that unique style, that Knight used over and over again – in the entire Eloise series, as Edith would learn, but also in other books. In fact, it was when Miss Edith was about eight years old that she noticed, in her own mother’s book collection, a book that was illustrated by Hilary Knight. Because it had those drawings, Miss Edith assumed it was a book for children, and read it over and over again, even though it wasn’t really intended for little girls at all. The book was titled The I Hate to Cook Book and it was by a woman named Peg Bracken.
Miss Edith’s mother, who loathed cooking, and who to this day will not cook a meal for herself, believing she did her time when her children were young, adored this book and if you ask her will remember that several of the recipes in it, including one for liver and wild rice, were really very good. Miss Edith’s mother probably thought it was incredibly funny that her child would sit and read this crappy paperback over and over again, but that’s exactly what Miss Edith did, and to this day, Miss Edith reads The I Hate to Cook Book when she’s feeling blue. Or wants a laugh. Or can’t think of anything else good to read.
Peg Bracken resides in my mind right next to Betty MacDonald, author of the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books, because – you guessed it – those were also illustrated by Hilary Knight (except for the one which was done by a very young Maurice Sendak). But the attachment is stronger than my literal-child mind would have guessed; it’s true that the illustrations make a strong bond between all these books, but there’s also a sort of wry attitude toward domestic life that’s reflected in the works of both Bracken and MacDonald. And MacDonald was – I would learn years later – the author of The Egg and I, one of the funniest books ever written, and one which discusses in clear, snarky terms exactly why housekeeping is an endless uphill battle that really doesn’t get anyone anywhere in the end. (You can see that Miss Edith’s love for books like Home Comforts sits comfortably right alongside these cranky housewife books; life is full of these dichotomies.)
I would say that over the years I have read the complete Peg Bracken dozens of times – including her memoir, which no one seems to remember but me, which was titled A Window Over the Sink -- and in fact two weeks ago I began to re-read said memoir on a lark. A few days after I completed it and dropped it on my desk, too lazy to reshelve it (and it’s still here, I’m staring at it as I type), I saw in the New York Times an obituary for Peg Bracken. I hadn’t realized she was still alive; god, I’d’ve written her a fan letter aeons ago if I’d ever stopped to think about it.
Peg Bracken was, as far as I can tell, entirely unique in her literary persona. I don’t know much of anything about her personal life (memoirs notwithstanding) but she was the kind of writer who talked about boring things like cooking and cleaning without getting all preachy on you: her audience was smart women who worked. Her audience was women who felt that there was more to life than whelping pups, mopping the floor, and making sure that tablecloths were kept in a cabinet hanging so that they wouldn’t show unsightly creases when placed on the dining table. Her feeling was, If you’re the kind of person who wants to worry about tablecloth creases, that’s fine – just don’t make the rest of us think about it. To this end, she wrote The I Hate to Cook Book, and then a book on housekeeping, The I Hate to Housekeep Book, and a book on etiquette, the title of which I adore: I Try to Behave Myself. She also wrote about travel, and published a number of books of essays and magazine pieces and so on. I mean, there was more to Peg Bracken than this one little cookbook. But even if that was all she’d done – even if it was just, say, that brilliant domestic trilogy – that would be enough. One of the great frustrations of my time as a book buyer in new books was the discovery that The I Hate to Cook Book was out of print, and I could not order it for the store. If I’d’ve been able to, I would have sold a copy of that book every week. It’s not that I’d expect people to want to eat those recipes today – as the New York Times obituary points out, in the Age of Arugula Bracken’s recipes seem rather hopeless – but because Bracken’s voice, her way of expressing herself on the subject of cooking, is just priceless. The book was in print not too long ago as a mass market paperback that couldn’t have been priced at more than $8.99; I remember this because I actually bought a copy to give to my sister in law, who does not cook so much as a hard-boiled egg, ever. (I thought she would find the book just funny to read, but I’m assuming I was wrong, because she’s never once mentioned it to me.) It is a crying shame that America’s publishers let Peg Bracken’s greatest titles go out of print. Were there any justice in the publishing world, there would be a Library of America edition collecting all three of her domestic tomes, with introductory essays by Nora Ephron, Cheryl Mendelson, and someone else like maybe Cynthia Heimel or something.
But there is no justice.
A side note: the New York Times obituary was printed on October 23, 2007, right next to the obituary for Vincent DeDomenico, the man who invented Rice-A-Roni. I have not been so thrilled by an obituary page since the obituary for Selma Kock, lingerie fitter (“… died Thursday at Mount Sinai Medical Center. She was 95 and a 34B.”) ran next to the obituary for philosopher Bernard Williams.
The next time I have a martini, it shall be raised in Peg Bracken’s honor.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Friday, October 12, 2007
another small thought about small vegetables
i will use only lowercase letters in this post to keep things scaled properly.
ponder this one, o mothers and marketers of america: miniature spinach. to be known as:
mini-spini.
you can't tell me there aren't possibilities here. then spanakopitas would be available as "mini-spini-pies" which are just, you know, i mean, who could pass up a mini-spini-pie?
miss edith perhaps needs more coffee.
ponder this one, o mothers and marketers of america: miniature spinach. to be known as:
mini-spini.
you can't tell me there aren't possibilities here. then spanakopitas would be available as "mini-spini-pies" which are just, you know, i mean, who could pass up a mini-spini-pie?
miss edith perhaps needs more coffee.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Who handles the marketing for American Brussels sprout farmers?
Today I got to thinking, for complicated reasons, about Brussels sprouts and cabbages and how kids will eat cabbage as cole slaw but they won't eat Brussels sprouts. Then I wondered, "Why don't the marketing people re-name them "mini-cabbages" the way prunes have been renamed "dried plums"? It's like, duh.
Because -- here's the thing -- then you can parboil the sprouts and make -- you guessed it -- mini slaws! Imagine that! You could have mini-slaws that came in little mini tubs and they could all be different flavored! You could have Traditional American mini-slaw, or Special Curried mini-slaw, or Hot'n'Spicy mini-slaw... really, the possibilities are endless. There are a lot of cole slaw recipes out there.
And since it's well documented, at least in my head, that children will eat almost anything it if it's "mini," then mini-cabbages and mini-slaws are just marketing dreams waiting to happen.
I do realize that people will, in conversation and in blogs, refer to Brussels sprouts as mini-cabbages. But Miss Edith is envisioning something bigger. Miss Edith wants mini-cabbages to take over the world.
Because -- here's the thing -- then you can parboil the sprouts and make -- you guessed it -- mini slaws! Imagine that! You could have mini-slaws that came in little mini tubs and they could all be different flavored! You could have Traditional American mini-slaw, or Special Curried mini-slaw, or Hot'n'Spicy mini-slaw... really, the possibilities are endless. There are a lot of cole slaw recipes out there.
And since it's well documented, at least in my head, that children will eat almost anything it if it's "mini," then mini-cabbages and mini-slaws are just marketing dreams waiting to happen.
I do realize that people will, in conversation and in blogs, refer to Brussels sprouts as mini-cabbages. But Miss Edith is envisioning something bigger. Miss Edith wants mini-cabbages to take over the world.
Saturday, October 06, 2007
The Joys of Joanna Lumley, Rediscovered
To any English readers, this is going to seem extremely silly, but Americans might find the following novel.
Some years ago I worked in a bookshop which, when it finally went online, used AOL for email. For reasons completely beyond me, when the owner of the store decided to load one of those free AOL disks into the computer (these used to come in the mail at least once a week, or so it seemed), he ended up loading a UK or possibly Canadian version of AOL. This was nearly identical to the version I was accustomed to -- Miss Edith still maintains an AOL account, thank you very much -- but there was one amazing difference. Instead of a bland male voice saying, "You've got mail!" one was treated to a lush English woman's voice stating calmly yet seductively, "You've got post."
I cannot tell you how this entertained me. Notarius found it a joy beyond compare (he still brings it up from time to time). And I never thought to wonder who the female speaker was, but -- now it's come into my head -- it's the incomparable Joanna Lumley. And even better, some besotted schlub has created a link so that even us Yanks can, with little effort, and without searching for UK AOL, go here and click on this gent's link. (Not to make this sound any dirtier than it really is...)
Some years ago I worked in a bookshop which, when it finally went online, used AOL for email. For reasons completely beyond me, when the owner of the store decided to load one of those free AOL disks into the computer (these used to come in the mail at least once a week, or so it seemed), he ended up loading a UK or possibly Canadian version of AOL. This was nearly identical to the version I was accustomed to -- Miss Edith still maintains an AOL account, thank you very much -- but there was one amazing difference. Instead of a bland male voice saying, "You've got mail!" one was treated to a lush English woman's voice stating calmly yet seductively, "You've got post."
I cannot tell you how this entertained me. Notarius found it a joy beyond compare (he still brings it up from time to time). And I never thought to wonder who the female speaker was, but -- now it's come into my head -- it's the incomparable Joanna Lumley. And even better, some besotted schlub has created a link so that even us Yanks can, with little effort, and without searching for UK AOL, go here and click on this gent's link. (Not to make this sound any dirtier than it really is...)
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Madeleine L'Engle
Madeleine L’Engle died a few weeks ago, and I was genuinely saddened by this news, but it also got me to thinking about an issue that’s come up over and over again in my life. The problem is: when the subject of A Wrinkle in Time comes up, which I’d say it does at least once a year in my life, given the nature of what Miss Edith has always done for a living, why is it that I have no way of convincing people that I thought all of those books were just boring as fuck? How can I convince people that when I say, “I couldn’t stand the Narnia books,” what I mean is, I really hated reading the Narnia books, and was never able to absorb The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, let alone the rest of the series. No one ever believes me. There’s some kind of button in peoples’ minds that goes on – automatically – when they think of a bookish child – which Miss Edith certainly was – that equates “bookish child” with “Narnia, Hobbit, Wrinkle in Time.”
Folks, I’m saying this again: I hated all that stuff as a child. When I was at an age when I could have been reading that stuff, I was reading Judie Angell, Ellen Conford, and Norma Klein. I have not regretted this a whit. No one talks about Judie Angell, Ellen Conford, or Norma Klein, but I think about them all the time and I would heartily recommend them to young girls today, if they cared, which I’m sure they don’t. (Though Norma Klein’s books do have enough sex in them to seem realistic today, I note – which means that, if we’re honest, teenage sex a la Gossip Girl isn’t really a recent innovation. Someone ought to give Ms. Klein her due; it’s too bad she’s not alive to offer commentary on this subject in the New York Times or something.)
I know this is snotty, dear ones, but bear with me: I have a theory that goes like this. Narnia, Tolkien, and Wrinkle in Time readers develop into people – particularly if they’re boys – who like Rush and Pink Floyd too much. The girls, well, I can’t quite pinpoint their musical tastes but I’d imagine they lean toward the Celtic (Richard Thompson and Kirsty MacColl at the good end, and all that dross that I can’t even begin to think about at the other end.) We’re talking SCA and ren faires, here.
And then there are the girls who read Ellen Conford and so forth, and the boys who maybe read them too but also read Paul Zindel, and these people grew up to be English majors in college who really loved Edith Wharton and Jane Austen. The ren faire crowd is fairly thin here.
You know where Miss Edith stands. And Miss Edith will admit that she’s annoying, but anyone who’s ever examined her shoes – for example, that pink suede pair she dropped off at the cobbler’s yesterday, extremely elegant, thanks for noticing – knows that she’s not too interested in the suede-lace-up boot so popular among SCA types; it just doesn’t show off the ankle enough. Basically, this is a matter, I’m saying, of personal style. Madeleine L’Engle spoke to people who would grow up to wear mullets and shags and shirts that lace up the front. But what if your idea of chic headgear isn’t a metal helmet suitable for jousting but rather a snappy cloche? Well, then you evolved from Norma Klein to Dorothy Parker. There it is.
L’Engle was an old, old woman when she died, and it’s well-known that her family was always pissed off at her about one thing or another. But I wished that in all the hushed, worshipful pieces that were published about her at her death, more than one of them had spoken honestly and said, “Listen, if you weren’t REALLY into this stuff, it was INSUFFERABLY BORING.” The only piece I read anywhere that spoke to me about L’Engle was Meghan Cox Gurdon’s piece in the Wall Street Journal. And god bless her for it.
When I was eighteen, I read a book L’Engle wrote about marriage entitled Two-Part Invention and I loved it. I haven’t looked at it in years, and perhaps I ought to have a gander at it now, knowing that she manipulated the truth of her life over and over again for writing purposes – but even if I don’t, I will remember that book with more fondness and more respect than any of her children’s books. Call me evil, but that’s what Miss Edith thinks.
Folks, I’m saying this again: I hated all that stuff as a child. When I was at an age when I could have been reading that stuff, I was reading Judie Angell, Ellen Conford, and Norma Klein. I have not regretted this a whit. No one talks about Judie Angell, Ellen Conford, or Norma Klein, but I think about them all the time and I would heartily recommend them to young girls today, if they cared, which I’m sure they don’t. (Though Norma Klein’s books do have enough sex in them to seem realistic today, I note – which means that, if we’re honest, teenage sex a la Gossip Girl isn’t really a recent innovation. Someone ought to give Ms. Klein her due; it’s too bad she’s not alive to offer commentary on this subject in the New York Times or something.)
I know this is snotty, dear ones, but bear with me: I have a theory that goes like this. Narnia, Tolkien, and Wrinkle in Time readers develop into people – particularly if they’re boys – who like Rush and Pink Floyd too much. The girls, well, I can’t quite pinpoint their musical tastes but I’d imagine they lean toward the Celtic (Richard Thompson and Kirsty MacColl at the good end, and all that dross that I can’t even begin to think about at the other end.) We’re talking SCA and ren faires, here.
And then there are the girls who read Ellen Conford and so forth, and the boys who maybe read them too but also read Paul Zindel, and these people grew up to be English majors in college who really loved Edith Wharton and Jane Austen. The ren faire crowd is fairly thin here.
You know where Miss Edith stands. And Miss Edith will admit that she’s annoying, but anyone who’s ever examined her shoes – for example, that pink suede pair she dropped off at the cobbler’s yesterday, extremely elegant, thanks for noticing – knows that she’s not too interested in the suede-lace-up boot so popular among SCA types; it just doesn’t show off the ankle enough. Basically, this is a matter, I’m saying, of personal style. Madeleine L’Engle spoke to people who would grow up to wear mullets and shags and shirts that lace up the front. But what if your idea of chic headgear isn’t a metal helmet suitable for jousting but rather a snappy cloche? Well, then you evolved from Norma Klein to Dorothy Parker. There it is.
L’Engle was an old, old woman when she died, and it’s well-known that her family was always pissed off at her about one thing or another. But I wished that in all the hushed, worshipful pieces that were published about her at her death, more than one of them had spoken honestly and said, “Listen, if you weren’t REALLY into this stuff, it was INSUFFERABLY BORING.” The only piece I read anywhere that spoke to me about L’Engle was Meghan Cox Gurdon’s piece in the Wall Street Journal. And god bless her for it.
When I was eighteen, I read a book L’Engle wrote about marriage entitled Two-Part Invention and I loved it. I haven’t looked at it in years, and perhaps I ought to have a gander at it now, knowing that she manipulated the truth of her life over and over again for writing purposes – but even if I don’t, I will remember that book with more fondness and more respect than any of her children’s books. Call me evil, but that’s what Miss Edith thinks.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Miss Edith has a Small Moment of Joy
Miss Edith reads GalleyCat from time to time… today she saw this:
Thursday, Sep 20
Will the Book Party Have a Mosh Pit?
File under "Things I Sure Didn't See Coming": If you're of a certain age, you probably remember The Book of Lists and its sequels. You might even remember that Amy Wallace, one of the co-authors on those books, spent a lot of time in the orbit of New Age guru Carlos Castaneda, which she recounted in her memoir, Sorceror's Apprentice. Somewhere along the line, and with the help of former Dictators lead singer Handsome Dick Manitoba, she got from there to The Official Punk Rock Book of Lists. The two have recruited a bunch of celebrities to contribute, from the potentially serious (Nick Tosches' "10 Who Were Punk Before There Was Punk") to the silly (Debbie Harry's "People I'd Like to F ***") to the WTF (Mario Batali on pizzas of the world). Sadly not mentioned in the press release: Jim Carroll's list of people who died.
If no one gets this for Miss Edith for her birthday, whenever it comes out, she will have to eat one of her hats.
Thursday, Sep 20
Will the Book Party Have a Mosh Pit?
File under "Things I Sure Didn't See Coming": If you're of a certain age, you probably remember The Book of Lists and its sequels. You might even remember that Amy Wallace, one of the co-authors on those books, spent a lot of time in the orbit of New Age guru Carlos Castaneda, which she recounted in her memoir, Sorceror's Apprentice. Somewhere along the line, and with the help of former Dictators lead singer Handsome Dick Manitoba, she got from there to The Official Punk Rock Book of Lists. The two have recruited a bunch of celebrities to contribute, from the potentially serious (Nick Tosches' "10 Who Were Punk Before There Was Punk") to the silly (Debbie Harry's "People I'd Like to F ***") to the WTF (Mario Batali on pizzas of the world). Sadly not mentioned in the press release: Jim Carroll's list of people who died.
If no one gets this for Miss Edith for her birthday, whenever it comes out, she will have to eat one of her hats.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Miss Edith and Her Ongoing Gripe: Alice Waters
Miss Edith enjoys eating good food as much as the next person. In fact, she may enjoy it even more than the next person, given that the next person (these days) seems to regard McDonald’s as a food group unto itself.
So it’s not going to ring exactly true when she starts off by saying here that she thinks Alice Waters is the biggest pain in the ass.
Alice Waters has done an awful lot of good for an awful lot of people. We all eat better and more interesting food as the result of her influence. (Please see David Kamp’s United States of Arugula, any issue of Gourmet magazine printed in the last thirty years, or today’s article in the New York Times.) I am personally thrilled that Americans eat more beets because of Alice Waters. I love goat cheese and it’s because of Alice Waters. I get it, folks, I really do.
But at the same time, I really wish – Notarius is so sick of hearing me talk about this – I really wish that someone would kick this woman in the butt and get her to be just a smidge, a pinch, more realistic about food and cooking.
It was gratifying, in today’s Times article, to read the writer make a few digs in this direction. I don’t read nearly enough in major press outlets about how annoying Alice Waters is. I certainly harp on it a lot, but, you know, no one listens to me. Who the hell am I to talk about food? After all, I live in Connecticut, don’t own a restaurant, am not an organic farmer, and have no clout whatsoever.
