Consider the Fork by Bee Wilson

This was a joy to read. The author has a light-hearted voice and an arbitrary but unfailingly appropriate sense of organization. She surveys, not what humans eat, but the technology used to prepare food. Her main focus is on how it's done in the home, but she also explains those old kitchens with warm hearth and the hanging pots as where the servants sweated (sometimes naked) to produce the meals their betters ate. She segways into restaurant cooking now and then too, particularly as it influences the home cook. Her organization is tool-oriented: spoons, forks, knives, pans, heat sources, freezing, not forgetting peelers and whisks and Cuisinarts, even Sous Vide machines and Aeropress espresso makers.

On the way she touches on a wide variety of topics, mixing historical research, expert opinion and her own feelings on a wide variety of topics, all without ever losing the focus on food technology. I was entertained as well as informed. Nothing stuffy or academic here. She's British, by the way, and that informs her opinions but not too much. She's very knowledgeable about US food tools and habits too, and jumps around Europe with her examples, with France and then Italy coming next, though there are also sections on people who don't use spoons and forks—on chop sticks and on eating with one's fingers for example.

 

She's quite good on the current rage for the perfect kitchen, with space and provision for every possible tool. She hates islands. She also points out that kitchens usually contain features and tools from a wide variety times, historically as well as within one's own life, which is part of her objection to the "kitchen renovation" concept. I think she thinks one should "collect" one's kitchen over the years. (She thinks reproduction anything is silly. To recreate a room from the 1940s you don't just fill it full of everything made in the 1940ies....)

She's interesting on futuristic kitchens from the past too: a 1940s kitchen designed to excite American women to put up with the last years of the war (she very gently suggests American women weren't all that deprived by the war). And the Frankfurt kitchen designed by a woman not taken seriously because she was a communist (http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/counter_space/the_frankfurt_kitchen), but which was actually very good. And the model kitchen of the Nixon-Khrushchev "kitchen debate".

I highly recommend this one. 

Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham

Excellent book. Meacham sees Jefferson not only as the idealist and philosopher who wrote the Declaration of Independence, but as a man who learned from experience and compromised throughout his political career. In fact, at the beginning of his Presidency, the Federalists were frightened that the country fail because real democracy was too dangerous and at the end of his Presidency some of the Republicans were angry that he'd compromised with the Federalists to the extend that he compromised the who idea of democracy. Interestingly, there was talk of secession at both points, and in both instances the North was seen as leaving the union, perhaps to form a country with British possessions in North America (Canada) and to have a more "royalist" government, maybe even go back to British rule.
One of Jefferson's greatest fears was that the new United States would give up the democratic ideal and have a "president for life" or even a younger son of the British king as its king.

His relationship with John Adams was also interesting. The two were close when they were both abroad as diplomats but politics separated them as Adams became the head of the Federalist Party and Jefferson of the Republicans. Only in old age did they reconcile (as a result of a push by Abigail Adams) and carry on a correspondence after Jefferson had retired. Then, they both died on the 4th of July of 1826, Jefferson have struggled to stay alive until July 4th.

Interesting to me that I've always liked Jefferson and felt closer to his main ideas but never read very much about him. Lately though I've read biographies of Adams, Hamilton (Jefferson's Nemesis) and Washington so have understand the Federalist POV much better, but reading this book reminded me that Jefferson, IMHO, is the closest to the way I think.

The book was interesting on the Jefferson controversy (slavery--he didn't free his slaves at death as did Washington, Sally Hemmings--Jefferson promised his wife not to remarry/sleeping with a slave, who was in fact a half sister of his wife, was not unusual at the time).

I was also reminded that it was Jefferson who commissioned the Voyage of Discovery of Lewis and Clark and who made the purchase of the Louisiana Territory on his own without consulting Congress (thought he at first wanted a constitutional amendment to allow it). It would probably not have happened had he not acted quickly. Those two acts set the scene for American expansion into the west and were therefore far-seeing and critical decisions.

