Blood, Bones and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton

I really enjoyed this book and I recommend it; I thought it was well-written and entertaining. The author, Gabrielle Hamilton, is the chef/owner of Prune in Manhattan.

Gabrielle Hamilton has led a very interesting life. For one thing, it's fairly rare for a woman to be the chef/owner of a restaurant. Many times, cooking is a man's business. Both of her parents were interesting people and her memoir begins with her memories of her home and her parents' parties. Her mother was French, and her mother's cooking deeply influenced Hamilton's cooking; in fact, something her mother made, marrow bones, is on the menu at Prune today, I think.

She herself is a vivid person who's made some interesting choices, and she talks about them in her book. Not only did she travel in France, Greece and Turkey, picking up food lore along the way, but she attended a writer's program in Michigan. In Michigan I think she must have experienced a very different culture - both literary culture and the culture of the Midwest.

I finished this book in about three days and that's important to me because I've come to feel that when I am able to read fast it's a sign that the author is a strong prose stylist. I think Hamilton is a really good writer. Some of her sentences were very poetic.

I also think that she grapples with some tough personal issues in her book. I read the New York Times review last night and the reviewer reported that there was wasn't much connective tissue between the episodes in the book and that she failed to explain why she did some things.

I think those criticisms are valid but unimportant to me as a reader. I wanted to be entertained and I was.

The reviewer did not find her to be honest; I found her to be refreshingly candid and the gaps in exposition the reviewer noted I associate with the fact that we do not see ourselves or our lives objectively; memoirs can be beautiful, instructive and true in a number of ways but I don't think that they are ever objective. This is a story told from her point of view.

One aspect of her story I found particularly interesting was how ambition had, according to her report, hurt the relationship she had before she met her husband. Conflict over ambition, and whether it's really socially acceptable, really resonated with me.

Many people specifically enjoy reading about food and I think that they will enjoy the book. I recommend this book to foodies and to anyone who likes a good story.

Prune has a nice website with the restaurant's menu, at http://www.prunerestaurant.com.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

Loved this book.

It's a shorter book, very well written, and I read it in four hours.

I don't know how to talk about this book without revealing the ending, and I prefer not to reveal the endings of books as plot is very important to me as a reader.

(I'd looked forward to reading Pamela for years and when I read the critical introduction and found out the ending I couldn't bring myself to finish reading the book. Of course, that's ridiculous -- anyone who'd ever seen a romantic comedy would have guessed what the ending of that particular story would be -- except for me. I wouldn't have guessed. And the fact that that is ridiculous doesn't mean it's not true.)

So, I hate to reveal endings because I hate having them revealed to me.

There is an element of fantasy to this book, but you should not be misled by that. (There is perhaps more than an element of fantasy.) I view this fantastical element as a metaphor, used by the author to give the book greater universality.

I read this book for my book club.

I think the reasons I would give for why I loved this book would be that it was very well written; the plot was organized to achieve and maintain suspense; the prose was often plain and straightforward but often very poetic and always shapely; the behavior and thoughts of characters seemed psychologically authentic; and I found the discussions of food sensually appealing (in this way it seemed harmonious with my recent reading of Blood, Bones & Butter and Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle).

It is hard for me to recommend this book because I think it is about the things that grieve us most deeply. Its emotional honesty is sad; in this respect it reminds me of Chekhov.

A few or so years ago I saw a wonderful production of Chekhov's The Seagull. As I walked out of the theater with tears running down my face I turned to my companion and said, "Why should I pay for the privilege of having my heart broken?" You see I am committed to the notion of a satisfyingly happy ending and not ashamed of it.

There is one little detail about this experience I have to share. As I turned to my companion, I caught a glimpse of the one the very talented young actresses in the production peeking around the curtain to spy on us and find out if we loved her performance. And, we did.

Reading Now

Yesterday I began Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton; very entertaining. I highly recommend it.

Today I began the Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender. I'm only on page 38, but I think I'm going to like it very much. It's definitely a fast read.

Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Andrew Garfield

This is a book about type and its modern-day equivalent, font. As the author points out, type was a big but hidden part of our lives, exclusively considered by designers, printers, and publishers. If you weren't in the "business," or some kind of business, you probably wouldn't know too much about type.

But computer fonts changed all of that, and apparently, Steve Jobs is the person who's responsible. Oh, the zeitgeist is all about font! Or, perhaps more accurately (or hopefully), it's about design.

Jobs, I understand, took a calligraphy course at Reed College, and while he didn't expect to do anything with that calligraphy knowledge, when the Apple Macintosh shipped, it had a bunch of fonts that permitted ordinary people like me to choose fonts and to consider which fonts they wanted to choose. Before that, the state of the art in the typewriter was the IBM Selectric (Garfield notes that Big Blue was the Apple of its day) and the balls could be changed. The only two type I ever saw was Courier or Prestige Elite. Well, Steve Jobs changed all that.