But you know, it’s almost precisely because of those fact that people – people like Alice Waters, even – should pay attention to what I, and people like me, think. Home cooking is mostly done by people like me. Or at least, people not that unlike me. Home cooking is done more by people like me than by people like Alice Waters. People like Alice Waters, I’d wager, spend more time eating out than eating in. And people like Alice Waters always live in some place – like, say, Berkeley, CA – where it’s possible to get darling little baby beets, baby this, or baby that, all twelve months out of the year.
Fuck this shit. Reading about Alice Waters is enough to make this goat-cheese loving snob want to go buy a can of Ravioli-Os and eat them straight from the can. Cold.
Them’s tasty.
So it’s not going to ring exactly true when she starts off by saying here that she thinks Alice Waters is the biggest pain in the ass.
Alice Waters has done an awful lot of good for an awful lot of people. We all eat better and more interesting food as the result of her influence. (Please see David Kamp’s United States of Arugula, any issue of Gourmet magazine printed in the last thirty years, or today’s article in the New York Times.) I am personally thrilled that Americans eat more beets because of Alice Waters. I love goat cheese and it’s because of Alice Waters. I get it, folks, I really do.
But at the same time, I really wish – Notarius is so sick of hearing me talk about this – I really wish that someone would kick this woman in the butt and get her to be just a smidge, a pinch, more realistic about food and cooking.
It was gratifying, in today’s Times article, to read the writer make a few digs in this direction. I don’t read nearly enough in major press outlets about how annoying Alice Waters is. I certainly harp on it a lot, but, you know, no one listens to me. Who the hell am I to talk about food? After all, I live in Connecticut, don’t own a restaurant, am not an organic farmer, and have no clout whatsoever.
But you know, it’s almost precisely because of those fact that people – people like Alice Waters, even – should pay attention to what I, and people like me, think. Home cooking is mostly done by people like me. Or at least, people not that unlike me. Home cooking is done more by people like me than by people like Alice Waters. People like Alice Waters, I’d wager, spend more time eating out than eating in. And people like Alice Waters always live in some place – like, say, Berkeley, CA – where it’s possible to get darling little baby beets, baby this, or baby that, all twelve months out of the year.
Fuck this shit. Reading about Alice Waters is enough to make this goat-cheese loving snob want to go buy a can of Ravioli-Os and eat them straight from the can. Cold.
Them’s tasty.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Heartwarming News
This just made me so happy.
It came to my attention today that someone landed at Miss Edith's piece about The New Criterion and Jack Kerouac by doing a search for:
Jack Kerouac Asshole
Whoever you are, o searcher: Thank you. You've made Miss Edith very happy.
It came to my attention today that someone landed at Miss Edith's piece about The New Criterion and Jack Kerouac by doing a search for:
Jack Kerouac Asshole
Whoever you are, o searcher: Thank you. You've made Miss Edith very happy.
At the Request of Notarius: Miss Edith and The Tale of the Ring
Many years ago, when Notarius and I had been shacked up for maybe a year or so, we had a dramatic moment.
It began when I was making a huge pot of vegetarian chili. This was something I did every week or so, much as I do now; the pot I use today is the same pot I used then. It’s a huge black Le Creuset Dutch oven, an absolute monster of a pot that weighs a ton when empty and even more when full of chili. It was one of the first things Notarius and I bought together when we forged our domestic partnership. I expect we will use it until we are dead, unless one of us manages to shatter it first, but that seems unlikely.
I wore on my hands, in those days, two rings, one on the ring finger of each hand. One was a plain silver band, like a wedding ring, but sterling silver. The other ring, on my right hand, was also sterling silver, but much heavier, thicker, and had set into it a highly polished garnet. I had designed this ring myself and having the ring made was a special gift my mother made to me when my brother got married. I never took off these rings; I slept with them, I bathed with them, I cooked with them – I took them off, as best I can recall, only when I was doing something really really messy, like mixing dough or meatloaf by hand.
So there we were. As I recall it was a rather placid Sunday afternoon, though I can’t be sure of that. What I remember was that it was an entirely unremarkable day – I only make chili on unremarkable days – and the chili was simmering happily in the pot when I noticed that one of my rings, the one with the garnet, was not on my hand.
“Hey,” I said to my beloved, “Do you know where my ring is?”
My beloved did not. “It must be in the kitchen,” he said. This sounded reasonable. Was it on a counter? By the sink? On the kitchen table? No to all. The ring was nowhere. I was not happy. How could I have lost my special ring? The “wedding” ring was also special – I’d bought it for myself to commemorate my graduating from college, to replace a lovely but distinctly undignified silver ring in the shape of a snake that wrapped up my ring finger and had an amethyst on the back of the snake’s head. It was punk and cool and it looked great on me, but I had known it would not be a good accessory on job interviews, and so I’d convinced myself to acquire the “wedding” ring instead. It had cost $42 (the same amount as the snake ring, which I had felt was a sign). The ring with the garnet, the retail value of which I did not know, was worth far more to me than the “wedding” ring. I was very, very upset about not knowing where it was.
Notarius tried to keep me calm. “It’s got to be around here somewhere,” he said. “Maybe it’s in the chili!” I said hopefully. I had a method (which I no longer use) of mashing up the canned plum tomatoes for chili by sticking my hand in the can and just crunching up the tomatoes. A ring could easily slide off in those circumstances, and there were at least two cans’ worth of tomatoes in that big pot. I carefully and methodically began to transfer spoonsful of chili into a smaller bowl so that I could inspect the chili, hunting for the ring. This was time consuming, and netted me no ring.
“Maybe it’s in the garbage,” I said gloomily. “It probably is!” Notarius said. I spread garbage bags and newspapers out on the floor and dumped the kitchen trash onto the floor. The ring was nowhere. At this point, I was really at a loss. How could I explain to my mother what had happened to the ring?
“It’s going to turn up in some totally unexpected place,” Notarius said, trying to comfort me. “It can’t have gone far.” He used a flashlight to look under the refrigerator and under the stove; we found dustbunnies but no ring. Finally he urged me to come watch TV and relax. “It’ll turn up,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
In those days we used the living room of our apartment as our bedroom; the two bedrooms in the apartment were used as studies. (This made entertaining a little weird occasionally, but when it was just the two of us at home it was a perfectly fine arrangement.) So I followed Notarius into the living room/bedroom, where the TV was on. He sat in his rocking chair, and I perched nervously at the foot of the bed, wondering what the hell had happened to my garnet ring.
After a few minutes, I decided to keep looking for it. I’d already spent probably an hour scouring the kitchen for the ring, but it had to be around someplace. It wasn’t like I’d lost it around town; I was too nervous a person to’ve let that happen. I felt too weird without the ring on to let that happen. So I stood up. Notarius looked over at me, clearly thinking, “Oh, Christ, here we go again.” Standing up, I looked down at the folded blanket I’d been sitting on. And I noticed a little round imprint. Just the size of a ring.
All this time that I’d been sifting through chili and garbage and dustbunnies looking for the ring, I realized, it had been on my person the whole time… just not in its usual place. I slid my hand tentatively over my butt, which was in a pair of jeans at the time. Indeed: a small, circular lump. I slid my hand under the denim, under my underwear… and there was my garnet ring: stuck to my ass.
We were immediately convulsed with laughter, and also immediately remembered the classic Nicholson Baker scene – I believe it’s in his much-underrated second novel, Room Temperature, which I’ve just begun to re-read – when our protagonist/narrator remembers a night when his girlfriend gets out of bed to pee in the middle of the night. Sleepy, she notices some coins have somehow landed in the bed, and she’s been sleeping on them. “Dime on my bottom,” she says, removing a coin from a cheek.
It was just like that, except instead of “dime on my bottom,” it was “ring on my ass”.
In case anyone is wondering, I happen to know exactly how this happened, by the way. I had, while cooking, taken a little potty break – hey, these things are necessary sometimes – and after washing my hands but not drying them perhaps as thoroughly as I ought to have done, I had straightened out my shirt (tucked into jeans) and underwear (slightly crumpled in tucking-in process) by sliding my hand into the back of my jeans at my ass. Somehow, the ring had slid off, and I had not noticed it while sitting…because I’d been cooking, i.e., standing up ever since leaving the toilet. It was only once I sat down again that I could re-discover the ring.
To this day, in our household, whenever something goes missing, Notarius will helpfully suggest that I check my ass.
What a charmer.
It began when I was making a huge pot of vegetarian chili. This was something I did every week or so, much as I do now; the pot I use today is the same pot I used then. It’s a huge black Le Creuset Dutch oven, an absolute monster of a pot that weighs a ton when empty and even more when full of chili. It was one of the first things Notarius and I bought together when we forged our domestic partnership. I expect we will use it until we are dead, unless one of us manages to shatter it first, but that seems unlikely.
I wore on my hands, in those days, two rings, one on the ring finger of each hand. One was a plain silver band, like a wedding ring, but sterling silver. The other ring, on my right hand, was also sterling silver, but much heavier, thicker, and had set into it a highly polished garnet. I had designed this ring myself and having the ring made was a special gift my mother made to me when my brother got married. I never took off these rings; I slept with them, I bathed with them, I cooked with them – I took them off, as best I can recall, only when I was doing something really really messy, like mixing dough or meatloaf by hand.
So there we were. As I recall it was a rather placid Sunday afternoon, though I can’t be sure of that. What I remember was that it was an entirely unremarkable day – I only make chili on unremarkable days – and the chili was simmering happily in the pot when I noticed that one of my rings, the one with the garnet, was not on my hand.
“Hey,” I said to my beloved, “Do you know where my ring is?”
My beloved did not. “It must be in the kitchen,” he said. This sounded reasonable. Was it on a counter? By the sink? On the kitchen table? No to all. The ring was nowhere. I was not happy. How could I have lost my special ring? The “wedding” ring was also special – I’d bought it for myself to commemorate my graduating from college, to replace a lovely but distinctly undignified silver ring in the shape of a snake that wrapped up my ring finger and had an amethyst on the back of the snake’s head. It was punk and cool and it looked great on me, but I had known it would not be a good accessory on job interviews, and so I’d convinced myself to acquire the “wedding” ring instead. It had cost $42 (the same amount as the snake ring, which I had felt was a sign). The ring with the garnet, the retail value of which I did not know, was worth far more to me than the “wedding” ring. I was very, very upset about not knowing where it was.
Notarius tried to keep me calm. “It’s got to be around here somewhere,” he said. “Maybe it’s in the chili!” I said hopefully. I had a method (which I no longer use) of mashing up the canned plum tomatoes for chili by sticking my hand in the can and just crunching up the tomatoes. A ring could easily slide off in those circumstances, and there were at least two cans’ worth of tomatoes in that big pot. I carefully and methodically began to transfer spoonsful of chili into a smaller bowl so that I could inspect the chili, hunting for the ring. This was time consuming, and netted me no ring.
“Maybe it’s in the garbage,” I said gloomily. “It probably is!” Notarius said. I spread garbage bags and newspapers out on the floor and dumped the kitchen trash onto the floor. The ring was nowhere. At this point, I was really at a loss. How could I explain to my mother what had happened to the ring?
“It’s going to turn up in some totally unexpected place,” Notarius said, trying to comfort me. “It can’t have gone far.” He used a flashlight to look under the refrigerator and under the stove; we found dustbunnies but no ring. Finally he urged me to come watch TV and relax. “It’ll turn up,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
In those days we used the living room of our apartment as our bedroom; the two bedrooms in the apartment were used as studies. (This made entertaining a little weird occasionally, but when it was just the two of us at home it was a perfectly fine arrangement.) So I followed Notarius into the living room/bedroom, where the TV was on. He sat in his rocking chair, and I perched nervously at the foot of the bed, wondering what the hell had happened to my garnet ring.
After a few minutes, I decided to keep looking for it. I’d already spent probably an hour scouring the kitchen for the ring, but it had to be around someplace. It wasn’t like I’d lost it around town; I was too nervous a person to’ve let that happen. I felt too weird without the ring on to let that happen. So I stood up. Notarius looked over at me, clearly thinking, “Oh, Christ, here we go again.” Standing up, I looked down at the folded blanket I’d been sitting on. And I noticed a little round imprint. Just the size of a ring.
All this time that I’d been sifting through chili and garbage and dustbunnies looking for the ring, I realized, it had been on my person the whole time… just not in its usual place. I slid my hand tentatively over my butt, which was in a pair of jeans at the time. Indeed: a small, circular lump. I slid my hand under the denim, under my underwear… and there was my garnet ring: stuck to my ass.
We were immediately convulsed with laughter, and also immediately remembered the classic Nicholson Baker scene – I believe it’s in his much-underrated second novel, Room Temperature, which I’ve just begun to re-read – when our protagonist/narrator remembers a night when his girlfriend gets out of bed to pee in the middle of the night. Sleepy, she notices some coins have somehow landed in the bed, and she’s been sleeping on them. “Dime on my bottom,” she says, removing a coin from a cheek.
It was just like that, except instead of “dime on my bottom,” it was “ring on my ass”.
In case anyone is wondering, I happen to know exactly how this happened, by the way. I had, while cooking, taken a little potty break – hey, these things are necessary sometimes – and after washing my hands but not drying them perhaps as thoroughly as I ought to have done, I had straightened out my shirt (tucked into jeans) and underwear (slightly crumpled in tucking-in process) by sliding my hand into the back of my jeans at my ass. Somehow, the ring had slid off, and I had not noticed it while sitting…because I’d been cooking, i.e., standing up ever since leaving the toilet. It was only once I sat down again that I could re-discover the ring.
To this day, in our household, whenever something goes missing, Notarius will helpfully suggest that I check my ass.
What a charmer.
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Jack Kerouac. Whatever.
Another article in the latest New Criterion that Miss Edith enjoyed very much because it made her feel warm inside was Anthony Daniels’ thing about how Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is totally fucking overrated.
When did you first read On the Road? Almost certainly you were in high school, and it was one of the few books you read that wasn’t actually required for homework. Anyone who’s read this book, as far as I can tell, read it like that. I know I did. And I remember that there was a passage that made a big impression on my little 14 year old mind – something, I think, about Terry’s first appearance in the book – but the truth is I can’t remember a thing about it now. And the last time that I tried to remember it was – this I remember clearly – when I was nineteen and traveling on a Vermont Transit bus, trying to make conversation with a young man who was traveling to his job teaching at a boarding school in Putney. He was reading On the Road, and because we were the only two people on the bus under the age of 40, we tried to chat with each other. And we did chat, fairly happily, until we both got off the bus in Brattleboro and went our separate ways. I think his name was Chet. But see, this is my point – I remember Chet and that Vermont Transit trip a hell of a lot better than I remember On the Road, which is supposed to be so important to me since I am, after all, supposed to be one of these artsy types.
I remember that I sort of enjoyed On the Road when I first read it. I liked at least the first 75 or so pages. I then went and made the mistake of buying several other Kerouac books – Dr. Sax, I’m pretty sure, and The Dharma Bums, and, oh yes, I remember buying Pic; and I never made it through any of them. I was certainly an ambitious reader in those days but the truth was that my eyes were bigger than my stomach more often than not. I found Kerouac painfully boring. I gave up on him and have never looked back.
One of the funny observations I’ve made through years and years as a bookseller is that I can generally tell whether or not people are going to annoy me horribly based on the books they like. I know that a guy who likes Kurt Vonnegut, Herman Hesse, and Jack Kerouac a little too much is a guy who, well, let’s put it this way: I wouldn’t want to be romantically involved with this guy. I’m not saying he’s guaranteed to be an asshole. I just mean that our temperaments would not mesh well. I was glad to read Mr. Daniels’s article. It made me feel like maybe I haven’t been crazy all these years. I mean, sure, Capote said, “That’s not writing, that’s typing,” but that in itself isn’t enough of a critique to really take seriously (genius though it is, in its way). Daniels’s essay was, like Mr. Epstein’s, writing that made me nod my head in agreement. It made me feel like I was not alone in my frustration with this hero worship – because that’s what it is. Hero worship. And I don’t think Kerouac is worth worshipping.
As you were, readers.
When did you first read On the Road? Almost certainly you were in high school, and it was one of the few books you read that wasn’t actually required for homework. Anyone who’s read this book, as far as I can tell, read it like that. I know I did. And I remember that there was a passage that made a big impression on my little 14 year old mind – something, I think, about Terry’s first appearance in the book – but the truth is I can’t remember a thing about it now. And the last time that I tried to remember it was – this I remember clearly – when I was nineteen and traveling on a Vermont Transit bus, trying to make conversation with a young man who was traveling to his job teaching at a boarding school in Putney. He was reading On the Road, and because we were the only two people on the bus under the age of 40, we tried to chat with each other. And we did chat, fairly happily, until we both got off the bus in Brattleboro and went our separate ways. I think his name was Chet. But see, this is my point – I remember Chet and that Vermont Transit trip a hell of a lot better than I remember On the Road, which is supposed to be so important to me since I am, after all, supposed to be one of these artsy types.
I remember that I sort of enjoyed On the Road when I first read it. I liked at least the first 75 or so pages. I then went and made the mistake of buying several other Kerouac books – Dr. Sax, I’m pretty sure, and The Dharma Bums, and, oh yes, I remember buying Pic; and I never made it through any of them. I was certainly an ambitious reader in those days but the truth was that my eyes were bigger than my stomach more often than not. I found Kerouac painfully boring. I gave up on him and have never looked back.
One of the funny observations I’ve made through years and years as a bookseller is that I can generally tell whether or not people are going to annoy me horribly based on the books they like. I know that a guy who likes Kurt Vonnegut, Herman Hesse, and Jack Kerouac a little too much is a guy who, well, let’s put it this way: I wouldn’t want to be romantically involved with this guy. I’m not saying he’s guaranteed to be an asshole. I just mean that our temperaments would not mesh well. I was glad to read Mr. Daniels’s article. It made me feel like maybe I haven’t been crazy all these years. I mean, sure, Capote said, “That’s not writing, that’s typing,” but that in itself isn’t enough of a critique to really take seriously (genius though it is, in its way). Daniels’s essay was, like Mr. Epstein’s, writing that made me nod my head in agreement. It made me feel like I was not alone in my frustration with this hero worship – because that’s what it is. Hero worship. And I don’t think Kerouac is worth worshipping.
As you were, readers.
Some Thoughts on Literature and Literary Theory: Joseph Epstein's, which are quite lucid, and Miss Edith's, which are less so.