In Sunlight and in Shadow by Mark Helprin

I read this one because it sounded to me a bit like his Winter's Tale, the only other Helprin novel I've read and which I became completely immersed in and loved. Like Winter's Tale, this novel celebrates New York City, this time at a somewhat later period. The time is 1946 and the main character, Harry Copeland, is a well-to-do Jewish ex-soldier who's come home to run his father's leather goods business, his father having died while he was at war. (I couldn't help but note that  Swede Levov, Roth's main character in American Pastorale, was also a business man in leather goods.) Harry, now in his early 30ies,  had been in the special forces  and fought his way from Africa to Sicily and eventually to the Normandy invasion, undertaking hazardous missions alone or with an elite team, been seriously wounded and had not exactly expected to survive. In 1942 in NY, he had two significant problems: his want of someone to love and be loved by and the need to save his father's business from the "protection rackets" which were largely unchecked by police or government in the city. And those two are related in ways that define who Harry Copeland is and how he will live his life.

Visiting an aunt (his only relative and she not a blood relative) on Staten Island, he sees a woman on the ferry and falls in love with her before he even meets her. Their love story is the at the core of the novel and Helprin writes some downright purple prose in its praise, verging sometimes on sentimentality, but for me right on the edge with the focus of the horrendous need of human beings to love, especially after living through the nightmare of the century. The woman is Catherine, only daughter of a rich financier, engaged to marry the son of another rich financier; a recent graduate of Bryn Mawr she has been trained as a singer  and is in a promising Broadway show. She too was stuck by seeing Harry on the ferry.

Harry's business is threatened with ruinous protection payments, orders of magnitude higher than those his father had been paying or any other tenants of the same building are currently paying, enough to ruin the business within the year. There is no hope of help from authority. The mob rules in this kind of thing. But Harry's sense of honor and dignity and what he owes to his father's memory cannot just close the business down and leave, and eventually it becomes clear that the mob is taking orders from the ex-fiance who has also bribed the critics to ignore Catherine's talent and imply that her rich father bought her a Broadway debut.

Love and honor denominate this novel and speak loudly to a generation that's learned to accept that neither is really possible in a world where return on investment trumps all. I recommend it highly. It's a moving story, a page turner and a tear jerker, but nonetheless honest.

I rate it a 10 though I doubt the critics do. I think it might be time to read other Helprin novels since these this one and Winter's Tale have captivated me so completely. And if you're in love with New York, this one isn't to be missed. I'm not--London is the city I dream about--but I still respond to Helprin's obvious love.

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Tim Egan

I enjoyed this book, another of the narrative histories so popular these days, books that appeal to real people because the author finds real people from the past whose lives were affected, even defined, by the events in question.

Egan describes the effects of drought on the areas of the high plains (mostly OK, TX and AR) where formerly prairie grasses had flourished and where the buffalo roamed. He begins with the XIT ranch, a huge ranch located in the TX Panhandle and NM, which broke up at the end of the 19th century when cattle prices tanked. Source of many Texas cowboy stories, there's a history of the XIT called 6000 Miles of Fence (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSGJIfDwP2U)

The US actively promoted these dry lands--that of the XIT and beyond--and encouraged farmers to homestead there, even recruited immigrants to  settle the land and grow wheat. since in the years before and during WWI the US was exporting wheat all over the world and farmers were making lots of money that way.

But the worst combination of disasters awaited those settlers: wheat prices tanked right after production in this area came online. a serious drought season began simultaneously, the stock market crash of 1929 ushered in 10 years of Depression. Removing the native grasses from the soil which was necessary in order to plant wheat and other crops, proved disastrous when the new crops failed and resulted in seasons of horrendous dust storms that snuffed out life everywhere in the area and in a few instances caused dust to rain over the entire eastern half of the US.

Egan presents the details of these disasters through the eyes of people who survived, some of whom he interviewed personally, some whose descendants he interviewed and others he explored through their published or unpublished diaries and memoirs. Interspersed among these personal stories was Egan's own research into the period: statistics about immigration to and from the area, crop successes and failures, weather and politics--FDR's New Deal targeted this area first as a haven for settlers and then, as disaster set in, as an area of experimentation with conservation (replanting grass, building tree barriers, rotating crops and husbanding the soil). Some of these projects were successful; other not. And the results were seen in human terms by Egan's informants living and dead: conservation success, lessons learned, but also human skepticism and greed.