In Just My Type, Simon Garfield has given us a book that is part a biography of typefaces or fonts, and partly a guide.

For instance, I learned that for several years there has been a movement against Comic Sans. It's one of those fonts, along with Brush Script, Papyrus (!Ow! a former favorite!), which, when used, demonstrates the amateur status of the user.

This is a book that, instead of flouting the received wisdom, explains what the received wisdom is, for the uncool kids.

I found it surprising to learn that the same man who designed Zapfino designed Palatino (Hermann Zapf). Palatino isn't perfectly classical: if you look closely, you can see that the capital P is not closed! But it's very close to Roman lettering, and the addition of a certain expressive style gives it its charm. Whereas Zapfino is both dramatic, bold, flouncy and inconsistent - and, it's everywhere! Brush Script is a "bad" font, the choice of an immature, inexperienced designer, and makes whatever you're working on look like it was designed in the 1950's. But, why is Zapfino everywhere (in the brochure for the retirement community, on the side of the cookie box, and everywhere else) while Brush Script is bad.

Why is Comic Sans so despised? The short answer is that it's overused. (Why is it overused? I imagine because it reminds people of comics, and that there's something warm about it - it reminds me of Charles Schulz lettering for Peanuts.)

And how can Helvetica be so wonderful and so ubiquitous on the one hand, and be regarded as overused by some designers on the other hand? I guess there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

As Garfield points out, type, or font, is everywhere around us. This book will lead you to see it with new eyes and soon you'll be saying under your breath, "That's Zapfino. That's Albertus, I think!"

And, when you have used Calibri for a sign because it just seems to fade into the background and doesn't draw attention to itself, you may, like me, be stunned to read that Calibri, "is a rounded, pliable sans serif with great visual impact."

By the end of this book, you'll agree that fonts are expressive and have personality. I wonder, though, if you might feel, like me, that not everyone agrees on what that personality is.

Yes, and if you loved the documentary "Helvetica," you'll love this, too. Here's something fun: a video promoting Just My Type (this is just the sort of thing I like)(photographed in London and Manchester): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhI2LYDkkZk

And you might enjoy this, too: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole

Who is Harry Nilsson (and Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him)?

If you love Harry Nilsson, you will enjoy this documentary. I wanted to know about his late and early career and his family. The highs and lows of his dramatic life and long career are all discussed here.

It was a pleasure to hear some of the songs again; I was especially pleased that they included "Don't Forget Me," on the sound track. I love that song, and in a way it's very typical of Nilsson as a songwriter: it's lovely, it's poignant, and it's frank in a way that pop songs rarely are ("I'll miss you when I'm lonely, I'll miss the alimony, too"). Nilsson was a really original songwriter and while that may not have always been commercial enough to win success on the charts, as a listener I find it inspiring, gratifying and moving. Different is not always better, but here it is.

The documentary has many people who knew Nilsson talking about him, and they all feel passionately about him; if you're a fan like me, you'll find that gratifying, I'm sure. Their portrait is affectionate and tactful, but truthful: Nilsson liked to party, was competitive, insecure, willful and stubborn; managed his own career and not always well.

I think I've felt sad that Nilsson's career has been eclipsed; I imagine I feel so strongly about it because he was such a great singer and such a great songwriter and that means something to me personally. (Why do fans take it personally?) I find myself wishing that more folks would discover him; perhaps because of this documentary they will.

It's gratifying to know that a tribute concert has been organized for November 26 at Off Broadway in St. Louis. I just read a bit of publicity about it online; one of the event producers, Kevin Buckley of Grace Basement, said: "However, Nilsson, for a variety of reasons, will remain somewhat on the fringes even if more and more people become aware of his work. Something about his art and persona is strangely subversive and elusive, while his music was so beautiful and melodious. Nilsson is interesting because he's confusing. He almost went out of his way to let people know he didn't take himself too seriously."

My favorite part of this documentary appears toward the end: Van Dyke Parks is facing the viewer and starts playing some music. I found myself beaming; then he turns away as if saddened, and I started crying. I guess I'm just an Aeolian harp but I was moved by something I took to be authentic.

The Tourist

I saw The Tourist last night. I suppose I watched it to see Venice. It was so different than what I imagined, and as I tried to take it in I couldn't make it hang together in my mind.

I suppose that movie was meant to star Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, and only if it did could it make sense - or seem to make sense. I can't think of an actress with the right kind of haughty froideur - oh, Joan Crawford, perhaps.

There were several ways in which the film was different from what I expected. One was the music. I think it was meant to be very old-fashioned movie music, that would tug on your heart strings and chill you with suspense and it didn't work. I really didn't like it and found it deeply disappointing. I think I started with a stereotypical thought like, "This is just what's wrong with movies today," and came to think that, while the original precis for the music may have made sense, it undercut the meaning of the film instead of supplying it.

Let Them Talk by Hugh Laurie and other artists

Mostly I am unfamiliar with the songs on this collection but I love "Tipitina," and think it worth the price of admission alone. I really love it. I love the song and I think this is an outstanding rendition and I love Laurie's singing here.