The latest issue of The New Criterion hit the stands – or, at least, reached our humble home – recently and, as is my wont, I nicked it from Notarius’s bag as soon as I noticed it. I read faster than he does and so feel fairly ok with taking periodicals from his bag to read; often, I’ve digested whatever is in there that I want to read before he’s even noticed the thing isn’t in his bag anymore.
Now, some issues of The New Criterion entertain me no end, and others leave me incredibly uninterested. I borrowed from the library that book of collected essays from the rag that came out some months back – Counterpoints, I believe it was called – convinced that it would be worth it for me to lug the heavy thing home; surely out of all those pages there’d be at least three pieces I’d love to pieces?
No. I was bored shitless within, oh, five essays. That is to say, I tried to read five different articles, wasn’t interested in any of them, and glanced through the rest of the book concluding that this was a mission to abort. I feel bad about this, but there it is. The truth is, Miss Edith is not a brainiac. She does not read to be enlightened or to have new doors opened. She reads to be entertained, and that means the article has to be about something that’s already somewhat relevant to her existence.
Fortunately, the new issue of the magazine met me on this, and there are at least two articles I sincerely enjoyed and which even left me sort of shooting my fist into the air crying “Gabba Gabba Hey!” to Joseph Epstein and Anthony Daniels.
The Epstein piece, ‘ “The Literary Life” at 25,’ is a sort of recap of what’s been going on in the lit’ry world for the last 25 years, and to hear him tell it, the truth would be: Not as much as you would hope, because writers have gotten “workshopped” into vapidity and opt for gimmickry whenever possible. This is certainly my position, and I cringe at the use of the word “workshop” when used as a verb, to boot.
When Miss Edith was a young thing in college, studying literature, the thing to do wasn’t to study the fiction per se, but rather to study something they called literary theory. I thought it was utter bullshit and a waste of time. College, however, felt differently, and insisted I study this shit. I remember that I weighed various options and decided that the efficient thing to do would be to take a lit theory course (which my advisor said I had to take, or else) over the summer, thus lessening the number of weeks I’d have to be miserable studying the shit. To this end, I enrolled in a Yale summer program, where I studied literary theory under one of the great men of the field, I guess. I sat in a classroom with Yale students – a charming lot, I can assure you – not one of whom had ever read Jane Eyre, it turned out. If I dug up my diaries from that summer I bet I could come up with a complete list of basic stuff that, I was shocked to discover, these overachievers had never read, even though most of them were about to be juniors or seniors in college. It was amazing to me. Apparently Yale was crushing these kids to be little theorybots and had decided that it just wasn’t important to’ve read anything like, say, a novel.
The professor was singularly unimpressed by me even though I had read the novels he referred to in passing; in addition, I knew already who Foucault and Derrida were (and could spell their names correctly). This didn't earn me any brownie points, though; I think he could tell I was not one of his flock. He actually called a meeting with me one day late in the summer session and asked me exactly why I was taking this course. I explained that I had been asked to take a course in theory even though it wasn’t exactly relevant to what I would be working on. He asked what I would be working on. I explained it to him; he flinched oh-so-politely, and gave me a gentleman’s C for my grade. It was, all things considered, rather nice of him; had I failed, I would have been sort of screwed. But the truth was, really, I saw no value in what he was teaching, and I never did in years to come, either. I’m somewhat vindicated, then, by Mr. Epstein’s article: “…theory in academic literary criticism seems to be playing itself out by the sheer force of its deep inner uselessness.” Hallelujah!
Mr. Epstein has various complaints and I don’t really want to discuss them point by point here. I just wanted to express my gratitude to him for elucidating thoughts that I myself have had in the back of my head for a long time now that I haven’t been able to express very well: the dissatisfaction with so many books published today, the basic emptiness of so many of the works of fiction that are popular, relatively speaking (not Danielle Steel popular, but Michael Chabon popular) today. Mr. Epstein discusses the lack of moral backbone supporting the world-view of so many of the literary novels we see today and, reading this, it suddenly struck me that perhaps this was part of why I loved Cheryl Mendelson’s Morningside Heights so much. Because it was, yes, set in a milieu I can enjoy reading about, and it was a novel of manners, but also, at the end of the day, it was a morality tale. It was about good triumphing over evil, or, at least, the bad and annoying and sleazy (personified, yes, by a lawyer). People I know either love or hate this novel, if they’ve ever looked at it, and I can accept that. I don’t care. I love it, and shall continue to re-read it and enjoy it. I only wondered, as I finished Mr. Epstein’s article, if he had read Ms. Mendelson’s book, and, if so, what did he make of it?
Now, some issues of The New Criterion entertain me no end, and others leave me incredibly uninterested. I borrowed from the library that book of collected essays from the rag that came out some months back – Counterpoints, I believe it was called – convinced that it would be worth it for me to lug the heavy thing home; surely out of all those pages there’d be at least three pieces I’d love to pieces?
No. I was bored shitless within, oh, five essays. That is to say, I tried to read five different articles, wasn’t interested in any of them, and glanced through the rest of the book concluding that this was a mission to abort. I feel bad about this, but there it is. The truth is, Miss Edith is not a brainiac. She does not read to be enlightened or to have new doors opened. She reads to be entertained, and that means the article has to be about something that’s already somewhat relevant to her existence.
Fortunately, the new issue of the magazine met me on this, and there are at least two articles I sincerely enjoyed and which even left me sort of shooting my fist into the air crying “Gabba Gabba Hey!” to Joseph Epstein and Anthony Daniels.
The Epstein piece, ‘ “The Literary Life” at 25,’ is a sort of recap of what’s been going on in the lit’ry world for the last 25 years, and to hear him tell it, the truth would be: Not as much as you would hope, because writers have gotten “workshopped” into vapidity and opt for gimmickry whenever possible. This is certainly my position, and I cringe at the use of the word “workshop” when used as a verb, to boot.
When Miss Edith was a young thing in college, studying literature, the thing to do wasn’t to study the fiction per se, but rather to study something they called literary theory. I thought it was utter bullshit and a waste of time. College, however, felt differently, and insisted I study this shit. I remember that I weighed various options and decided that the efficient thing to do would be to take a lit theory course (which my advisor said I had to take, or else) over the summer, thus lessening the number of weeks I’d have to be miserable studying the shit. To this end, I enrolled in a Yale summer program, where I studied literary theory under one of the great men of the field, I guess. I sat in a classroom with Yale students – a charming lot, I can assure you – not one of whom had ever read Jane Eyre, it turned out. If I dug up my diaries from that summer I bet I could come up with a complete list of basic stuff that, I was shocked to discover, these overachievers had never read, even though most of them were about to be juniors or seniors in college. It was amazing to me. Apparently Yale was crushing these kids to be little theorybots and had decided that it just wasn’t important to’ve read anything like, say, a novel.
The professor was singularly unimpressed by me even though I had read the novels he referred to in passing; in addition, I knew already who Foucault and Derrida were (and could spell their names correctly). This didn't earn me any brownie points, though; I think he could tell I was not one of his flock. He actually called a meeting with me one day late in the summer session and asked me exactly why I was taking this course. I explained that I had been asked to take a course in theory even though it wasn’t exactly relevant to what I would be working on. He asked what I would be working on. I explained it to him; he flinched oh-so-politely, and gave me a gentleman’s C for my grade. It was, all things considered, rather nice of him; had I failed, I would have been sort of screwed. But the truth was, really, I saw no value in what he was teaching, and I never did in years to come, either. I’m somewhat vindicated, then, by Mr. Epstein’s article: “…theory in academic literary criticism seems to be playing itself out by the sheer force of its deep inner uselessness.” Hallelujah!
Mr. Epstein has various complaints and I don’t really want to discuss them point by point here. I just wanted to express my gratitude to him for elucidating thoughts that I myself have had in the back of my head for a long time now that I haven’t been able to express very well: the dissatisfaction with so many books published today, the basic emptiness of so many of the works of fiction that are popular, relatively speaking (not Danielle Steel popular, but Michael Chabon popular) today. Mr. Epstein discusses the lack of moral backbone supporting the world-view of so many of the literary novels we see today and, reading this, it suddenly struck me that perhaps this was part of why I loved Cheryl Mendelson’s Morningside Heights so much. Because it was, yes, set in a milieu I can enjoy reading about, and it was a novel of manners, but also, at the end of the day, it was a morality tale. It was about good triumphing over evil, or, at least, the bad and annoying and sleazy (personified, yes, by a lawyer). People I know either love or hate this novel, if they’ve ever looked at it, and I can accept that. I don’t care. I love it, and shall continue to re-read it and enjoy it. I only wondered, as I finished Mr. Epstein’s article, if he had read Ms. Mendelson’s book, and, if so, what did he make of it?
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Shopping: for pasta, canned tomatoes, and true love... Miss Edith Gets Sentimental...
In the mid-1990s, maybe it was more like the late 1990s, on into the early 2000s, my dear college pal G. and I emailed each other at least ten times a day. We were in our twenties, mostly unattached in romantic terms, and we had a lot of time on our hands. I worked something like 20 hours a week, and G. worked at home writing children’s books. She was in Mississippi, and then Virginia, and I was in Connecticut, but we were in touch so frequently that no aspect of the other’s life was unknown to us. It was sort of insane, I suppose, but that’s what it’s like to be a girl in your twenties, I think; there’s one girlfriend who you tell absolutely everything, and she is your lifeline. That is, if you’re lucky, that’s how it is. We complained to each other about everything, but we also amused the hell out of each other.
G. comes from a huge family in Pennsylvania and her parents owned a restaurant; she grew up cooking because of this, mostly Italian food. I come from a small family in Connecticut by way of Manhattan and my parents were not especially interested in cooking, to put it mildly. But when I was in my twenties, I had no money – I mean, no money – because I preferred to work this crazy job instead of getting a proper salary at a normal job. And because I was often without a romantic attachment – one of my rules about romantic attachments was that they should either be skilled cooks or able to pay for restaurant meals all the time – eventually I had to teach myself how to cook. G. was very good company in this regard. As the mother of a young child, she was good at advising on time-saving, effort-saving tricks in the kitchen. As a single mother supporting her family on basically nothing, she was in the same boat as I was (well, worse off, really, but she lived in places where the cost of living was much lower), so we could compare notes on cost-saving cooking enterprises ad nauseam, and we did.
G. and I spent hours and hours emailing each other about what we were cooking, what we were thinking about cooking, and what we would never cook because we thought it was stupid. We fantasized about sushi meals we couldn’t afford and we discussed the numerous ways to gussy up boxed macaroni and cheese so that we could eat it with a relatively clear conscience. Among the many ways we compared notes in this vein was that we would painstakingly copy out for each other the receipts from our shopping trips. I mean that every single time we went and bought groceries – even if it was just picking up milk and a can of tomatoes – we’d email each other to say what we’d bought. We had an elaborate system involving asterisks and other symbols to indicate when an item had been bought with a coupon or was on special at the store. We’d discuss total dollars spent, what money had been saved, what had been a splurge, and why some things were justified splurges (artichoke hearts: a necessary luxury) and others were just insane splurges but necessary at the moment in order to maintain morale (smoked oysters – which were stocked up on in a big way if they went on sale, which they hardly ever did, believe me).
I was reminded of these emails, which I wish I’d printed out and saved (though I’d’ve had to have been crazy to do this; the amount of paper involved could never have been amortized no matter how many coupons I clipped), when I was in the library and noticed a new book on the shelf. Entitled Milk Eggs Vodka: Grocery Lists Lost and Found, I knew right away that even though it was a big heavy book I had to take it home and read it straight through.
Apparently the author of this book, Bill Keaggy, has been documenting for some years the grocery lists he has found or that people have sent to him. He has a website, www.grocerylists.org, which I haven’t looked at yet but I gather that it is sort of the pure, expanded version of this book. The book is either a totally moronic waste of time or a delightfully funny waste of time, depending on one’s perspective. Notarius, when he saw me curling up with it on our wonderful upholstered couch this evening, practically scowled with disgust when I showed him what I was reading. This is not a book for the high-minded, let’s say. On the other hand, when he heard me belly-laughing at what I saw, which I did several times, he clearly softened a bit: the book has to have some value if it can make me laugh out loud like that.
I know there’s little justice in this world, and that books seldom receive the level of attention they deserve (i.e., the books that everyone’s talking about are almost always crap and little gems like this fall by the wayside – but I must add that 99% of the books out there are crap, even that so-called literary fiction that I’m supposed to take so seriously but refuse to on moral grounds). But if I were still a book buyer for a bookstore, I would make sure to have this book in stock: there would be a stack of five of them, prominently displayed. I would sneak it into people’s hands, and say, “I know this is silly. I know. And I know you’ll think less of me for recommending this book. But really – look at it. This thing is hilarious.”
It may not hit in hardcover, but if I had my druthers, this book would be a successful book come Christmastime, if not in 2007 then at least in the future, when there will be (I hope) a paperback edition priced in the neighborhood of $14.95. Though to be honest this hardcover is only $19.99, which isn’t so bad. Look for it. Laugh. Buy it for the person who was your best friend in the whole wide world when you were 28. I’m assuming you’re still close. G. and I are….
G. comes from a huge family in Pennsylvania and her parents owned a restaurant; she grew up cooking because of this, mostly Italian food. I come from a small family in Connecticut by way of Manhattan and my parents were not especially interested in cooking, to put it mildly. But when I was in my twenties, I had no money – I mean, no money – because I preferred to work this crazy job instead of getting a proper salary at a normal job. And because I was often without a romantic attachment – one of my rules about romantic attachments was that they should either be skilled cooks or able to pay for restaurant meals all the time – eventually I had to teach myself how to cook. G. was very good company in this regard. As the mother of a young child, she was good at advising on time-saving, effort-saving tricks in the kitchen. As a single mother supporting her family on basically nothing, she was in the same boat as I was (well, worse off, really, but she lived in places where the cost of living was much lower), so we could compare notes on cost-saving cooking enterprises ad nauseam, and we did.
G. and I spent hours and hours emailing each other about what we were cooking, what we were thinking about cooking, and what we would never cook because we thought it was stupid. We fantasized about sushi meals we couldn’t afford and we discussed the numerous ways to gussy up boxed macaroni and cheese so that we could eat it with a relatively clear conscience. Among the many ways we compared notes in this vein was that we would painstakingly copy out for each other the receipts from our shopping trips. I mean that every single time we went and bought groceries – even if it was just picking up milk and a can of tomatoes – we’d email each other to say what we’d bought. We had an elaborate system involving asterisks and other symbols to indicate when an item had been bought with a coupon or was on special at the store. We’d discuss total dollars spent, what money had been saved, what had been a splurge, and why some things were justified splurges (artichoke hearts: a necessary luxury) and others were just insane splurges but necessary at the moment in order to maintain morale (smoked oysters – which were stocked up on in a big way if they went on sale, which they hardly ever did, believe me).
I was reminded of these emails, which I wish I’d printed out and saved (though I’d’ve had to have been crazy to do this; the amount of paper involved could never have been amortized no matter how many coupons I clipped), when I was in the library and noticed a new book on the shelf. Entitled Milk Eggs Vodka: Grocery Lists Lost and Found, I knew right away that even though it was a big heavy book I had to take it home and read it straight through.
Apparently the author of this book, Bill Keaggy, has been documenting for some years the grocery lists he has found or that people have sent to him. He has a website, www.grocerylists.org, which I haven’t looked at yet but I gather that it is sort of the pure, expanded version of this book. The book is either a totally moronic waste of time or a delightfully funny waste of time, depending on one’s perspective. Notarius, when he saw me curling up with it on our wonderful upholstered couch this evening, practically scowled with disgust when I showed him what I was reading. This is not a book for the high-minded, let’s say. On the other hand, when he heard me belly-laughing at what I saw, which I did several times, he clearly softened a bit: the book has to have some value if it can make me laugh out loud like that.
I know there’s little justice in this world, and that books seldom receive the level of attention they deserve (i.e., the books that everyone’s talking about are almost always crap and little gems like this fall by the wayside – but I must add that 99% of the books out there are crap, even that so-called literary fiction that I’m supposed to take so seriously but refuse to on moral grounds). But if I were still a book buyer for a bookstore, I would make sure to have this book in stock: there would be a stack of five of them, prominently displayed. I would sneak it into people’s hands, and say, “I know this is silly. I know. And I know you’ll think less of me for recommending this book. But really – look at it. This thing is hilarious.”
It may not hit in hardcover, but if I had my druthers, this book would be a successful book come Christmastime, if not in 2007 then at least in the future, when there will be (I hope) a paperback edition priced in the neighborhood of $14.95. Though to be honest this hardcover is only $19.99, which isn’t so bad. Look for it. Laugh. Buy it for the person who was your best friend in the whole wide world when you were 28. I’m assuming you’re still close. G. and I are….
Monday, September 03, 2007
Miss Edith Gets Distracted. Easily.
The Wall Street Journal is a rag I enjoy for several reasons, none of them particularly honorable or having to do with their true function. So I never tell anyone to reading anything in there that’s actually important, and I admit this with little shame.
Last week, however, I was compelled to contact someone I work with to bring to their attention an article about corporate blogs. (Please don’t ask why I was moved to address this subject. It’s not pretty.) Interestingly, in the course of emailing the article to said co-worker, I stumbled on a little piece that the WSJ had about a sort of comic distraction that one could peruse online. Being a sucker for these kinds of things, I went straight to it, and now I’m going to share the joy with you, in case you don’t already know about it. It helps to find cats amusing, but frankly, it’s not really about animals per se. It’s just a certain kind of humor that, if you’re in the right mood, is really fucking funny.
www.icanhascheezburger.com.
Discuss amongst yourselves.
Last week, however, I was compelled to contact someone I work with to bring to their attention an article about corporate blogs. (Please don’t ask why I was moved to address this subject. It’s not pretty.) Interestingly, in the course of emailing the article to said co-worker, I stumbled on a little piece that the WSJ had about a sort of comic distraction that one could peruse online. Being a sucker for these kinds of things, I went straight to it, and now I’m going to share the joy with you, in case you don’t already know about it. It helps to find cats amusing, but frankly, it’s not really about animals per se. It’s just a certain kind of humor that, if you’re in the right mood, is really fucking funny.
www.icanhascheezburger.com.
Discuss amongst yourselves.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
A Late Review of The $64 Tomato, in honor of My Friends Who Believe Gardening Is Good
Before Miss Edith left the world of bookselling, and was still a real-life, full-time gadfly, rather than the virtual gadfly she’s become, she had the pleasure of working alongside a young woman whose true calling was working with the soil. This healthy young woman, who hailed from the Midwest and had come East with her beau, worked part time at the bookstore while she looked for full-time work as a gardener or landscaper. She has since moved to the West Coast, where one is likelier to find jobs like this that keep the checking account healthy year-round, but in the year or so that I worked with this young woman, we had many amusing conversations about nature.