A quick read and even if you think you understand the dust bowl, you'll discover that more people stayed than left (as The Grapes of Wrath taught us) and that the effects of the irresponsible use of the soil which directly caused the dust storms were far more disastrous than you thought. At least that was my experience. Rated this one a 9 (out of 10). Only problem with the book is that the combination of factual history and personal story was not quite as well integrated as it is in many of these popular histories.

Master of the Senate by Robert A. Caro

Over 1000 pages long, this one doesn't even mention Johnson until about 200 pages in. That early part of the book is a history of the US Senate, from its heyday as a chamber for learned debate with orators like Webster, Clay,and Calhoun to the rule-bound naysayer it became, particularly as it was when Johnson showed up in 1949. The Senate then was run by the Southern senators, lead by Richard Russell of GA, and the name of the game was protecting "the southern way of life" --code for discrimination against blacks. They not only blocked civil rights legislation but even blocked anti-lynching laws. While they didn't always have the votes to stop legislation they had the filibuster and the infamous Rule 22--cloture (ending the filibuster by a 2/3 vote). And the threat of filibuster.

Johnson understood power all his life and knew how to go about getting it. He became Russell's protégée, even his toady and everything he did focused on increasing his power. He learned how to pass legislation. He already knew how to influence people. He did a lot of unsavory things, one of the worst of which was to engineer a negative confirmation vote for Leland Olds as head of the Federal Power Commission. It was Olds' third confirmation. Johnson had even benefitted from Olds' policies when he was helping the Texas Hill Country get power when he first entered the House. But the Texas oil men wanted Olds gone because they didn't want natural gas prices regulated like electricity had been. Johnson went to extreme lengths to bring out Olds' early liberal  ideas and  writings (we're talking about Communism here, this was the McCarthy era after all). Despite the fact that Olds had always rejected the Communist Party and written about it early on, Johnson assembled a book of everything he'd ever written and Olds was quizzed on sentences taken out of context from his own writings of 20 years before. Unprepared (because he'd been lead to believe his reconfirmation was only a formality), Olds stumbled because he'd forgotten. Johnson led him down the path to destruction. He was not confirmed because of his "Communist leanings". His life work was not only interrupted but over. But Johnson won the support of the Texas oilmen that he needed to sustain his own power base.

But Johnson was not your typical Southern senator. His family was poor, had fallen on hard times , farming on inhospitable land in a remote and relatively poor area. He'd started his working life teaching school in a small town of Mexican immigrants who were dreadfully discriminated against. He helped them when he could and remembered their plight.

He also wanted to be President and knew as things stood that a Southerner could never be elected.

Needless to say, the book is fascinating, partly because Johnson is fascinating and full of contradictions, but also because Caro has researched not only Johnson's life and work, but the entire milieu in which he operated. He devoted 2 of 43 chapters to the Leland Olds story, for instance, to hit the reader over this head with Johnson's energy, thoroughness, and ruthlessness. And feel the great injustice done to Olds. And that same energy, thoroughness,and ruthlessness eventually gets directed toward causes that LBJ really believed in, like Civil Rights.

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Even living in Texas for the last 25 years I've ignored Larry McMurtry (except for the film of The Last Picture Show), but I had bought a copy of Lonesome Dove in paperback which has been on the shelf for years. I was wanting a long, compelling novel so started this one on a whim. At first I figured I'd made a mistake—not interested in cowboys and “rough humor”.

But I soon got completely involved and ended up spending my entire Saturday with the  mini-series playing on TV in the background if not actually watching it. I loved it, the book more than the mini-series which of necessity simplified and smoothed the edges.

