Prologue: Two cross-country flights with three young children and unavoidable transfers in both directions, separated by less than 72 hours in-country, on my non-native coast, for a theocratic church wedding packed with in-laws and people I don't know well enough to drink with... Clearly, quality reading material is essential packing, somewhere just below, and possibly preceding, a decent pair of shoes and a clean shirt for the wedding itself. I show up to SFO without so much as a day-old copy of the Times.
Actually, I'm taking at least a little literary license. Not with the horrors of the 15 or so hours my family would spend in the care and company of commercial air carriers, not with the other factual particulars, but with the implication that I forgot to pack something to read. I spent many years traveling for work in a previous life, mostly long-haul, and, while I have forgotten virtually every essential one can forget at one point or another (passport, socks and underwear, foreign currency), I have learned - the hard way - never, not ever, to travel without a book. If at all possible, not without backup. I left our house without a book on Thursday morning because I knew we'd be at the airport with loads of time and access to a passable bookstore, and I really, really like picking out new stuff to read with my hands: The tactile sensation of the pages, their weight in one's hand, even the font chosen for printing - all these things matter. While I, like you, buy most of my books online for convenience and price, I will mourn the inevitable death of the physical bookstore, and I regret that my children will, in all likelihood, never even know what I'm talking about.
Also, for the record, any insinuation that either my in-laws, or the family they're marrying into, were anything other than lovely would be grossly unfair: They were, to a name, lovely people who had the foresight to cater cute little mac-n-cheese ramekins and chicken in zinc buckets for the kids alongside plenty of booze for the grownups. I can't speak to the wedding cake, except to say that it looked very classy, without so much as a single square meter of overworked fondant in sight, and it got raves from the munchkins. (Granted, the bar for that last bit consists of little more than sugar, but still.) Even the church service was manageable, and I say that as a non-practicing Jew: I don't think we had to spend more than a few hours on our knees or otherwise flagellating ourselves. Kidding.
In the event, I bought two books with vastly inflated, travel-desperation sorts of profit margins: "All The Pretty Horses", by Cormac McCarthy (arguably America's greatest writer of fiction and whose work I carefully ration in order to extend for as long as possible the literary cherry-popping that only a McCarthy first page can deliver), and "Cooking Dirty", by Jason Sheehan (a food writer I had not previously heard of and whose book I bought largely on a whim). Jay Sheehan's book is a revelation if only because, like food itself, so much of what is produced is irredeemable shite, the moral equivalent of an Applebee's salad bar, that one often forgets what the real thing, done properly, can be like.
Sheehan writes well. Not just well-enough, mind you, but the sort of writing that makes you wonder how he ever got that good, that seems somehow unfair. He also happens to have a vast wealth of personal stories about working in kitchens that, for the most part, strike just the right balance between making the reader cringe and laugh out loud. He also knows an awful lot about professional cookery at all levels, in and of itself a worthy diversion, because it's not every day that you get to hear a cook talk intelligently about the short-order counter at Waffle House and Escoffier's preparation for oxtail consomme with equal respect, enthusiasm, and first-hand knowledge. And the book is dirty: Filthy, in-the-gutter, foul-mouthed, grossly-inappropriate, richly-laden-with-highly-questionable-lifestyle-choices dirty. You like him in spite of his Himalayan faults. Did I mention that he's funny? I'll say it again: You'll cringe, but you'll be laughing. Out loud. He's also the perfect antidote to a foodie culture that considers the candy-ass veneer and slapstick cookery of Guy Fieri or Rachel Ray in any way relevant to the actual preparation of real food.
The other thing, maybe the thing, that makes the book so successful is that, despite being about nothing but cooking, it is really about everything but cooking. It is kitchen-as-parable: His career in the kitchen, while fundamental to the story line, including his descent toward near-dearth and the eventual righting of his life, is also just a means of explaining what I took to be much larger truths about the choices we all make in our lives, loves, and work. The point is made most succinctly and directly when, near the very end, he tells us that the most important thing for any would-be restaurant critic to understand is that the food is always the least interesting part of the review.
In a perfect world, I'll be able to say that here, in this blog, as well.
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