The young gardener was one in a long line of friends of mine: people with whom I have almost nothing in common, but who enjoys zinging her edges against mine. Much like my college roommate, The Blonde, the Young Gardener was an incredibly nice, well-adjusted person. She liked doing healthy, outdoorsy things; she rode a bike to work every day. She knew the names of plants – Latin names, I mean – and was good-humored beyond all reason. She had had a job, when in college, working at a Godiva chocolate shop, and as a result was capable of the finest, sharpest, most perfect gift-wrapping jobs I’ve ever seen. (She taught me some of her tricks, too.) I never saw her lose it in anger, though I did see her very, very sad… She’s much happier, now, on the West Coast, and I’m happy for her, though I must admit that I miss having her around. The Young Gardener and I had come to enjoy each other’s company tremendously, and while we’ve kept in touch of course, I sometimes wish she were around so that we could just do something boring like go to the movies together. We used to go to the movies together, sometimes. It’s nice to have movie pals, and I never have enough of them.
When the Young Gardener came to work at the bookstore, I asked her if she’d be willing to write blurbs for a book or two – just things she genuinely liked or thought were interesting. I thought her interests would give our shelves a little more variety than I was capable of bringing, since Miss Edith is something of a one-trick pony when it comes to books. I suggested she have a look at a book coming out soon, The $64 Tomato, because it was about gardening and because I expected it to be getting a fair amount of publicity anyhow. The Young Gardener took the book home and read it like a good girl.
Now, Miss Edith’s position on gardening is that it’s all well and good for those who like that sort of thing, but that Miss Edith is not one of those people and never will be. I like gardens when they’re someone else’s. I wish I had a garden – but I also wish that, if I had to have a garden, I’d be wealthy enough to be able to have someone else maintain it for me. I do not derive massive cosmic pleasure at the thought of home-grown tomatoes, zucchini, or beans. I hate the work, for one thing. But also, I believe that my true gifts lie in knowing where to buy the lovely tomatoes, zucchini, and beans that other people, who do like to garden, have their goods for sale. I am happy to spend money at farmer’s markets. I do not want to farm. I feel that gardening is like knitting or sewing or any number of wholesome enterprises: it’s lovely if you know how to do it and you like it. But economic growth, and urban living, is predicated on the notion that consumers – that’s Miss Edith – are happy to pay people for their services – the gardeners/farmers, the people who knit sweaters, the people who sew clothes. If everyone grew their own food, we’d be living in the Middle Ages again. Personally, I don’t see the appeal.
Notarius and I actually have a small backyard. It is a disaster. In the first two or three years that we lived here, we (mostly he) tried to make the backyard a nice place. He built raised beds. I planted flowering bulbs. I bought seeds for us to grow. I planted the seeds. None of this effort was successful and eventually we got sick of it and now the yard is overrun with weeds and is mostly a kind of ugly parking space that gets very muddy in bad weather.
Periodically Notarius points out that we need to have this space worked on. Someone – a professional landscaper – should be hired to flatten the space and resurface it. Notarius would like to see some lawn back there. He has visions of a tiny urban garden, a little jewel of a green space where he can relax. I look at the space and think, “It would be so lovely if we could brick over the whole thing, and then have a few planters with, say, flowering bulbs.” (I’m big on flowering bulbs ever since I realized that with bulbs, you plant them once and leave them alone and they’ll do their thing year after year. I love irises and daffodils; and how convenient that you only have to plant them once! So much better than those goddamned marigolds. I hate marigolds and the fact that you have to do them every year just gives me more reason to hate them.)
My notion of a lovely yard – to suit this particular urban space, this particular humble house – really, truly, is a nicely bricked space with some artfully placed plants. I’d like to keep the massive maple tree that’s back there, for example. What I don’t want is plant life that we have to actually pay attention to in a serious way. Why on earth would we want a lawn? Lawns just need to be mowed. Wouldn’t a brick or slate space be nicer? You can drag garden furniture around without worrying about ripping up the grass. Children – and, ok, Miss Edith herself – could draw hopscotch boards and play at will. Try doing that on grass, folks. Can’t play hopscotch on grass.
We live within ten blocks of so many lovely greengrocers. We have no real reason to want to grow our own vegetables. I won’t deny that there are vegetables I could see wanting to grow, but these are things that I suspect we would not be likely to successfully. I wish I could have all the Brussels sprouts I want; ditto asaparagus, beets, and maybe artichokes, even though Notarius isn’t a big fan of artichokes. But these vegetables aren’t really what people think of when they think of home gardens.
Well. The Young Gardener really likes gardens, and thinks they’re a good thing. Her feeling about my feeling about gardens is that, well, I’m a little fucked in the head and unfeeling about it. Like, I just haven’t met the right garden yet. And the Young Gardener really enjoyed The $64 Tomato, as I thought she would… sold quite a few copies of it, too, bless her heart.
So last week I stumbled on a copy of it at the public library. “Ya know,” Miss Edith said to herself, “I really oughta read that thing.” So I added it to the rather considerable stack of books I was already lugging around, and I think I ended up taking a bus home because the books weighed so much I didn’t think I could carry them all comfortably.
I’ve now finished The $64 Tomato. Its author, William Alexander, is probably a very smart and good humored man. And I know that this book is beloved, not only by the Young Gardener, but by many many other people whose idea of a relaxing time is going out in the yard and getting dirty and weeding. Who think nothing of watering lawns. And let’s not even discuss the kind of people who invest in garden sculptures of the sort Alexander himself discusses – tacky, insane sculptures that serve no obvious purpose on peoples’ front lawns.
This book sums up, neatly and with a little bit of wit, and astounding financial accuracy, exactly why I hate gardening. The next time anyone asks me why I don’t want to garden, I’m going to refer them directly to William Alexander’s delightful little book, which I imagine will be a small classic in gardening literature for years to come.
I’m not sure Alexander meant to have this effect on me. I suspect that he wants his readers to chortle with identification; to turn to the wife, while reading, and say, “Hon, listen to this – he had that same problem with sodworms” or whatever the fuck disgusting little bugs someone had problems with four years ago.
I am not that reader. I read about the bugs and wanted to vomit. I heard about the labor and thought, “Dude, how is it you have nothing better to do with your time? Wouldn’t you rather take a nap?” And buy your lovely Brandywine tomatoes, your flowers, your green beans? The sense of community and joy I get from walking home from the store with my vegetables is, I think, just as palpable as the joy Alexander gets from breaking his back to eat a homegrown tomato. Which one of us is crazy?
Alexander’s book, I know, is not intended for me. But like the drug that’s developed for one purpose, and turns out to have a side effect that’s even more beneficial, I believe that The $64 Tomato has had a marvelous effect on me: it has made me entirely confident that I need not feel bad, not one whit, about not giving a shit about gardening. And to the many smug acquaintances of mine who insist on working on your gardens, and are so proud of them: better you than me, darlings. Miss Edith really, truly has better things to do. The $64 Tomato was one of those things.
That said, I realized today that if I’m going to install more bulbs in our scraggly patch of front lawn, I’d best get on the stick soon. Even Miss Edith is a sucker for lots of blue flowers popping up in the front yard in the spring...
The young gardener was one in a long line of friends of mine: people with whom I have almost nothing in common, but who enjoys zinging her edges against mine. Much like my college roommate, The Blonde, the Young Gardener was an incredibly nice, well-adjusted person. She liked doing healthy, outdoorsy things; she rode a bike to work every day. She knew the names of plants – Latin names, I mean – and was good-humored beyond all reason. She had had a job, when in college, working at a Godiva chocolate shop, and as a result was capable of the finest, sharpest, most perfect gift-wrapping jobs I’ve ever seen. (She taught me some of her tricks, too.) I never saw her lose it in anger, though I did see her very, very sad… She’s much happier, now, on the West Coast, and I’m happy for her, though I must admit that I miss having her around. The Young Gardener and I had come to enjoy each other’s company tremendously, and while we’ve kept in touch of course, I sometimes wish she were around so that we could just do something boring like go to the movies together. We used to go to the movies together, sometimes. It’s nice to have movie pals, and I never have enough of them.
When the Young Gardener came to work at the bookstore, I asked her if she’d be willing to write blurbs for a book or two – just things she genuinely liked or thought were interesting. I thought her interests would give our shelves a little more variety than I was capable of bringing, since Miss Edith is something of a one-trick pony when it comes to books. I suggested she have a look at a book coming out soon, The $64 Tomato, because it was about gardening and because I expected it to be getting a fair amount of publicity anyhow. The Young Gardener took the book home and read it like a good girl.
Now, Miss Edith’s position on gardening is that it’s all well and good for those who like that sort of thing, but that Miss Edith is not one of those people and never will be. I like gardens when they’re someone else’s. I wish I had a garden – but I also wish that, if I had to have a garden, I’d be wealthy enough to be able to have someone else maintain it for me. I do not derive massive cosmic pleasure at the thought of home-grown tomatoes, zucchini, or beans. I hate the work, for one thing. But also, I believe that my true gifts lie in knowing where to buy the lovely tomatoes, zucchini, and beans that other people, who do like to garden, have their goods for sale. I am happy to spend money at farmer’s markets. I do not want to farm. I feel that gardening is like knitting or sewing or any number of wholesome enterprises: it’s lovely if you know how to do it and you like it. But economic growth, and urban living, is predicated on the notion that consumers – that’s Miss Edith – are happy to pay people for their services – the gardeners/farmers, the people who knit sweaters, the people who sew clothes. If everyone grew their own food, we’d be living in the Middle Ages again. Personally, I don’t see the appeal.
Notarius and I actually have a small backyard. It is a disaster. In the first two or three years that we lived here, we (mostly he) tried to make the backyard a nice place. He built raised beds. I planted flowering bulbs. I bought seeds for us to grow. I planted the seeds. None of this effort was successful and eventually we got sick of it and now the yard is overrun with weeds and is mostly a kind of ugly parking space that gets very muddy in bad weather.
Periodically Notarius points out that we need to have this space worked on. Someone – a professional landscaper – should be hired to flatten the space and resurface it. Notarius would like to see some lawn back there. He has visions of a tiny urban garden, a little jewel of a green space where he can relax. I look at the space and think, “It would be so lovely if we could brick over the whole thing, and then have a few planters with, say, flowering bulbs.” (I’m big on flowering bulbs ever since I realized that with bulbs, you plant them once and leave them alone and they’ll do their thing year after year. I love irises and daffodils; and how convenient that you only have to plant them once! So much better than those goddamned marigolds. I hate marigolds and the fact that you have to do them every year just gives me more reason to hate them.)
My notion of a lovely yard – to suit this particular urban space, this particular humble house – really, truly, is a nicely bricked space with some artfully placed plants. I’d like to keep the massive maple tree that’s back there, for example. What I don’t want is plant life that we have to actually pay attention to in a serious way. Why on earth would we want a lawn? Lawns just need to be mowed. Wouldn’t a brick or slate space be nicer? You can drag garden furniture around without worrying about ripping up the grass. Children – and, ok, Miss Edith herself – could draw hopscotch boards and play at will. Try doing that on grass, folks. Can’t play hopscotch on grass.
We live within ten blocks of so many lovely greengrocers. We have no real reason to want to grow our own vegetables. I won’t deny that there are vegetables I could see wanting to grow, but these are things that I suspect we would not be likely to successfully. I wish I could have all the Brussels sprouts I want; ditto asaparagus, beets, and maybe artichokes, even though Notarius isn’t a big fan of artichokes. But these vegetables aren’t really what people think of when they think of home gardens.
Well. The Young Gardener really likes gardens, and thinks they’re a good thing. Her feeling about my feeling about gardens is that, well, I’m a little fucked in the head and unfeeling about it. Like, I just haven’t met the right garden yet. And the Young Gardener really enjoyed The $64 Tomato, as I thought she would… sold quite a few copies of it, too, bless her heart.
So last week I stumbled on a copy of it at the public library. “Ya know,” Miss Edith said to herself, “I really oughta read that thing.” So I added it to the rather considerable stack of books I was already lugging around, and I think I ended up taking a bus home because the books weighed so much I didn’t think I could carry them all comfortably.
I’ve now finished The $64 Tomato. Its author, William Alexander, is probably a very smart and good humored man. And I know that this book is beloved, not only by the Young Gardener, but by many many other people whose idea of a relaxing time is going out in the yard and getting dirty and weeding. Who think nothing of watering lawns. And let’s not even discuss the kind of people who invest in garden sculptures of the sort Alexander himself discusses – tacky, insane sculptures that serve no obvious purpose on peoples’ front lawns.
This book sums up, neatly and with a little bit of wit, and astounding financial accuracy, exactly why I hate gardening. The next time anyone asks me why I don’t want to garden, I’m going to refer them directly to William Alexander’s delightful little book, which I imagine will be a small classic in gardening literature for years to come.
I’m not sure Alexander meant to have this effect on me. I suspect that he wants his readers to chortle with identification; to turn to the wife, while reading, and say, “Hon, listen to this – he had that same problem with sodworms” or whatever the fuck disgusting little bugs someone had problems with four years ago.
I am not that reader. I read about the bugs and wanted to vomit. I heard about the labor and thought, “Dude, how is it you have nothing better to do with your time? Wouldn’t you rather take a nap?” And buy your lovely Brandywine tomatoes, your flowers, your green beans? The sense of community and joy I get from walking home from the store with my vegetables is, I think, just as palpable as the joy Alexander gets from breaking his back to eat a homegrown tomato. Which one of us is crazy?
Alexander’s book, I know, is not intended for me. But like the drug that’s developed for one purpose, and turns out to have a side effect that’s even more beneficial, I believe that The $64 Tomato has had a marvelous effect on me: it has made me entirely confident that I need not feel bad, not one whit, about not giving a shit about gardening. And to the many smug acquaintances of mine who insist on working on your gardens, and are so proud of them: better you than me, darlings. Miss Edith really, truly has better things to do. The $64 Tomato was one of those things.
That said, I realized today that if I’m going to install more bulbs in our scraggly patch of front lawn, I’d best get on the stick soon. Even Miss Edith is a sucker for lots of blue flowers popping up in the front yard in the spring...
Miss Edith Goes to Cape Cod, Eats
My dears, I know you’ve been worried about me. I know it’s not been like the good old days when you could rely on Miss Edith to spew pith and nonsense like clockwork, when you could distract yourself from your jobs by visiting me, knowing that you’d find something guaranteed to not involve an Excel spreadsheet. I have been remiss.
It is true, however, that I’ve been busy in other arenas of my life – What? Miss Edith has a life?; aye, she does – and often that has meant that I didn’t stand a chance of posting here. For example, I find it difficult to compose while traveling. And I recently spent several days on the road, en famille, and was hence unable to keep in touch with you, my darlings; I am so sorry. Many of you have emailed to ask me what the fuck, and I appreciate your concern.
Several days recently found Miss Edith in an environment where she was really quite at home: Provincetown, Massachusetts. You have to understand that while Miss Edith is actually female, the reality is that a large portion of my head is somehow… a drag queen. And so I find it at some level entirely natural to visit Provincetown. This is a town that cherishes Auntie Mame; I feel quite at home there, if always a bit underdressed. I enjoy being in a place where there are more dogs than children. And such nice bookstores! Really, if one has to be in an out-of-the-way place, a vacation area, then Provincetown is quite a nice place to be.
Notarius and I were there with members of his family; it wasn’t a reunion or anything formal like that, just a few of us who enjoy each others’ company, knocking around. Notarius had read a recent Mark Bittman article about restaurants in Provincetown and was determined to eat at one of the places mentioned in the article. We have spent a great deal of time on Cape Cod, Notarius and I – he is from there, and his family still lives there – and one of the things we discuss endlessly is how it is possible to have a part of the country where there is so much wealth, and such sophistication, and yet for that place to have such utterly miserable dining options. It is true that if you want fried clam bellies, which I often do, then Cape Cod is the place to be. But if you want other types of food, you are shit out of luck nine times out of ten. The number of undistinguished meals we have eaten in Cape Cod restaurants is beyond calculation.
Notarius was determined that for once, we would eat an actually impressive meal while on Cape Cod. Unfortunately, he could not remember any of the details from the Bittman article (and I’m not sure it would have helped much anyhow, to be honest; I’m confident that Bittman’s budget is not like ours, given that the Times doesn’t reimburse us for our meals). And, being a boy, Notarius was not interested in doing the sensible thing (going online to scout out the article and refresh his memory for the cited location -- too much like asking for directions, something the boys never do). So in the end, Notarius and I, with three of his relatives in tow, several of whom badly needed to use a bathroom, myself included, trotted up and down Commercial Street, looking for “the right place.”
As you may imagine, this got old fairly quickly. Notarius was stubborn, though, and would not simply accept anyplace that looked relatively ok. “It’s got to be good,” he kept saying. Frustrating? Yes: thank you for asking. Eventually he stopped to pause at the menu, posted at street level, for a second-story restaurant called Café Edwige.
The place is better known for its luxurious breakfasts, and the breakfast menu did look quite fabulous, but there is also a dinner menu. It was filled with trendy ingredients. I felt a sinking feeling and knew this would be where we’d end up eating dinner – not because the place was sure to be excellent, but because Notarius was in the kind of mood where he wouldn’t be happy unless there was something relatively elaborate and reasonably fashionable on his plate. Lo, I was correct: though we kept walking and looking for another twenty minutes, the five of us ended up seated at Café Edwige, known during dinner hours as Edwige at Night.
This is what I would like to say about Edwige: it has lovely waitresses. The food is fine, if a little silly. The tres leches cake was a serious disappointment, but the strawberry garnish was perfect. And while I look forward to the day when I get to sample a breakfast there, I do not feel a pressing need to have dinner there again.
It’s not that it was bad; I’d like to make that clear. But: was this a wholly memorable meal? Was there anything I ate that left me swooning? No. It was solid, fashionable-fusion (heavy on the Asian, light on the French, Italian, and Mediterranean) food. I suppose that compared to the heavy “American” food that one finds all too often on the Cape, it was actually a nice change – I was glad to not see a single breaded thing on the menu – but had we been at home, for the same money we could have done just as well if not better.