It's the story of Augustus Macrae and Woodrow Call who were Texas Rangers and Indian fighters in their prime and, in the present, after the Civil War, are bored of the life they settled down to in Lonesome Dove, a tiny settlement on the Rio Grande, where they rustled and retrieved horses and

cattle from wealthy Mexicans across the border. The two are the oddest of old time friends: Gus is observant, kind, outgoing, a philosopher who always told you more than you wanted to know. He's been spending his days drinking whiskey on the front porch and laughing over his pigs. Call is strong, silent, determined, almost Puritanical in his outlook on work and personal morality. It's soon clear that Newt, a young man of 17 whose live with the Lonesome Dove gang since his mother died is Call's child and though Newt grows into a fine young man, Call can never bring himself to acknowledge him, even with Gus's prodding. Gus's talking drives Call nuts as his silence gets to Gus. Each in his way is tired of the current life, ready for one more adventure. Call dreams of driving a herd of cattle into Montana and becoming the first rancher in an unsettled territory.

The book follows them—and an assortment of cowboys and other characters who travel with them or meet them on the way—on this journey, driving horses and cattle (and Gus's pigs) up through the middle of the country, crossing one river after another, starting with the Nueces (where a young Scot turned cowboy of necessity is killed in a nest of water moccasins) and ending when they cross the Power River into Montana and reach the Yellowstone and even the Milk.

On the journey the reader gets to know Dish Bogett, the best of the hands who's hopelessly in love with Lorena, the whore in the Lonesome Dove saloon and Pea Eye, who went rangering with Gus and Call in a past life, a Deets, the Negro who's the best scout of the bunch, an Po Campo, the cook who tempts the to eat grasshoppers dipped in molasses. There's Allan O'Brien, brother to the dead boy, with his lovely voice, and Lippy Jones, and Needle Nelson, and Jasper Fant who's Newt's rival, the Spettle brothers one of whom dies....

There are three women characters (and I admit I was particularly interested in the women): Lorena starts out from the saloon at Lonesome Dove, traveling with Jake Spoon, another old Ranger and Indian fighter with Gus and call who casually promised to take her to San Francisco. They follow along side the herd—Call doesn't want a woman in camp—but Jake leaves her alone to go to San Antonio to gamble and she's captured by Blue Duck—the baddest of the bad men in the West who sells her to a couple of brutal outlaws and Kiowas. It's Gus who rescues her and brings her back from the brink. Clara they meet up with in Ogallala, Nebraska where she's nursing a paralyzed and dying husband on a horse ranch. In an odd way she's happy doing his work, realizes she better with horses than he was, but she longs also for Gus who was the love of her youth. Gus had agreed to the trip in part because he wanted to find Clara who had turned down his proposal 16 years before. And finally, Ellie, who'd married Sheriff July Johnson—without loving him, still in love with Dee Boot, an outlaw. Finding herself pregnant and July, maneuvered by his sister to chase a killer, gone, she takes off on a whiskey boat up the Arkansas River in the direction of Ogallala—and Boot (who it turns out is about to be hung), putting herself under the protection of a buffalo hunter of enormous size and strength, if a little dim.

Gus really captivated me, though by the end I'd come around to Call too, but about half way through I began dreading that Gus would die and wanting to stop reading before that happened. I suppose it was clear that he would die, but I'm not sure how I was so sure.

11/22/63 by Stephen King

Maybe not great literature, but.... I admit I've never READ Stephen King before. I don't like ghost stories or scifi (in most cases) and I really don't like blood and gore so I've bypassed him, though I know (by reputation) he's a good storyteller. Loved the film of the Shawshank Redemption.

So I'm more than pleasantly surprised at this one. It's long (nearly 900 pages) but I'm listening to the audible version where the reader is very good, especially with the various regional accents--even manages the Kennedy accent pretty well. (I'd forgotten how completely regional accents have smoothed out since 1963--forgotten a lot of things about that period that King revives in this book.) I've spent HOURS this week listening pretty compulsively as I knit (finishing a boring project) or spin (once you get going it's pretty routine--plenty of attention left over for something else). 

Definitely NOT a rehash of the assassination or the conspiracy theories--and in fact what there is of that is the least interesting part of the book.

Some blood and gore--though NOT Kennedy's.

The locales of the story are very well done: Maine where the main character comes from and a small Texas town where he ends up in particular.

The plot is the thing here. King is very very good at that--maybe even reminds me of Dickens in that regard--there's a similar sentimental ethos as well as a dependence on detail which echoes through the novel. There's a love story--and a pretty good one. There's a self-effacing, self-analyzing narrator/main character who's appealing and great with the hints not only of what's to come but about details that will recur.

The mechanics of time travel--not the scientific possibility thereof which King wisely doesn't tackle, but the practical rules--are well thought out and connect well with the plot and the themes of the novel. King is different from many time travel writers in tackling the issue of changing the past head on rather than avoiding it if at all possible. In Jake/George's world a trip to the past does allow you to change things--though as he says "the past doesn't like to be changed", but if you go back and come again there's a complete reset--everything goes back to the way it was. Not sure how that works as a theory of real possibilities, but it works very effectively in the novel.

I admit there are a couple of reasons I may be more addicted to this novel than you will be.
1. I LOVE time travel stories.
2. I was not only alive but an adult (in the first year of grad school) in 1963 and not surprisingly Nov 22 1963 left a huge impression.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John LeCarré

I reread this in March 2012 and still liked it a lot, but read it this time as a study for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. In this one the spy is a British one in the East German hierarchy instead of a Soviet one in the British hierarchy. Alec Leamas, British spymaster in Berlin loses an agent who's supposed to be crossing the wall to safety after years of providing good information to the British. That makes Alec less valuable in Berlin so he's recalled to a London desk job--one he's too much of a "field agent" and too independent to find tolerable. And the spymasters in London cook up an undercover job for him. He's to affect disaffection with the Service and go to seed, making himself vulnerable to recruitment by the other side, in order to get rid of a particularly nasty East German intelligence agent. Only he doesn't get all the information he needs. Neither does the naive British Communist girl who befriends him--and who becomes his lover--in the menial job he gets when he leaves the Service.

He is duly recruited as a defector, promised money, and meets his contact in Holland to spill the beans. But his contact soon lures him into the East where the contact is accused of treachery and Leamus finally realizes his real role in the mission. And when the girl turns up--having been "given a trip east a reward" by her local Communist party--Leamus.

LeCarre's message is that human treachery is human treachery whether out of personal cussedness or in the name of the State. And one side is no better than the other. Leamas, about as far away from an idealistic character as one can imagine, rebels.

George Smiley is a more important character in this one than I remembered and not as likable as he becomes later. He's clearly the brains behind the London plot. (Very interesting in these early novels by LeCarre to see how Smiley must have grown on his creator.)


Now I've got to watch the film again--I love Richard Burton in the part. Couldn't resist uploading the movie cover, not the book cover.

Restless by William Boyd

I was surprised to find this book on a list of the "best" spy novels, but not when I read it. It's not only a good one but it's different.

A woman tutoring foreign students in English while she half-heartedly completes a dissertation in history visits her mother in a picturesque village a short drive away. Her mother is a widow, in reasonable good health and in possession of her faculties. But Sally (the mother) has decided it's time to tell Ruth (the daughter) the truth about her life. She's really Russian (well, she had an English mother)--left with family after the Revolution, ended up in Paris by way of Shanghai--where the family exists as "stateless persons".  She's persuaded by a dashing British spy to work for him in return for British citizenship etc. 

The chapters alternate between Sal's memoir of her life as a spy and Ruth's life in the present. The two converge as Sal urges Ruth to help her track down the suave British spy who seems to have tried to kill off everyone who worked for him during the war. Sal alone escaped.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

Not sure this is a review so much as " thoughts on" the novel. If you don't want spoilers, don't read past the ****

I finished this one last night and am still not sure how to evaluate it. I didn't respond as positively as I did to Middlesex but I initially liked it much more than I liked it later. The characters, however, were very well done--believable and recognizable and their issues were not only real but often quite touching.  One reviewer, comparing the novel to Franzen's Freedom, found this one  "sweeter, kinder, with a more generous heart".

The "marriage plot" refers to a course in 19th century novel the main character, Madeleine (think of the Ludwig Bemelmans' heroine with whom she identified as a child) Hanna takes at Brown. The marriage plot, in which novels end with the suitable marriage of the heroine (a la Jane Austen) or later in which the heroine marries, is unhappy but has to stay married (a la Henry James) is posited as the  raison d'être  for the novel itself and the question is whether the novel can survive its loss. The theory is that the "marriage plot" was essentially the definition of a novel until social conditions between men and women changed and marriage was no longer the defining moment in the life of a woman. Did the novel languishes without the marriage plot? Madeleine writes a senior thesis on the marriage plot and Jeffrey Eugenides adapts a marriage plot to the late 20th century.