For the life of me I may never understand why it is that the food on the Cape is so bad. Perhaps all resort areas are like this. But if that’s true, why would I ever want to go there? A place that doesn’t have interesting food is a place I do not want to be. It’s not about “fancy” or anything like that; I truly do not require baby field greens, roasted pine nuts, or seafood-stuffed ravioli to be happy (though those things are nice once in a while). There are times when baby field greens and goat cheese are really the correct thing to eat, when that is the honest meal. When you’re on Cape Cod, however, it is not.
The next day, before we left Cape Cod to head home, the five of us went out to Seafood Sam’s, which is kind of like McDonald’s except all the food is seafood and fish. It’s fast, unpretentious, and a little sloppy, but you know why you’re there when you go. Notarius and I ordered clam bellies. They were excellent.
It is true, however, that I’ve been busy in other arenas of my life – What? Miss Edith has a life?; aye, she does – and often that has meant that I didn’t stand a chance of posting here. For example, I find it difficult to compose while traveling. And I recently spent several days on the road, en famille, and was hence unable to keep in touch with you, my darlings; I am so sorry. Many of you have emailed to ask me what the fuck, and I appreciate your concern.
Several days recently found Miss Edith in an environment where she was really quite at home: Provincetown, Massachusetts. You have to understand that while Miss Edith is actually female, the reality is that a large portion of my head is somehow… a drag queen. And so I find it at some level entirely natural to visit Provincetown. This is a town that cherishes Auntie Mame; I feel quite at home there, if always a bit underdressed. I enjoy being in a place where there are more dogs than children. And such nice bookstores! Really, if one has to be in an out-of-the-way place, a vacation area, then Provincetown is quite a nice place to be.
Notarius and I were there with members of his family; it wasn’t a reunion or anything formal like that, just a few of us who enjoy each others’ company, knocking around. Notarius had read a recent Mark Bittman article about restaurants in Provincetown and was determined to eat at one of the places mentioned in the article. We have spent a great deal of time on Cape Cod, Notarius and I – he is from there, and his family still lives there – and one of the things we discuss endlessly is how it is possible to have a part of the country where there is so much wealth, and such sophistication, and yet for that place to have such utterly miserable dining options. It is true that if you want fried clam bellies, which I often do, then Cape Cod is the place to be. But if you want other types of food, you are shit out of luck nine times out of ten. The number of undistinguished meals we have eaten in Cape Cod restaurants is beyond calculation.
Notarius was determined that for once, we would eat an actually impressive meal while on Cape Cod. Unfortunately, he could not remember any of the details from the Bittman article (and I’m not sure it would have helped much anyhow, to be honest; I’m confident that Bittman’s budget is not like ours, given that the Times doesn’t reimburse us for our meals). And, being a boy, Notarius was not interested in doing the sensible thing (going online to scout out the article and refresh his memory for the cited location -- too much like asking for directions, something the boys never do). So in the end, Notarius and I, with three of his relatives in tow, several of whom badly needed to use a bathroom, myself included, trotted up and down Commercial Street, looking for “the right place.”
As you may imagine, this got old fairly quickly. Notarius was stubborn, though, and would not simply accept anyplace that looked relatively ok. “It’s got to be good,” he kept saying. Frustrating? Yes: thank you for asking. Eventually he stopped to pause at the menu, posted at street level, for a second-story restaurant called Café Edwige.
The place is better known for its luxurious breakfasts, and the breakfast menu did look quite fabulous, but there is also a dinner menu. It was filled with trendy ingredients. I felt a sinking feeling and knew this would be where we’d end up eating dinner – not because the place was sure to be excellent, but because Notarius was in the kind of mood where he wouldn’t be happy unless there was something relatively elaborate and reasonably fashionable on his plate. Lo, I was correct: though we kept walking and looking for another twenty minutes, the five of us ended up seated at Café Edwige, known during dinner hours as Edwige at Night.
This is what I would like to say about Edwige: it has lovely waitresses. The food is fine, if a little silly. The tres leches cake was a serious disappointment, but the strawberry garnish was perfect. And while I look forward to the day when I get to sample a breakfast there, I do not feel a pressing need to have dinner there again.
It’s not that it was bad; I’d like to make that clear. But: was this a wholly memorable meal? Was there anything I ate that left me swooning? No. It was solid, fashionable-fusion (heavy on the Asian, light on the French, Italian, and Mediterranean) food. I suppose that compared to the heavy “American” food that one finds all too often on the Cape, it was actually a nice change – I was glad to not see a single breaded thing on the menu – but had we been at home, for the same money we could have done just as well if not better.
For the life of me I may never understand why it is that the food on the Cape is so bad. Perhaps all resort areas are like this. But if that’s true, why would I ever want to go there? A place that doesn’t have interesting food is a place I do not want to be. It’s not about “fancy” or anything like that; I truly do not require baby field greens, roasted pine nuts, or seafood-stuffed ravioli to be happy (though those things are nice once in a while). There are times when baby field greens and goat cheese are really the correct thing to eat, when that is the honest meal. When you’re on Cape Cod, however, it is not.
The next day, before we left Cape Cod to head home, the five of us went out to Seafood Sam’s, which is kind of like McDonald’s except all the food is seafood and fish. It’s fast, unpretentious, and a little sloppy, but you know why you’re there when you go. Notarius and I ordered clam bellies. They were excellent.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Company: A Book.
As my devoted readers will know, not long ago I expressed interest in something I’ll now describe as the literature of corporate life; I was thinking about salesmanship as discussed in recent fiction. It occurs to me that I could re-read Babbitt, a book I remember enjoying very much when I read it as a student (and I had to read it twice, and liked it both times); I’m sure that Sinclair Lewis has more than one title which would contribute to my thoughts on this subject.
But last week I took a more recent title from the library, a book that I remember ordering for the bookstore, and could have read at the time, but didn’t. It’s entitled Company, by a young man named Max Barry. A paperback of this novel was at the public library in the New Fiction section, and my eye fell on it. I thought, “Well, I could read that,” but I wasn’t really interested, so I moved on… and then I remembered, “Wait: wasn’t I just talking about sales in fiction? I bet this book has something in it for me.” So I trotted back and snatched the bright yellow book from the shelf. Well, ok: the spine is bright yellow. The cover is a sort of bland photo of a young business type, his face obscured by a bright yellow band reading, simply: COMPANY.
One is reminded of the generic BEER that everyone drinks in the movie Repo Man. Which is, now that I think about it, about repo men – the opposite of salesmen. Perhaps I should watch that little gem again, too…
Miss Edith spends a lot of time these days thinking about sales and the different kinds of sales that people do. I don’t want to go into too much detail here because, frankly, it’s a rather boring subject and I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable in the process of boring everyone else. But let’s just say that sales, in the normal corporate sales sense, seems to require a particular kind of personality. It’s different from retail sales. They’re both deadening sorts of work, but there’s something about retail, I believe, that can, depending on what one’s retailing, that can keep the soul alive. Corporate sales, though… I just don’t know how that kind of work can do anything but eat away at one’s soul.
Max Barry apparently worked at Hewlett Packard for a long time, so presumably he had a long chance to observe corporate sales types in action. I don’t know Barry’s background but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that he was probably in marketing for at least some of his time at H-P. He tackles the psyche of the salesman/saleswoman early in his novel. From page 11 of Company:
On level 14, Elizabeth is falling in love. This is what makes her such a good sales rep, and an emotional basket case: she falls in love with her customers. It is hard to convey just how wretchedly, boot-lickingly draining it is to be a salesperson. Sales is a business of relationships, and you must cultivate customers with tenderness and love, like cabbages in winter, even if the customer is an egomaniacal asshole you want to hit with a shovel. There is something wrong with the kind of person who becomes a sales rep, or if not, there is something wrong after six months.
Earlier in the book, when we meet Elizabeth, she is nutshelled: “Elizabeth is smart, ruthless, and emotionally damaged; that is, she is a sales representative. If Elizabeth’s brain was a person, it would have scars, tattoos, and be missing one eye. If you saw it coming, you could cross the street.”
Max Barry’s book tackles almost every type of person you can imagine coming across in the corporate world with this kind of precision. While the book does get a bit draggy toward the end, the little pieces of sharp skewering are so good it’s worth it. Miss Edith recommends this book, highly, to that select group of people who understand that cubicles and business cards can lead only to hell…
But last week I took a more recent title from the library, a book that I remember ordering for the bookstore, and could have read at the time, but didn’t. It’s entitled Company, by a young man named Max Barry. A paperback of this novel was at the public library in the New Fiction section, and my eye fell on it. I thought, “Well, I could read that,” but I wasn’t really interested, so I moved on… and then I remembered, “Wait: wasn’t I just talking about sales in fiction? I bet this book has something in it for me.” So I trotted back and snatched the bright yellow book from the shelf. Well, ok: the spine is bright yellow. The cover is a sort of bland photo of a young business type, his face obscured by a bright yellow band reading, simply: COMPANY.
One is reminded of the generic BEER that everyone drinks in the movie Repo Man. Which is, now that I think about it, about repo men – the opposite of salesmen. Perhaps I should watch that little gem again, too…
Miss Edith spends a lot of time these days thinking about sales and the different kinds of sales that people do. I don’t want to go into too much detail here because, frankly, it’s a rather boring subject and I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable in the process of boring everyone else. But let’s just say that sales, in the normal corporate sales sense, seems to require a particular kind of personality. It’s different from retail sales. They’re both deadening sorts of work, but there’s something about retail, I believe, that can, depending on what one’s retailing, that can keep the soul alive. Corporate sales, though… I just don’t know how that kind of work can do anything but eat away at one’s soul.
Max Barry apparently worked at Hewlett Packard for a long time, so presumably he had a long chance to observe corporate sales types in action. I don’t know Barry’s background but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that he was probably in marketing for at least some of his time at H-P. He tackles the psyche of the salesman/saleswoman early in his novel. From page 11 of Company:
On level 14, Elizabeth is falling in love. This is what makes her such a good sales rep, and an emotional basket case: she falls in love with her customers. It is hard to convey just how wretchedly, boot-lickingly draining it is to be a salesperson. Sales is a business of relationships, and you must cultivate customers with tenderness and love, like cabbages in winter, even if the customer is an egomaniacal asshole you want to hit with a shovel. There is something wrong with the kind of person who becomes a sales rep, or if not, there is something wrong after six months.
Earlier in the book, when we meet Elizabeth, she is nutshelled: “Elizabeth is smart, ruthless, and emotionally damaged; that is, she is a sales representative. If Elizabeth’s brain was a person, it would have scars, tattoos, and be missing one eye. If you saw it coming, you could cross the street.”
Max Barry’s book tackles almost every type of person you can imagine coming across in the corporate world with this kind of precision. While the book does get a bit draggy toward the end, the little pieces of sharp skewering are so good it’s worth it. Miss Edith recommends this book, highly, to that select group of people who understand that cubicles and business cards can lead only to hell…
Monday, August 06, 2007
Florence King
It was almost twenty years ago that I was introduced to the joys of Florence King, but at the time I didn’t think about it too much.
In 1988, an old beau of Miss Edith’s went to work in Manhattan as an editorial assistant. He climbed the ranks there fairly quickly, and in the process I, at first still in high school and then in college, learned rather more than I wanted to about the publishing industry. I learned, primarily, that I didn’t want to go to New York City to work in publishing. But I also got tipped off to a number of truly wonderful writers. My friend would send me copies of books with notes clipped to them, saying things like, “I think you need to read this.” Sometimes he missed his target a bit, and I’d be left scratching my head asking myself, “Um, why?” But other times, I was astounded by how good the books were, and wondered why these writers weren’t being toasted across the country. Because, inevitably, the books my friend sent me were written by people who were truly underappreciated, at least in my part of the world.
Among the first books he sent me was a collection of essays by a woman named Florence King. Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye was the book. I still have my copy of it. When I received it, it left me cold; I was not yet able to appreciate the form (a collection of essays) and I was not yet able to appreciate the author’s brand of sharpness. But my friend knew me better than I knew myself; within a couple of years, my eye fell on the book again and I picked it up and I was a total convert. Florence King became one of my heroes.
Some years after that, an anthology, The Florence King Reader, was published, and I received a copy of that with a fulsome inscription from my friend the editor, who by this point knew that I’d fallen completely in love with King’s writing. I was thrilled – at last I had a huge chunk of King to devour. Many of her books were out of print by this time, in the mid 1990s, and though I spent my life in used bookstores I really never saw her stuff around. The Reader was really a Godsend. Over the years I have recommended it to friends and customers countless times, and tried to get people to understand that not reading Florence King is, as far as I am concerned, a tragedy. Anyone who appreciates a strong, well-considered opinion should read Florence King – but also, anyone with a taste for intelligent humor, good storytelling, or just an appreciation for good old American contrariness, must read her.
I believe Florence King writes an occasional column for a publication called The National Review; last year, again in a used bookstore, I stumbled on an anthology of her essays for this conservative publication. The anthology is called Stet, Damnit!: The Misanthrope’s Corner. I’ve just gone and grabbed my copy from my bedside (where it resides, permanently) and it came out in 2003, rather a long time ago. I was sad when I found this book because I had to admit I’d been out of the loop to not know about it when it first came out, but I was also pleased as punch that fate had brought it to me. I cut through it in probably two days, not the way this book should be handled – it should be dipped into periodically, which is why I now keep it at the bedside table; one or two pieces before bedtime is just right – and found it a little frustrating (as time goes on. Miss King does recycle her better material a little too often, as I’m sure I would too if I were in her position) but overall I have never regretted the money I spent on this book. I regret that I didn’t know about it in 2003 so that King could’ve gotten some royalty money out of me. In fact, if Miss King would like to contact me and strike a deal, I’d be happy to send her a check to make up the difference.
The past couple of weeks have led two earlier Florence King books to fall into my hands, and one of them, Wasp, Where is Thy Sting? has kept me entertained for several nights now. I found it in a used bookstore in Vermont – Brattleboro Books, which is on Elliot Street – and began reading it as soon as I’d paid for it. A comic analysis of WASP culture circa 1977 – pre-Preppy Handbook, pre-George W. Bush – it contains many elements of truth, all incredibly well-phrased and often funny as hell. Some of her essays are a bit dated now, particularly those about church denominations and WASP culture, but what’s on the page is still very funny; you just have to set your internal clock back when you’re reading it. This book was excerpted for the Reader and I’d always been a little frustrated that I didn’t have access to the work in full. Now I do and Miss Edith is a happy camper.
I also found, in the public library (where I had never thought to look for this book) a copy of Miss King’s early send-up of 1970s feminist culture, a light novel entitled When Sisterhood Was in Flower. It appears in the Reader, but slightly altered; I liked the idea of reading the original edition. This was highly enjoyable, as well; a perfect book for me to read on these hot summer nights when Notarius is sitting around reading about the history of church architecture or something else appropriately lofty. (It is Miss Edith’s job to provide a counterpoint to Notarius’ high-mindedness.)
I suspect that some of Miss Edith’s readers want me to explain something about Florence King – who is she, why is she funny, and so on. The problem is, I don’t want to pigeonhole Miss King that way, and I think Miss King would appreciate my reticence. When my friend originally sent me Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye, he didn’t really tell me anything about it. I had to find my way into that book, and benefited tremendously from that little interior journey. I feel that way now. I want to introduce people to Florence King, but I want them to realize on their own what it is about her that’s so sharp and true and wonderful. It’s now a little late for me to be recommending summer reading but I can honestly say that on a crisp autumn day, I think the concise, clear writing of Florence King would be a delight. To sit down with a cup of coffee, look out a kitchen window at that kind of bright blue cloudless sky that we get on fall days in New England, and turn eyes downward to read Florence King: Miss Edith can think of a few things that might be more fun, maybe, but few that would be more worthwhile.
In 1988, an old beau of Miss Edith’s went to work in Manhattan as an editorial assistant. He climbed the ranks there fairly quickly, and in the process I, at first still in high school and then in college, learned rather more than I wanted to about the publishing industry. I learned, primarily, that I didn’t want to go to New York City to work in publishing. But I also got tipped off to a number of truly wonderful writers. My friend would send me copies of books with notes clipped to them, saying things like, “I think you need to read this.” Sometimes he missed his target a bit, and I’d be left scratching my head asking myself, “Um, why?” But other times, I was astounded by how good the books were, and wondered why these writers weren’t being toasted across the country. Because, inevitably, the books my friend sent me were written by people who were truly underappreciated, at least in my part of the world.
Among the first books he sent me was a collection of essays by a woman named Florence King. Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye was the book. I still have my copy of it. When I received it, it left me cold; I was not yet able to appreciate the form (a collection of essays) and I was not yet able to appreciate the author’s brand of sharpness. But my friend knew me better than I knew myself; within a couple of years, my eye fell on the book again and I picked it up and I was a total convert. Florence King became one of my heroes.
Some years after that, an anthology, The Florence King Reader, was published, and I received a copy of that with a fulsome inscription from my friend the editor, who by this point knew that I’d fallen completely in love with King’s writing. I was thrilled – at last I had a huge chunk of King to devour. Many of her books were out of print by this time, in the mid 1990s, and though I spent my life in used bookstores I really never saw her stuff around. The Reader was really a Godsend. Over the years I have recommended it to friends and customers countless times, and tried to get people to understand that not reading Florence King is, as far as I am concerned, a tragedy. Anyone who appreciates a strong, well-considered opinion should read Florence King – but also, anyone with a taste for intelligent humor, good storytelling, or just an appreciation for good old American contrariness, must read her.
I believe Florence King writes an occasional column for a publication called The National Review; last year, again in a used bookstore, I stumbled on an anthology of her essays for this conservative publication. The anthology is called Stet, Damnit!: The Misanthrope’s Corner. I’ve just gone and grabbed my copy from my bedside (where it resides, permanently) and it came out in 2003, rather a long time ago. I was sad when I found this book because I had to admit I’d been out of the loop to not know about it when it first came out, but I was also pleased as punch that fate had brought it to me. I cut through it in probably two days, not the way this book should be handled – it should be dipped into periodically, which is why I now keep it at the bedside table; one or two pieces before bedtime is just right – and found it a little frustrating (as time goes on. Miss King does recycle her better material a little too often, as I’m sure I would too if I were in her position) but overall I have never regretted the money I spent on this book. I regret that I didn’t know about it in 2003 so that King could’ve gotten some royalty money out of me. In fact, if Miss King would like to contact me and strike a deal, I’d be happy to send her a check to make up the difference.
The past couple of weeks have led two earlier Florence King books to fall into my hands, and one of them, Wasp, Where is Thy Sting? has kept me entertained for several nights now. I found it in a used bookstore in Vermont – Brattleboro Books, which is on Elliot Street – and began reading it as soon as I’d paid for it. A comic analysis of WASP culture circa 1977 – pre-Preppy Handbook, pre-George W. Bush – it contains many elements of truth, all incredibly well-phrased and often funny as hell. Some of her essays are a bit dated now, particularly those about church denominations and WASP culture, but what’s on the page is still very funny; you just have to set your internal clock back when you’re reading it. This book was excerpted for the Reader and I’d always been a little frustrated that I didn’t have access to the work in full. Now I do and Miss Edith is a happy camper.
I also found, in the public library (where I had never thought to look for this book) a copy of Miss King’s early send-up of 1970s feminist culture, a light novel entitled When Sisterhood Was in Flower. It appears in the Reader, but slightly altered; I liked the idea of reading the original edition. This was highly enjoyable, as well; a perfect book for me to read on these hot summer nights when Notarius is sitting around reading about the history of church architecture or something else appropriately lofty. (It is Miss Edith’s job to provide a counterpoint to Notarius’ high-mindedness.)
I suspect that some of Miss Edith’s readers want me to explain something about Florence King – who is she, why is she funny, and so on. The problem is, I don’t want to pigeonhole Miss King that way, and I think Miss King would appreciate my reticence. When my friend originally sent me Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye, he didn’t really tell me anything about it. I had to find my way into that book, and benefited tremendously from that little interior journey. I feel that way now. I want to introduce people to Florence King, but I want them to realize on their own what it is about her that’s so sharp and true and wonderful. It’s now a little late for me to be recommending summer reading but I can honestly say that on a crisp autumn day, I think the concise, clear writing of Florence King would be a delight. To sit down with a cup of coffee, look out a kitchen window at that kind of bright blue cloudless sky that we get on fall days in New England, and turn eyes downward to read Florence King: Miss Edith can think of a few things that might be more fun, maybe, but few that would be more worthwhile.
Friday, August 03, 2007
Amanda Hesser Revisits A Pasta Sauce and Seems A Little Silly to Miss Edith...
This past Sunday The New York Times Magazine section featured a recipe for Pamela Sherrid’s Summer Pasta. Apparently this was all the rage at the Times in 1996. The article comments that it was only in the early to mid 1990s that the Times began printing recipes that involved room temperature pasta sauces. The article, written by Amanda Hesser, who I shouldn’t argue with I guess, but I’m going to anyway, makes it sound as if no one in American civilization had ever heard of serving hot pasta with a room temperature sauce before then.
Miss Edith, sitting at her kitchen table, snorted as she swallowed the last of her tuna sandwich.
I cannot accept Amanda Hesser’s article. Surely she has read Nora Ephron’s minor classic Heartburn?
There are many joys to be found in this novel, but one of them is this recipe, which I remember reading when I first read this novel in the summer of 1985. (It was originally published a couple years before that.) On page 128 of my crappy movie-tie-in mass market edition of this book, there is a recipe for Linguine Alla Cecca, which Our Heroine Rachel tells the reader she and her pals weaseled out of a chef on a trip to Italy.
I cannot imagine that Amanda Hesser hasn’t read Heartburn. This is a book that was probably memorized by hundreds of journalists and would-be journalists in the 1980s, and then glommed onto by countless divorcees over the years, and then, too, noticed and read by many women who, craving more Nora Ephron (they just loved Sleepless in Seattle, the fools), picked up a copy of Heartburn thinking it’d be more of the same (it isn’t).
Hesser says that she sent a copy of the famed Pamela Sherrid pasta recipe to an Italian chef working in Manhattan and that he was initially appalled by the notion of a room temperature sauce – apparently no one in Italy does such things. But then why have I got so many cookbooks, many of them decades old, that contain the basic outline of this same recipe? I admit that I first read it in Ephron – but since then I’ve read quite a few more cookbooks, and, let me tell you, this recipe is really good and reliable, and I adore it, but there’s nothing particularly “new” about it. For that matter, I remember brother making this dish one night when he was visiting home during his college career… and he graduated from college in 1987.
Nora Ephron’s recipe is titled Linguine Alla Cecca but let’s face it, it’s just pasta with a raw tomato sauce. In a large bowl, pour about 1/2 cup of good olive oil (extra virgin is, in fact, nice here). In my kitchen, a good-sized raw clove of garlic is pressed into the oil. (Ephron has you cut the clove in half so it can later be easily removed.) Seed and chop (Ephron also has you peel) several big juicy summer tomatoes and put the flesh in the bowl. Grind in salt, pepper, red pepper flakes; tear up a lot of basil leaves and dump them in too. Then leave this to sit. You want a minimum of one hour but all freaking day is dandy, too. Then you cook your pasta and mix it all together. Ephron doesn’t talk about sprinkling Parmesan on this, but you certainly may; I’ve also melted logs of goat cheese into the pasta and sauce and that is truly delicious though it makes for a much more rich meal.
The Sherrid pasta sauce differs from Ephron’s only in this, as far as I can see: it has slightly more garlic and little cubes of mozzarella.
Please. Amanda Hesser: get over it. This recipe was not earthshattering when the Times printed it in 1996. Let’s put it this way: if I, who was not cooking at all in 1996, knew about this recipe, then anyone who really was cooking in 1996 already knew it, too.
Miss Edith, sitting at her kitchen table, snorted as she swallowed the last of her tuna sandwich.
I cannot accept Amanda Hesser’s article. Surely she has read Nora Ephron’s minor classic Heartburn?
There are many joys to be found in this novel, but one of them is this recipe, which I remember reading when I first read this novel in the summer of 1985. (It was originally published a couple years before that.) On page 128 of my crappy movie-tie-in mass market edition of this book, there is a recipe for Linguine Alla Cecca, which Our Heroine Rachel tells the reader she and her pals weaseled out of a chef on a trip to Italy.
I cannot imagine that Amanda Hesser hasn’t read Heartburn. This is a book that was probably memorized by hundreds of journalists and would-be journalists in the 1980s, and then glommed onto by countless divorcees over the years, and then, too, noticed and read by many women who, craving more Nora Ephron (they just loved Sleepless in Seattle, the fools), picked up a copy of Heartburn thinking it’d be more of the same (it isn’t).
Hesser says that she sent a copy of the famed Pamela Sherrid pasta recipe to an Italian chef working in Manhattan and that he was initially appalled by the notion of a room temperature sauce – apparently no one in Italy does such things. But then why have I got so many cookbooks, many of them decades old, that contain the basic outline of this same recipe? I admit that I first read it in Ephron – but since then I’ve read quite a few more cookbooks, and, let me tell you, this recipe is really good and reliable, and I adore it, but there’s nothing particularly “new” about it. For that matter, I remember brother making this dish one night when he was visiting home during his college career… and he graduated from college in 1987.
Nora Ephron’s recipe is titled Linguine Alla Cecca but let’s face it, it’s just pasta with a raw tomato sauce. In a large bowl, pour about 1/2 cup of good olive oil (extra virgin is, in fact, nice here). In my kitchen, a good-sized raw clove of garlic is pressed into the oil. (Ephron has you cut the clove in half so it can later be easily removed.) Seed and chop (Ephron also has you peel) several big juicy summer tomatoes and put the flesh in the bowl. Grind in salt, pepper, red pepper flakes; tear up a lot of basil leaves and dump them in too. Then leave this to sit. You want a minimum of one hour but all freaking day is dandy, too. Then you cook your pasta and mix it all together. Ephron doesn’t talk about sprinkling Parmesan on this, but you certainly may; I’ve also melted logs of goat cheese into the pasta and sauce and that is truly delicious though it makes for a much more rich meal.
The Sherrid pasta sauce differs from Ephron’s only in this, as far as I can see: it has slightly more garlic and little cubes of mozzarella.
Please. Amanda Hesser: get over it. This recipe was not earthshattering when the Times printed it in 1996. Let’s put it this way: if I, who was not cooking at all in 1996, knew about this recipe, then anyone who really was cooking in 1996 already knew it, too.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
A Quiet Moment at Home with Miss Edith, Notarius, and the Idiot Box
Another quiet night for Miss Edith and Notarius.
There we were, on our luxuriantly upholstered furniture, watching a re-run of Gilmore Girls, which pretty much hit the skids when Rory went off to Yale, though up to that point we’d both been pretty slavish in our devotion to it; Tuesday nights were sacred in our home.
We gave up on the show long enough ago that we’d totally lost the plot and, worse, had forgotten the names of some of the characters. Came a scene where Rory was trying to serve breakfast in bed to her boyfriend, who seems to’ve graduated from college and turned 25. (When did this happen, exactly?) Notarius and I tried to remember the character’s name but just could not.
“What the hell is his name,” Notarius muttered.
“Caleb?” I proposed.
“It’s not Caleb,” he said snottily. Wounded, I fell silent.
“Magruder,” Notarius said. “It’s Macgruder.”
“It is not,” I said petulantly.
“Fritz!” he crowed.
I pondered this. Why isn’t any named Fritz anymore?
“AH!” Notarius said, triumphant: “Logan!”
Logan it was, too. How quickly we forget.
But I still think people, if they’re going to insist on having children, should seriously consider revisiting the name Fritz. Folks are missing out on a good thing here.
There we were, on our luxuriantly upholstered furniture, watching a re-run of Gilmore Girls, which pretty much hit the skids when Rory went off to Yale, though up to that point we’d both been pretty slavish in our devotion to it; Tuesday nights were sacred in our home.
We gave up on the show long enough ago that we’d totally lost the plot and, worse, had forgotten the names of some of the characters. Came a scene where Rory was trying to serve breakfast in bed to her boyfriend, who seems to’ve graduated from college and turned 25. (When did this happen, exactly?) Notarius and I tried to remember the character’s name but just could not.
“What the hell is his name,” Notarius muttered.
“Caleb?” I proposed.
“It’s not Caleb,” he said snottily. Wounded, I fell silent.
“Magruder,” Notarius said. “It’s Macgruder.”
“It is not,” I said petulantly.
“Fritz!” he crowed.
I pondered this. Why isn’t any named Fritz anymore?
“AH!” Notarius said, triumphant: “Logan!”
Logan it was, too. How quickly we forget.
But I still think people, if they’re going to insist on having children, should seriously consider revisiting the name Fritz. Folks are missing out on a good thing here.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Miss Edith Wants To Tell You: This is a Nice Book.
Some time ago, I noted that I was reading Calvin Trillin’s Tepper Isn’t Going Out. I was enjoying it, you may recall.
I’ve finally finished reading it – it became my bedtime reading because, I found, I was enjoying it so much that the best way for me to appreciate it was to read it in very small installments, a tiny bit at each bedtime. I won’t say that I’m in love with Tepper, the way I have fallen in love with other books over the years, but I really did enjoy it. Trillin’s got a tone, a – bear with me here, there’s a reason I’m using this phrase – a nice, light tone, wry, but realistic – that I found very soothing at bedtime, and occasionally I chortled aloud as I read, prompting Notarius to ask, “What?”
One such segment came early in the book, on page 32. Tepper is sitting in his parked car outside of Russ & Daughters, which Trillin fans know is a place that the author has a kind of obsession with. This is where you go to buy your lox, your whitefish, and things like that. An appetizing store.
So Tepper’s sitting in his car outside Russ & Daughters and the counterman from the shop comes outside to see if Tepper needs help or something. The counterman’s concerned that Tepper maybe can’t get out of the car for some reason, that something might be wrong. Tepper assures him that everything’s fine, he’s just sitting in the car, and the two fall into conversation. I love Trillin when he does stuff like this. I just love it:
Finally, the counterman said, “You know, it can get pretty irritating with some of those customers.”
“I’ll bet,” Tepper said.
“They’ll say, ‘Gimme a nice whitefish.’ So I’ll say, ‘One whitefish, coming right up.’ Cheerful. Pleasant. And they’ll say, ‘A nice whitefish.’ Can you imagine? This happens every Sunday at least once. I could prevent it, of course. I could head it off. You know how I could prevent it…”
“Well,” Tepper said, “I suppose –“
“Of course! I could just repeat after them exactly: ‘A nice whitefish.’ But I won’t. I won’t give them the satisfaction. What I really feel like saying when they correct me – when I say, ‘One whitefish, coming up,’ and they say, ‘A nice whitefish,’ – is, ‘Oh? Well, I’m glad you said that, because I wasn’t going to get you a nice whitefish. If you hadn’t said that, I would have looked for a whitefish that’s been sitting there since last Tish b’Ov – an old, greasy, fershtunkeneh whitefish. Because that’s what we serve here mostly. That’s out specialty. That’s how we’ve managed to stay in business all these years. That’s why the Russ family is synonymous with quality and integrity in this city for maybe seventy-five years – because they sell their steady customers rotten, stinking whitefish. That’s why the boss gets up at four in the morning to go to the suppliers, so he can get the fershtunkene whitefish before his competitors. Otherwise, if he slept until a civilized hour, as he maybe deserves by now, he might get stuck with nice whitefish.”
I loved this segment. It captured perfectly the way a certain type of person speaks. Someone with a Jewish, urban background; someone who’s been in the service industry a long time. Someone who takes pride in what they do and is mortally insulted by some pinhead’s unconcerned dissing of their profession. Having worked in retail for so long, I understood how the counterman felt. And I know – I know – that I use the word “nice” in this way sometimes. What slayed me was that… well, it’s like the word “nice” becomes Yiddish, in this context. Everyone uses the word but somehow it takes on an extra layer of depth when it’s used by alter cockers and demanding ladies standing on line in a store somewhere. The word becomes different, somehow.
It’s sometimes also used to convey the idea that one is taking pleasure in something beyond what one would expect. “Nice” can be used to modify or emphasize words unexpectedly, in a way that doesn’t sound right if you take the phrase at face value, but which makes total sense if you speak this weird language – which I want to call a Jewish urban language, but I’m not entirely sure that that’s fair. It might just be a generational thing. But I suspect that those of us who were raised in families where people used the word “nice” this way will carry it on to future generations. My niece, for example, who’s a mere child, and who seems to lean on “like” a lot more than “nice,” is a child who, someday, may be an adult who stands in a deli and asks the counterman imperiously for a nice whitefish. If she eats whitefish, which she might not. I suspect she’s a kid who’ll only go for belly lox and call it a day.
Later in Tepper, our hero falls into conversation with another person who visits Tepper in his parked car. They discuss how the visitor’s wife, an aspiring writer, writes things that the visitor finds completely mystifying. He just doesn’t get the stuff. He eventually admits that she’s really great at one thing in particular, which is describing serpents. He goes on for a while, saying how great the serpents are, even if the rest of the writing is just gobbledygook to him. Tepper considers this (I could just see him nodding his head thoughtfully) and comments:
“I like seeing a nice serpent now and then.”
A nice serpent. Man. I just about died.
Niceness, as a quality in people, may be overrated, but Miss Edith has to admit, there really is nothing like a nice serpent now and then.
Incidentally, one of my initial pleasures in reading Tepper Isn’t Going Out was reading the descriptions of how sales leads were generated by Tepper’s company, which is called something like Worldwide Lists. These little asides, which Trillin tosses throughout the book bit by bit, kind of like how in a salad you occasionally get a mouthful with a particularly tasty tidbit – a candied walnut, or a bit of pear, or whatever floats your boat – are definitely one of the reasons this book is a small joy. I don’t know if everyone would find this stuff entertaining, but god knows I did. In conclusion, I just want to thank Calvin Trillin for Tepper Isn’t Going Out; it was a palate-cleanser for me, a nice read.
I’ve finally finished reading it – it became my bedtime reading because, I found, I was enjoying it so much that the best way for me to appreciate it was to read it in very small installments, a tiny bit at each bedtime. I won’t say that I’m in love with Tepper, the way I have fallen in love with other books over the years, but I really did enjoy it. Trillin’s got a tone, a – bear with me here, there’s a reason I’m using this phrase – a nice, light tone, wry, but realistic – that I found very soothing at bedtime, and occasionally I chortled aloud as I read, prompting Notarius to ask, “What?”
One such segment came early in the book, on page 32. Tepper is sitting in his parked car outside of Russ & Daughters, which Trillin fans know is a place that the author has a kind of obsession with. This is where you go to buy your lox, your whitefish, and things like that. An appetizing store.
So Tepper’s sitting in his car outside Russ & Daughters and the counterman from the shop comes outside to see if Tepper needs help or something. The counterman’s concerned that Tepper maybe can’t get out of the car for some reason, that something might be wrong. Tepper assures him that everything’s fine, he’s just sitting in the car, and the two fall into conversation. I love Trillin when he does stuff like this. I just love it:
Finally, the counterman said, “You know, it can get pretty irritating with some of those customers.”
“I’ll bet,” Tepper said.
“They’ll say, ‘Gimme a nice whitefish.’ So I’ll say, ‘One whitefish, coming right up.’ Cheerful. Pleasant. And they’ll say, ‘A nice whitefish.’ Can you imagine? This happens every Sunday at least once. I could prevent it, of course. I could head it off. You know how I could prevent it…”
“Well,” Tepper said, “I suppose –“
“Of course! I could just repeat after them exactly: ‘A nice whitefish.’ But I won’t. I won’t give them the satisfaction. What I really feel like saying when they correct me – when I say, ‘One whitefish, coming up,’ and they say, ‘A nice whitefish,’ – is, ‘Oh? Well, I’m glad you said that, because I wasn’t going to get you a nice whitefish. If you hadn’t said that, I would have looked for a whitefish that’s been sitting there since last Tish b’Ov – an old, greasy, fershtunkeneh whitefish. Because that’s what we serve here mostly. That’s out specialty. That’s how we’ve managed to stay in business all these years. That’s why the Russ family is synonymous with quality and integrity in this city for maybe seventy-five years – because they sell their steady customers rotten, stinking whitefish. That’s why the boss gets up at four in the morning to go to the suppliers, so he can get the fershtunkene whitefish before his competitors. Otherwise, if he slept until a civilized hour, as he maybe deserves by now, he might get stuck with nice whitefish.”
I loved this segment. It captured perfectly the way a certain type of person speaks. Someone with a Jewish, urban background; someone who’s been in the service industry a long time. Someone who takes pride in what they do and is mortally insulted by some pinhead’s unconcerned dissing of their profession. Having worked in retail for so long, I understood how the counterman felt. And I know – I know – that I use the word “nice” in this way sometimes. What slayed me was that… well, it’s like the word “nice” becomes Yiddish, in this context. Everyone uses the word but somehow it takes on an extra layer of depth when it’s used by alter cockers and demanding ladies standing on line in a store somewhere. The word becomes different, somehow.