The novel takes place in the late seventies/early eighties when Madeleine goes to Brown. Her background is important to the novel: her father was president of a small college in New Jersey and her mother the epitome of upper middle class East Coast society. Financial and social security was important to both of them. Madeleine is the typical Ivy Leaguer. And while many of Maddy's friends at Brown come from a similar background, the two men who figure as main characters do not. Leonard comes from the west coast and from an arty but fractious family: both parents drink, the father is an antique dealer and eventually leaves his wife to go live with a former client in Europe. Mitchell comes from Detroit, also not from the comfortable middle class. He half identifies with the Greek side of his family (we remember the Greek society in Detroit from Middlesex and there's a bit of that in Mitchell's background--and in Eugenidies').

I'm a generation (or close to a generation) older than the characters (and the author) but was finishing an advanced degree and becoming an asst prof during the time period--in an English department--so I was fascinated by the introduction of deconstruction theories into the literary department conversation. Like most of Madeleine's profs I was schooled in the New Criticism but fascinated by semiotics and structuralism (and deconstruction)--Barthes, Derrida, etc. and with the whole idea of "literary theory" as a discipline (before that there were schools/fashions of literary criticism but nothing so formal as a theory, with philosophical and sociological underpinnings). All three of the main characters study these ideas though Leonard is a biology major and Mitchell in religious studies and they both take it more seriously than does Madeleine who decided eventually on a Victorian lit focus. But it's these ideas that "invalidate" (if that's what you want to call it) the very idea of the marriage plot--or any other plot for that matter. Eugenidies doesn't take it further than that except that clearly he's trying to write a novel with a marriage plot in a time when that plot would seem superannuated. Mitchell has a half-baked theory (discussed with others at Brown) that you can divide people up into first stage (married early, right out of college), married after establishing a career, and others....

The novel is told mostly from Madeleine's point of view, though the two male characters' back stories and aspirations as well as current experiences take the forefront some of the time, Mitchell (clearly a stand-in for the author) gets more center stage than Leonard. Madeleine impulsively invites friend Mitchell home with her for Thanksgiving freshman year. He's in love with her; she considers him a friend. There's an opportunity for a sexual encounter which both in their way back away from. Madeleine meets Leonard in the literary theory class and falls hard. Mitchell (like Knightly in Emma) remains in the background, supporting her when he can and suffering in silence. The perfect marriage plot. And not nearly as different from Emma or The Portrait of a Lady as one might expect, despite Madeleine's grad school plans, her prenup and the possibility of easy divorce, none of which were available to the 19th century heroines.

****

Maddy falls for Leonard, has a whirlwind affair with him till he breaks it off. She's devastated and Leonard seems to drop off the map--not coming to the class where they met and she doesn't see him anywhere else either. On graduation day, she discovers he's in the psych ward--he hadn't been taking the medicine for his bipolar condition. She misses graduation and rushes to rescue him. Mitchell, still in love with Madeleine, goes off to India as planned with Larry (who deserts him for male lover in Athens) and continues to explore his spirituality, volunteering for Mother Theresa and traveling to Indian shrines. He writes a long letter to Madeleine which he concludes with a plea that she not marry Leonard. She of course does. (This may be the rescue plot rather than the marriage plot--or the marriage as rescue plot.) Her parents are supportive but WASP-conventional when Leonard, experimenting with his meds, goes off the deep end. Mitchell appears out of nowhere to be a support to Madeleine. There is no Jane Austen ending, but the marriage plot seems to have worked quite as well as it did in the 19th century, even with quite a different ending. Or at least that's how I saw it. The novel isn't dead because women have alternatives they didn't have in Jane Austen's time. The marriage plot isn't entirely dead either--it's just different because marriage isn't "final" for the woman either. Whether or not she stays in the marriage, her options are much broader than those in Austen or James