It’s sometimes also used to convey the idea that one is taking pleasure in something beyond what one would expect. “Nice” can be used to modify or emphasize words unexpectedly, in a way that doesn’t sound right if you take the phrase at face value, but which makes total sense if you speak this weird language – which I want to call a Jewish urban language, but I’m not entirely sure that that’s fair. It might just be a generational thing. But I suspect that those of us who were raised in families where people used the word “nice” this way will carry it on to future generations. My niece, for example, who’s a mere child, and who seems to lean on “like” a lot more than “nice,” is a child who, someday, may be an adult who stands in a deli and asks the counterman imperiously for a nice whitefish. If she eats whitefish, which she might not. I suspect she’s a kid who’ll only go for belly lox and call it a day.
Later in Tepper, our hero falls into conversation with another person who visits Tepper in his parked car. They discuss how the visitor’s wife, an aspiring writer, writes things that the visitor finds completely mystifying. He just doesn’t get the stuff. He eventually admits that she’s really great at one thing in particular, which is describing serpents. He goes on for a while, saying how great the serpents are, even if the rest of the writing is just gobbledygook to him. Tepper considers this (I could just see him nodding his head thoughtfully) and comments:
“I like seeing a nice serpent now and then.”
A nice serpent. Man. I just about died.
Niceness, as a quality in people, may be overrated, but Miss Edith has to admit, there really is nothing like a nice serpent now and then.
Incidentally, one of my initial pleasures in reading Tepper Isn’t Going Out was reading the descriptions of how sales leads were generated by Tepper’s company, which is called something like Worldwide Lists. These little asides, which Trillin tosses throughout the book bit by bit, kind of like how in a salad you occasionally get a mouthful with a particularly tasty tidbit – a candied walnut, or a bit of pear, or whatever floats your boat – are definitely one of the reasons this book is a small joy. I don’t know if everyone would find this stuff entertaining, but god knows I did. In conclusion, I just want to thank Calvin Trillin for Tepper Isn’t Going Out; it was a palate-cleanser for me, a nice read.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Miss Edith: Out of Town, But Back Now, With a Remarkable Set of Pajamas...
Miss Edith apologizes profusely for not having posted anything in so long. It’s not, I realize, that this is unprecedented, but it is nonetheless frustrating for the few loyal readers among you (for whom I am grateful, by whom I am, I admit, a little mystified; haven’t you got anything better to do with your time?). But it is, honestly, the case that Miss Edith’s been spending an awful lot of time away from her computer and away from home. This puts a crimp in the writing schedule.
Last weekend, for example, Notarius and I went to Vermont again. He was determined to climb a mountain somewhere – he’s prone to these attacks of Virtue in this way; Outdoor Activity is not something from which Notarius shies away, unlike yours truly – and it was arranged that, similarly to the plan a couple weekends ago, we would go stay in Vermont while he and a pal hiked some mountain or other. This time, instead of camping out at a remote farm with nothing but spiders, chickens, and other assorted wildlife and books to keep me company, I was delivered unto the fine little city of Brattleboro.
It is easy to enjoy Brattleboro. The place is compact and friendly; there are a surprising number of stores where it is quite pleasant to dispose of one’s disposable income. There are several excellent bookstores, two nice cafes, and, considering the size of the place, a lot of very good dining options. I’m a fan of Brattleboro. So to be left there and told to spend the day occupying myself nicely was not a burden.
I arranged to meet an old college roommate for coffee. She is a tall blonde, an Amazon woman by my standards, who has damn near nothing in common with me. Upon first meeting her in 1992 or whatever year it was, I apparently terrorized her by letting her know in no uncertain terms that she should never touch any of my belongings. This is not, of course, an auspicious beginning, and I recognize that I was not being a friendly person, but the fact is that the Blonde* became one of my best friends very quickly, and we’ve stayed in touch all these years. How these friendships form, between unlikely pairs – it’s really strange. For example, I will never ever admit to having played volleyball. The Blonde not only admits it but has even told me that she thought it was fun.
Wonders never cease.
The Blonde is now an extremely put-together happily married mother of two living in New Hampshire. Being the organized person she is, she received my email saying "yo -- wanna get together?" and apparently dropped everything to come meet me in Brattleboro (her husband, wisely, encouraged this reunion; god help the man who tries to prevent college roommates from getting together to gossip). We met at Mocha Joe’s – a landmark, now, in Brattleboro, though when I was spending serious time up there it had only just opened – and after consuming a fair amount of caffeine we ambled around town and, most importantly, shopped.
I know it’s common to make fun of rich New Yorkers (Jerseyites; Connecticut matrons; whathaveyou) who go to Vermont and New Hampshire and Maine ostensibly for the clean fresh air and canoeing and so on. I am often prone to such snobbery myself. But here I will cheerfully admit that, should Brattleboro’s retail operations go into a tailspin in the year 2007, it will not be because I ignored their wares. I think I may have single-handedly revived the local economy this past weekend. It’s official: I am a Connecticut Matron. Little Miss Edith – who’d’ve thunk it?
I acquired many remarkable little items over the weekend, few of which can I seriously justify, all of which I intend to enjoy thoroughly. Books – I got books --; and tablecloths – oh, did Miss Edith acquire some delightful textiles! --; and, perhaps most stunningly, an item that I had never thought of before but when I saw it, I knew instantly that I must have it: flannel-lined silk pajamas.
These are, of course, to be worn when the weather turns cold.
These are black silk lined in true red flannel.
If L.L. Bean understood me better, they’d’ve been carrying these for years.
Oh, my.
From a manufacturer about whom I knew nothing when I bought the pajamas, but now see is rather trendy – Mary Green – who makes some really very, very, nice things. They’re not cheap and they may not be to everyone’s taste, but let me tell you: black silk flannel lined pajamas – particularly when they’re on sale, as these were… It’s things like this that make Miss Edith sigh with joy when it’s the end of the day and time for bed.
And – Blonde: if you’re reading this… I know you’re laughing, but I wanted to apologize to you: I bought the last pair of those pajamas. You’ll have to wait for next season’s stock to arrive before you can splurge on your own…
*(The Blonde may be offended by my calling her The Blonde, so if she wants to devise another nom de blog, she should speak up, because it’s early in the morning and I can’t come up with anything better yet; what’s more, as I’m thinking about it, I think the name has a sort of rakish, Lauren Bacall type quality that I kinda like… but, you know, let me know. Certainly no offense is intended.)
Last weekend, for example, Notarius and I went to Vermont again. He was determined to climb a mountain somewhere – he’s prone to these attacks of Virtue in this way; Outdoor Activity is not something from which Notarius shies away, unlike yours truly – and it was arranged that, similarly to the plan a couple weekends ago, we would go stay in Vermont while he and a pal hiked some mountain or other. This time, instead of camping out at a remote farm with nothing but spiders, chickens, and other assorted wildlife and books to keep me company, I was delivered unto the fine little city of Brattleboro.
It is easy to enjoy Brattleboro. The place is compact and friendly; there are a surprising number of stores where it is quite pleasant to dispose of one’s disposable income. There are several excellent bookstores, two nice cafes, and, considering the size of the place, a lot of very good dining options. I’m a fan of Brattleboro. So to be left there and told to spend the day occupying myself nicely was not a burden.
I arranged to meet an old college roommate for coffee. She is a tall blonde, an Amazon woman by my standards, who has damn near nothing in common with me. Upon first meeting her in 1992 or whatever year it was, I apparently terrorized her by letting her know in no uncertain terms that she should never touch any of my belongings. This is not, of course, an auspicious beginning, and I recognize that I was not being a friendly person, but the fact is that the Blonde* became one of my best friends very quickly, and we’ve stayed in touch all these years. How these friendships form, between unlikely pairs – it’s really strange. For example, I will never ever admit to having played volleyball. The Blonde not only admits it but has even told me that she thought it was fun.
Wonders never cease.
The Blonde is now an extremely put-together happily married mother of two living in New Hampshire. Being the organized person she is, she received my email saying "yo -- wanna get together?" and apparently dropped everything to come meet me in Brattleboro (her husband, wisely, encouraged this reunion; god help the man who tries to prevent college roommates from getting together to gossip). We met at Mocha Joe’s – a landmark, now, in Brattleboro, though when I was spending serious time up there it had only just opened – and after consuming a fair amount of caffeine we ambled around town and, most importantly, shopped.
I know it’s common to make fun of rich New Yorkers (Jerseyites; Connecticut matrons; whathaveyou) who go to Vermont and New Hampshire and Maine ostensibly for the clean fresh air and canoeing and so on. I am often prone to such snobbery myself. But here I will cheerfully admit that, should Brattleboro’s retail operations go into a tailspin in the year 2007, it will not be because I ignored their wares. I think I may have single-handedly revived the local economy this past weekend. It’s official: I am a Connecticut Matron. Little Miss Edith – who’d’ve thunk it?
I acquired many remarkable little items over the weekend, few of which can I seriously justify, all of which I intend to enjoy thoroughly. Books – I got books --; and tablecloths – oh, did Miss Edith acquire some delightful textiles! --; and, perhaps most stunningly, an item that I had never thought of before but when I saw it, I knew instantly that I must have it: flannel-lined silk pajamas.
These are, of course, to be worn when the weather turns cold.
These are black silk lined in true red flannel.
If L.L. Bean understood me better, they’d’ve been carrying these for years.
Oh, my.
From a manufacturer about whom I knew nothing when I bought the pajamas, but now see is rather trendy – Mary Green – who makes some really very, very, nice things. They’re not cheap and they may not be to everyone’s taste, but let me tell you: black silk flannel lined pajamas – particularly when they’re on sale, as these were… It’s things like this that make Miss Edith sigh with joy when it’s the end of the day and time for bed.
And – Blonde: if you’re reading this… I know you’re laughing, but I wanted to apologize to you: I bought the last pair of those pajamas. You’ll have to wait for next season’s stock to arrive before you can splurge on your own…
*(The Blonde may be offended by my calling her The Blonde, so if she wants to devise another nom de blog, she should speak up, because it’s early in the morning and I can’t come up with anything better yet; what’s more, as I’m thinking about it, I think the name has a sort of rakish, Lauren Bacall type quality that I kinda like… but, you know, let me know. Certainly no offense is intended.)
Sunday, July 15, 2007
A Quiet Moment at Home with Miss Edith...
A quiet moment at home with Miss Edith and Notarius:
The scene is thus: Miss Edith, clad in a light summer dress, is stretched out across the small Chesterfield, enjoying a cool breeze; Notarius, nearby, sits at a wooden chair, with his laptop, looking at the BBC news.
“Salman Rushdie’s been knighted, it says here,” he says to his wife. “Apparently his life is in danger again or something.”
Miss Edith, only half-aware of what’s been said, replies sadly, “He’s been knighted?… but you know what else, he’s getting divorced.”
Notarius glares at Miss Edith, astounded by how unfocused and dim she can truly be. “Divorce is the least of Salman Rushdie’s problems right now,” he says pointedly.
“I wonder if they signed a prenup,” muses Miss Edith, gazing out the window.
Notarius walks away. Sometimes there’s just no talking to Edith.
The scene is thus: Miss Edith, clad in a light summer dress, is stretched out across the small Chesterfield, enjoying a cool breeze; Notarius, nearby, sits at a wooden chair, with his laptop, looking at the BBC news.
“Salman Rushdie’s been knighted, it says here,” he says to his wife. “Apparently his life is in danger again or something.”
Miss Edith, only half-aware of what’s been said, replies sadly, “He’s been knighted?… but you know what else, he’s getting divorced.”
Notarius glares at Miss Edith, astounded by how unfocused and dim she can truly be. “Divorce is the least of Salman Rushdie’s problems right now,” he says pointedly.
“I wonder if they signed a prenup,” muses Miss Edith, gazing out the window.
Notarius walks away. Sometimes there’s just no talking to Edith.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Cynical Thoughts: Noah Charney's New Novel and the Mysteries of Publicity...
Miss Edith is known in certain circles for not giving a holy fuck about art or museums in general; that is to say, she thinks they’re all well and good, and noble, etc. etc.; just don’t take her to one unless you don’t mind her spending all her time in the gift shop.
So Edie isn’t real likely to actually give a hoot about whether a painting is a Caravaggio or not.
However, she notices a certain fortuitous timing for young art theft expert Noah Charney, who’s been profiled in the New York Times Magazine and who Edith actually had the pleasure of hearing speak a couple of years ago. Mr. Charney is particularly knowledgeable about Caravaggio, it seems, and is happy to stand around being handsome and charming while telling you a million things you never really cared to know about the dead painter. Mr. Charney is a guy who will doubtless go far. He’s got everything going for him. If Miss Edith was willing to sit and listen to him talk about art, then all things are possible.
One of the many things he’s got going for him is that he’s got a novel coming out this fall, The Art Thief, from Simon and Schuster. But books like this can have all the publicity in the world and fail. (Witness: The Interpretation of Murder.)
What Mr. Charney’s got, too, is the recent headline announcing that an art restorer claims to’ve stumbled on an unfinished Caravaggio painting.
If this story can be kept alive for just a few weeks, a few precious weeks, to meet the release date of Mr. Charney’s novel… Does anyone wonder if perhaps this merging of news stories is merely a coincidence? Or is Miss Edith being overly cynical?
I wouldn’t say that the possibilities are endless. And I haven’t looked into this, but I will assume that a film deal is in the works…
Pollyannas need not post comments here.
So Edie isn’t real likely to actually give a hoot about whether a painting is a Caravaggio or not.
However, she notices a certain fortuitous timing for young art theft expert Noah Charney, who’s been profiled in the New York Times Magazine and who Edith actually had the pleasure of hearing speak a couple of years ago. Mr. Charney is particularly knowledgeable about Caravaggio, it seems, and is happy to stand around being handsome and charming while telling you a million things you never really cared to know about the dead painter. Mr. Charney is a guy who will doubtless go far. He’s got everything going for him. If Miss Edith was willing to sit and listen to him talk about art, then all things are possible.
One of the many things he’s got going for him is that he’s got a novel coming out this fall, The Art Thief, from Simon and Schuster. But books like this can have all the publicity in the world and fail. (Witness: The Interpretation of Murder.)
What Mr. Charney’s got, too, is the recent headline announcing that an art restorer claims to’ve stumbled on an unfinished Caravaggio painting.
If this story can be kept alive for just a few weeks, a few precious weeks, to meet the release date of Mr. Charney’s novel… Does anyone wonder if perhaps this merging of news stories is merely a coincidence? Or is Miss Edith being overly cynical?
I wouldn’t say that the possibilities are endless. And I haven’t looked into this, but I will assume that a film deal is in the works…
Pollyannas need not post comments here.
Friday, July 13, 2007
When One Searches the Want Ads on Craigslist...
Miss Edith realizes that anything is possible. This morning I was going to maybe post one of my usual discussions of something or other to do with the printed word, but I have been pleasantly distracted by the following, found on Craigslist:
office assistant
Reply to: uscasting@yahoo.com
Date: 2007-07-12, 11:52PM EDT
A top shoe company is looking for a female executive assistant ASAP. This person will do administrative work as well model shoes to department store buyers. Will model shoes so must have nice feet. Send Resume and foot pics. Need pictures of feet in top side back and arch view. Please send in headshot as well as pictures in and out of 6 pairs of open toe shoes. Send phone# asap.
* Location: new haven
* Compensation: 76,000
* Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
* Please, no phone calls about this job!
* Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.
PostingID: 372707119
Anyone who sees this ad and think it's a legitimate, non-fetish-related job, should be preserved in amber.
I hope someone else finds this as chucklesome an ad as I did...
office assistant
Reply to: uscasting@yahoo.com
Date: 2007-07-12, 11:52PM EDT
A top shoe company is looking for a female executive assistant ASAP. This person will do administrative work as well model shoes to department store buyers. Will model shoes so must have nice feet. Send Resume and foot pics. Need pictures of feet in top side back and arch view. Please send in headshot as well as pictures in and out of 6 pairs of open toe shoes. Send phone# asap.
* Location: new haven
* Compensation: 76,000
* Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
* Please, no phone calls about this job!
* Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.
PostingID: 372707119
Anyone who sees this ad and think it's a legitimate, non-fetish-related job, should be preserved in amber.
I hope someone else finds this as chucklesome an ad as I did...
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Miss Edith Reads Fiction for Cranky Girls -- so, what else is new?
Lest you think that all I did when I was in Vermont was read books I hated and watch movies I hated, I’d like to assure you this was not the case.
I also enjoyed a few things while I was up there.
While the chickens clucked in their little house a few yards from the porch where I perched, I re-read Alice and Martin Provensen’s classic childrens’ book, Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm. This is a book I discovered, thanks to co-workers at a bookstore, only a couple of years ago, but it is so utterly charming that I bought a copy for myself, and I actually read it on a surprisingly regular basis. Whether you are a city child or a country child, this book should be required reading for all little ones. It’s just a delightful book with the greatest illustrations and totally honest descriptions of life with animals.
I also read the one Jennifer Weiner novel that I had not yet read, a book I’d really forgotten about entirely though surely I’ve sold many copies of it over the years – Little Earthquakes.
Jennifer Weiner: when I was first hired as the buyer at that wacky joint downtown, I remember, I gave myself a little assignment, which was to figure out this chick lit thing. I asked the staff to make a pile of books for me to read; clearly this was a big trend, and spending a decade in rare books was all well and good but it didn’t give me a good background in selling cutely designed pink paperbacks to girls who were old enough to drink legally.
Jennifer Weiner’s Good in Bed was in that first pile of books assigned to me. It was, if I recall, one of about six titles I read one after the other, very fast – so fast that now I can’t remember any of the other titles I read, though I know I read a book by Marian Keyes. The Jennifer Weiner book was shocking to me, quite frankly, after reading all those candy-colored tomes, because it was just so much better than any of the other books. It was just head and shoulders better. It was still chick lit, don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying it was like reading Edith Wharton – but it was a different kind of chick lit. I quickly read In Her Shoes and enjoyed it thoroughly, and made a mental note: this Jennifer Weiner – she’s worth hanging onto. Jennifer Weiner knows how to put together a respectable sentence; she's good good comic timing; and she's actually...smart. More importantly, perhaps, her characters are allowed to be smart, and reflective, in ways that you seldom see in this genre, which I'll actually call "women's fiction" even though that's really no better than saying Chick Lit. I loved the Bridget Jones books, and nothing came close to them, as far as I was concerned, until Jennifer Weiner -- though they're such different types of chick lit that it's not a truly fair comparison. Bridget is meant to be a lark. Weiner's characters, her books, are clearly intended to have a little more weight to them than Bridget Jones ever could. Bridget is a comic conceit. Weiner's characters are characters in a larger sense. And Weiner writes them without the crutches that are littered about the Bridget Jones books like cigarette butts on a the floor of a nightclub.
I read her Goodnight Nobody when it came out, and was simultaneously pleased and frustrated by it, because it was such a carbon copy/tribute to Susan Isaacs – and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I think I’d hoped for something a little less derivative. Initially I was peeved by the similarity, but once I realized that this was a deliberate process on Weiner’s part, I thought, “Well, ok, babe. Go for it.” And I heartily recommended the book to Weiner’s fans, saying, “You’ll also want to read Susan Isaacs’ Compromising Positions” – which I promptly ordered for the store – and rang up sales with a clear conscience.
Little Earthquakes, though, somehow got past me. So when I noticed it on the shelf in Vermont, I thought, Oh, cool. Beach reading.
For those who want to dip their toes in something light and bright and intelligent; for those who could use a break from all that aggressively literary fiction that is pressed on us all the time; for those girls who look like McSweeney’s fans but are secretly annoyed as fuck by all the gimmickry, and just want to read something FUN, for fuck’s sake – for those girls, in particular the ones who are pregnant or new mommies (Miss Edith is not among your count, but trust her anyway), Little Earthquakes is an entirely enjoyable read. Fast. Sparkly. You won’t remember a thing about it when you’re done, in all likelihood, but that’s a nice thing – that means you’ll be able to revisit it in a year or two and you’ll enjoy it completely, all over again.
Miss Edith read a book just today that would appeal to the same kind of person who likes Jennifer Weiner, too – and maybe some straight boys, as well. It’s a young adult novel entitled Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. This bugger came out as I was leaving my job as buyer, if memory serves, and I remember being interested in it but didn’t actually lay hands on a copy until today. (Why the local public libraries haven’t ordered this title is simply beyond me; I had to get it through interlibrary loan! Mr. Armstrong! What gives!) This book is the kind of YA novel I would have died for when I was about 14, 15 years old. It’s smart, it’s funny (in a low-key way), and it absolutely captures the total insanity of young attraction. I don’t want to say young love – it’s not that. It’s about how one night can be forever – this holds true regardless of how old you are, but when you’re in high school…. Oh, forever is a very long time when you’re in high school.
The novel, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, is set up so that our heroes, Nick and Norah, trade turns narrating each chapter. Nick, newly broken hearted, is in a band playing a nightclub in lower Manhattan. Norah, also brokenhearted, and fairly cranky to boot, is there, and through a short series of coincidences finds herself sort of swept off her feet by Nick, and they spent a night going from club to club and going on emotional roller coaster rides in the process. The characters are seniors in high school, but the book’s readership shouldn’t be limited to that age. A young teen would love this. It’s cool in a way that might date it pretty quickly, but it’s also cool in ways that will, I hope, allow it to transcend that problem. Teens obsessed with punk, or adults who were teens obsessed with punk, should read this. It made Miss Edith – even Miss Edith – a little misty for her own wretched teen years.
Ah, youth. Miss Edith raises a glass and drinks a toast to the days when she had purple hair and wore black and white striped tights. Odd, but those days didn’t end so long ago, did they?…
I also enjoyed a few things while I was up there.
While the chickens clucked in their little house a few yards from the porch where I perched, I re-read Alice and Martin Provensen’s classic childrens’ book, Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm. This is a book I discovered, thanks to co-workers at a bookstore, only a couple of years ago, but it is so utterly charming that I bought a copy for myself, and I actually read it on a surprisingly regular basis. Whether you are a city child or a country child, this book should be required reading for all little ones. It’s just a delightful book with the greatest illustrations and totally honest descriptions of life with animals.
I also read the one Jennifer Weiner novel that I had not yet read, a book I’d really forgotten about entirely though surely I’ve sold many copies of it over the years – Little Earthquakes.
Jennifer Weiner: when I was first hired as the buyer at that wacky joint downtown, I remember, I gave myself a little assignment, which was to figure out this chick lit thing. I asked the staff to make a pile of books for me to read; clearly this was a big trend, and spending a decade in rare books was all well and good but it didn’t give me a good background in selling cutely designed pink paperbacks to girls who were old enough to drink legally.
Jennifer Weiner’s Good in Bed was in that first pile of books assigned to me. It was, if I recall, one of about six titles I read one after the other, very fast – so fast that now I can’t remember any of the other titles I read, though I know I read a book by Marian Keyes. The Jennifer Weiner book was shocking to me, quite frankly, after reading all those candy-colored tomes, because it was just so much better than any of the other books. It was just head and shoulders better. It was still chick lit, don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying it was like reading Edith Wharton – but it was a different kind of chick lit. I quickly read In Her Shoes and enjoyed it thoroughly, and made a mental note: this Jennifer Weiner – she’s worth hanging onto. Jennifer Weiner knows how to put together a respectable sentence; she's good good comic timing; and she's actually...smart. More importantly, perhaps, her characters are allowed to be smart, and reflective, in ways that you seldom see in this genre, which I'll actually call "women's fiction" even though that's really no better than saying Chick Lit. I loved the Bridget Jones books, and nothing came close to them, as far as I was concerned, until Jennifer Weiner -- though they're such different types of chick lit that it's not a truly fair comparison. Bridget is meant to be a lark. Weiner's characters, her books, are clearly intended to have a little more weight to them than Bridget Jones ever could. Bridget is a comic conceit. Weiner's characters are characters in a larger sense. And Weiner writes them without the crutches that are littered about the Bridget Jones books like cigarette butts on a the floor of a nightclub.
I read her Goodnight Nobody when it came out, and was simultaneously pleased and frustrated by it, because it was such a carbon copy/tribute to Susan Isaacs – and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I think I’d hoped for something a little less derivative. Initially I was peeved by the similarity, but once I realized that this was a deliberate process on Weiner’s part, I thought, “Well, ok, babe. Go for it.” And I heartily recommended the book to Weiner’s fans, saying, “You’ll also want to read Susan Isaacs’ Compromising Positions” – which I promptly ordered for the store – and rang up sales with a clear conscience.
Little Earthquakes, though, somehow got past me. So when I noticed it on the shelf in Vermont, I thought, Oh, cool. Beach reading.
For those who want to dip their toes in something light and bright and intelligent; for those who could use a break from all that aggressively literary fiction that is pressed on us all the time; for those girls who look like McSweeney’s fans but are secretly annoyed as fuck by all the gimmickry, and just want to read something FUN, for fuck’s sake – for those girls, in particular the ones who are pregnant or new mommies (Miss Edith is not among your count, but trust her anyway), Little Earthquakes is an entirely enjoyable read. Fast. Sparkly. You won’t remember a thing about it when you’re done, in all likelihood, but that’s a nice thing – that means you’ll be able to revisit it in a year or two and you’ll enjoy it completely, all over again.
Miss Edith read a book just today that would appeal to the same kind of person who likes Jennifer Weiner, too – and maybe some straight boys, as well. It’s a young adult novel entitled Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. This bugger came out as I was leaving my job as buyer, if memory serves, and I remember being interested in it but didn’t actually lay hands on a copy until today. (Why the local public libraries haven’t ordered this title is simply beyond me; I had to get it through interlibrary loan! Mr. Armstrong! What gives!) This book is the kind of YA novel I would have died for when I was about 14, 15 years old. It’s smart, it’s funny (in a low-key way), and it absolutely captures the total insanity of young attraction. I don’t want to say young love – it’s not that. It’s about how one night can be forever – this holds true regardless of how old you are, but when you’re in high school…. Oh, forever is a very long time when you’re in high school.
The novel, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, is set up so that our heroes, Nick and Norah, trade turns narrating each chapter. Nick, newly broken hearted, is in a band playing a nightclub in lower Manhattan. Norah, also brokenhearted, and fairly cranky to boot, is there, and through a short series of coincidences finds herself sort of swept off her feet by Nick, and they spent a night going from club to club and going on emotional roller coaster rides in the process. The characters are seniors in high school, but the book’s readership shouldn’t be limited to that age. A young teen would love this. It’s cool in a way that might date it pretty quickly, but it’s also cool in ways that will, I hope, allow it to transcend that problem. Teens obsessed with punk, or adults who were teens obsessed with punk, should read this. It made Miss Edith – even Miss Edith – a little misty for her own wretched teen years.
Ah, youth. Miss Edith raises a glass and drinks a toast to the days when she had purple hair and wore black and white striped tights. Odd, but those days didn’t end so long ago, did they?…
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Get the Hell Out of Town! -- with Miss Edith
Miss Edith and Notarius decided to get away from it all this weekend. Notarius felt a need to be manly and climb large mountains. I felt no such need, but was happy to sit in the car and head northward with him; the game plan was that I would spend the time when the menfolk were off being manly on some mountain or other at the home of some dear friends who live near mountains. Since this was all planned sort of at the last minute, I didn't have the time to make potentially interesting social plans -- meeting old friends for coffee, for example --; people have lives, after all, and you can't ask them to drop everything on six hours' notice... So I devised my own idea of a getaway.
Accordingly, I packed carefully. I brought DVDs, a number of books, a pair of jeans (it’s sweltering here, but up North, you know, even in the summer it can get sort of chilly), a sweater. I brought things, basically, to keep me comfortable and entertained in a situation where I might otherwise be bored shitless. Miss Edith has no interest in rambling strolls down country lanes; birdwatching holds no charm for me. I admit to enjoying looking at houses and noticing that this one’s gotten a new roof since we were last up – steel to replace cracked slate – and that that house over there has been repainted, finally; it’s now a bed and breakfast. But this is the same kind of strolling I would do in my hometown. Basically, Miss Edith in the country is a bad idea, and the only way for me to be happy in the middle of nowhere is for me to buffet myself with creature comforts and not leave the house at all.
Having had the presence of mind to bring my computer with me – even though there’s no internet connection at the house – I was able to spend happy hours sitting on the porch of the house, drinking coffee and watching DVDs. When I reached the end of a movie, I read for a while. And then I had lunch, and put in another DVD.
So it was really quite a full day, and by the time the mens came back to the house, I could honestly say I’d been pretty busy while they were gone, and everyone was happy.
While on the porch I viewed, in its entirety, a movie entitled “Someone Like You” which stars Ashley Judd, Hugh Jackman, and Greg Kinnear. This movie was highly recommended to me by a dear friend not because it’s a good movie but because it stars Hugh Jackman. Why is Hugh Jackman so ill-served by his movie roles? It’s really criminal. Well, we shan’t dwell on this.
The movie is based on a book entitled Animal Husbandry, a piece of early-ish chick lit by someone named Laura Zigman. I remember reading it some years ago, when I was at the library and frustrated because there was nothing I felt like reading. Animal Husbandry seemed like it might be a decent Laurie Colwin substitute. It was not. I was sorely disappointed. You know something? The experience of reading the book is almost identical to watching the movie. You hope it’ll be very enjoyable – perhaps even genuinely clever, something to admire on its own terms. But it just… isn’t. It’s not that it’s a bad movie… but it isn’t good enough. I’m sorry. Good actors trying sort of hard…you want to be sympathetic. But this is a case where the script could not be overcome. What ought to’ve been a really charming romantic comedy just lacks zing. Sparkle. Actual wit. And Hugh Jackman’s really nice to look at, but that is not sufficient.
I also read, yesterday, a book that about eighty-six people have told me I must read, and never have until now: Augusten Burroughs’s Running With Scissors. This is, as I’m sure Edith’s readers know, a memoir by a young man who had a fairly wretched childhood. Ya know, I’m awfully sorry if this story is true, but I’m more sorry about three things:
1. that people think this is funny; there was really remarkably little comic material in here, and the stuff that’s intended to be comic just… isn’t;
2. that the book is so fundamentally incredible, and I mean that literally; and
3. that the book is so badly written.
I admit that I only find David Sedaris amusing in tiny slices, and that humor is very, very subjective – so a book that’s recommended by David Sedaris is, of course, not likely to impress me (though I did fall for Jincy Willett, another writer who’s been hyped by Sedaris), but really, folks. Who is it exactly that finds these descriptions of boys being raped by older men funny? Who can possibly read this book without thinking, “Um, if this is even remotely trye, how is it that no one ever called social services, or the police, to find out what the fuck was going on in the nuthouse down the street?” This story is supposed to take place in Amherst and Northampton, MA, and in my experience, these are places where there are plenty of do-gooders (you could even say Nosy Parkers) who’d love nothing more than to handle social problems like those in this memoir – and I mean people with social problems, not “social problems” as a larger concept – and try to take care of them. Basically, I find this book just unbelievable. Had the story taken place in an area that was really isolated, in a culture where people really are more “live and let live” – northern New Hampshire, say – then I might say, “Ok, so, these people were fucked up fruitcakes. Oh, well.” As it is, I don’t buy it. And if Mr. Burroughs and his editor can’t be bothered to spell things correctly – not even things that are trademarks, like Brylcreem – then Miss Edith shan’t be bothered to really worry about the well-being of these utterly fucked sounding people.
Would you want to read a novel that talked about Kleenex but spelled it “Cleeneks”?
No, you wouldn’t.
The only reason I don’t feel more annoyed by Running with Scissors is that it took me precisely 2 1/2 hours to read, a short enough time that, you know, I can make it up without worry. But I will not waste time with further work by Burroughs.
A P.S. of sorts:
After posting this, I was moved to go online and discovered a considerable amount of material documenting that the family portrayed in this book have contested the author's veracity, etc. etc., which basically confirms my feelings about this thing. Those who read Augusten Burroughs and think this stuff is awesome basically deserve James Frey, whose "memoir" I tried to read a few years ago but gave up on after a few pages because I was so fucking bored. Readers, readers: try having some critical thinking skills, ok?
Accordingly, I packed carefully. I brought DVDs, a number of books, a pair of jeans (it’s sweltering here, but up North, you know, even in the summer it can get sort of chilly), a sweater. I brought things, basically, to keep me comfortable and entertained in a situation where I might otherwise be bored shitless. Miss Edith has no interest in rambling strolls down country lanes; birdwatching holds no charm for me. I admit to enjoying looking at houses and noticing that this one’s gotten a new roof since we were last up – steel to replace cracked slate – and that that house over there has been repainted, finally; it’s now a bed and breakfast. But this is the same kind of strolling I would do in my hometown. Basically, Miss Edith in the country is a bad idea, and the only way for me to be happy in the middle of nowhere is for me to buffet myself with creature comforts and not leave the house at all.
Having had the presence of mind to bring my computer with me – even though there’s no internet connection at the house – I was able to spend happy hours sitting on the porch of the house, drinking coffee and watching DVDs. When I reached the end of a movie, I read for a while. And then I had lunch, and put in another DVD.
So it was really quite a full day, and by the time the mens came back to the house, I could honestly say I’d been pretty busy while they were gone, and everyone was happy.
While on the porch I viewed, in its entirety, a movie entitled “Someone Like You” which stars Ashley Judd, Hugh Jackman, and Greg Kinnear. This movie was highly recommended to me by a dear friend not because it’s a good movie but because it stars Hugh Jackman. Why is Hugh Jackman so ill-served by his movie roles? It’s really criminal. Well, we shan’t dwell on this.
The movie is based on a book entitled Animal Husbandry, a piece of early-ish chick lit by someone named Laura Zigman. I remember reading it some years ago, when I was at the library and frustrated because there was nothing I felt like reading. Animal Husbandry seemed like it might be a decent Laurie Colwin substitute. It was not. I was sorely disappointed. You know something? The experience of reading the book is almost identical to watching the movie. You hope it’ll be very enjoyable – perhaps even genuinely clever, something to admire on its own terms. But it just… isn’t. It’s not that it’s a bad movie… but it isn’t good enough. I’m sorry. Good actors trying sort of hard…you want to be sympathetic. But this is a case where the script could not be overcome. What ought to’ve been a really charming romantic comedy just lacks zing. Sparkle. Actual wit. And Hugh Jackman’s really nice to look at, but that is not sufficient.
I also read, yesterday, a book that about eighty-six people have told me I must read, and never have until now: Augusten Burroughs’s Running With Scissors. This is, as I’m sure Edith’s readers know, a memoir by a young man who had a fairly wretched childhood. Ya know, I’m awfully sorry if this story is true, but I’m more sorry about three things:
1. that people think this is funny; there was really remarkably little comic material in here, and the stuff that’s intended to be comic just… isn’t;
2. that the book is so fundamentally incredible, and I mean that literally; and
3. that the book is so badly written.
I admit that I only find David Sedaris amusing in tiny slices, and that humor is very, very subjective – so a book that’s recommended by David Sedaris is, of course, not likely to impress me (though I did fall for Jincy Willett, another writer who’s been hyped by Sedaris), but really, folks. Who is it exactly that finds these descriptions of boys being raped by older men funny? Who can possibly read this book without thinking, “Um, if this is even remotely trye, how is it that no one ever called social services, or the police, to find out what the fuck was going on in the nuthouse down the street?” This story is supposed to take place in Amherst and Northampton, MA, and in my experience, these are places where there are plenty of do-gooders (you could even say Nosy Parkers) who’d love nothing more than to handle social problems like those in this memoir – and I mean people with social problems, not “social problems” as a larger concept – and try to take care of them. Basically, I find this book just unbelievable. Had the story taken place in an area that was really isolated, in a culture where people really are more “live and let live” – northern New Hampshire, say – then I might say, “Ok, so, these people were fucked up fruitcakes. Oh, well.” As it is, I don’t buy it. And if Mr. Burroughs and his editor can’t be bothered to spell things correctly – not even things that are trademarks, like Brylcreem – then Miss Edith shan’t be bothered to really worry about the well-being of these utterly fucked sounding people.
Would you want to read a novel that talked about Kleenex but spelled it “Cleeneks”?
No, you wouldn’t.
The only reason I don’t feel more annoyed by Running with Scissors is that it took me precisely 2 1/2 hours to read, a short enough time that, you know, I can make it up without worry. But I will not waste time with further work by Burroughs.
A P.S. of sorts:
After posting this, I was moved to go online and discovered a considerable amount of material documenting that the family portrayed in this book have contested the author's veracity, etc. etc., which basically confirms my feelings about this thing. Those who read Augusten Burroughs and think this stuff is awesome basically deserve James Frey, whose "memoir" I tried to read a few years ago but gave up on after a few pages because I was so fucking bored. Readers, readers: try having some critical thinking skills, ok?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