I'm afraid that I like to imagine myself discerning but I'm very opinionated and I'm no David Denby, that's for sure.

I like variety, and I like people doing things passionately, and I like folks with lesser vocal gifts singing musically and expressively. I enjoyed this record.

P.S.: I was driving a friend to the airport and listening to this record (to "Let Them Talk," specifically), and he suddenly burst out, "I like this guy! Who is he?" and I explained that it was Hugh Laurie.

As I've been listening to this record, it's been growing on me and I am now very fond of "Let Them Talk."

Once I was attending a performance of Madama Butterfly in a 4,000 seat hall. Someone complained that the tenor, not well-known, did not have a voice big enough to fill the hall. I thought about it and I decided that it was just unfortunate that you had to have such a big voice to fill a large hall like that and that I wanted to be able to enjoy his voice as well. I want to have a chance to appreciate everyone's voice. I personally feel that the final arbiter of worth here is "Do you enjoy it?" and I am enjoying Laurie's album.

Animal, Vegetable and Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver

I haven't finished this book (I'm only on Chapter 4) but I thought I'd give you a preview of coming attractions.

First, let me say that I have never read Barbara Kingsolver's fiction. If I had, I imagine I'd come to this book with greater eagerness.

Secondly, I like food and I especially like my favorite things, but I am not a foodie. I'm not a gardener, either. Kingsolver is and she is passionate about it. She takes real aesthetic pleasure in the flavors of heirloom fruits and vegetables, and a visceral satisfaction in the seasons of the year, and visual delight in the colors and flowers of the vegetables she plants. As a result, as I slog through this book I feel like the one person at the party who doesn't know anyone else.

Kingsolver has something to say, and I respect that. Truthfully, without having something to say, what is the point? It's a didactic book, and meant to be one. To paraphrase Gertrude, this book has plenty of matter - not so much the art.

Kingsolver's trying to argue that the combination of industrial style farming, genetic engineering of plants for industrial farming, the loss of smaller family farms, and the way in which we city dwellers have lost touch with the source of our food and any knowledge about it threaten our food security. She's trying to argue that the situation is serious and the need to act is immediate, and that there are things that ordinary people can do, in feeding themselves, to improve the situation.

Her husband, a professor of environmental science at a Virginia college, argues that the amount of petroleum consumed to transport out of season produce dramatically raises it cost - a cost that is invisible to us and subsidized by our government.

Her family's experiment is presented as proof that folks can take matters into their own hands, and her account is meant to show, in part, how it can be done. After living in Tucson, Arizona, for many years, she and her husband move their family to his farm in Virginia. They spend a year eating only those things that they can grow themselves or purchase from folks living nearby, and this book is Kingsolver's account of that year.

In short, they eat in season, something many of us, with our hothouse tomatoes and raspberries in winter, do not do.

The story of the year that her family spent trying to eat food that they'd either grown themselves or purchased from nearby neighbors is a little short on drama. Plenty of passion when she talks about how the use of corn syrup in many of our foods has helped to fatten us as a nation at the same time that the year-round availability of most fruits and vegetables requires shipping long distances, and that the logistics of their shipping means they arrive at our table shorn of any flavor. This, at the same time that the profit-maximizing policies of seed companies like Monsanto have led to a greatly reduced biodiversity that, if allowed to continue, will likely lead to catastrophic crop failures and widespread famine in the developed world. (I don't think Kingsolver explicitly states that famine will definitely happen, but if you're Irish you know how the story ends.)

This is important stuff, and Kingsolver is committed and passionate, and I admire her, and I find that I need toothpicks to keep my eyelids open.

The chapters on "Molly Mooching" (a local name for morels, with recipes) and "Gratitude," are delightfully engaging, full of rich, descriptive writing and probably catnip for a foodie.

"Gratitude" opens with a Mother's Day gift to a neighbor, a tomato plant. Kingsolver reports that the recipient did not say thank you, and her family refrained from saying "You're welcome." This is because of a local belief that if you say "thank you," for a plant, the plant will die.
The type of tomato this was a variety called "Silver Fig" from the former Soviet Union.

The chapter continues with a section on the May planting, an arduous task begun before school starts in the morning and continued after school lets out until well after dark. More tomato varieties are described in loving detail. Kingsolver plants a Siberian variety, bred for its ability to ripen in a short summer, helping to ensure some early tomatoes.

In June, she's embarrassed when she plans to offer some of those Siberian tomatoes to a friend only to discover that her friend, living in western Massachusetts, already has some gargantuan tomatoes.

In this chapter, Kingsolver starts to talk about a practical problem: Americans have grown accustomed not just to eating out of season but to paying lower prices for factory-farm produced food that food produced by hand on smaller farms and sold at farmers' markets can be sold for.

But Kingsolver argues that the price differential is not enough to discourage low-income food consumers and that in fact, holders of food subsidy vouchers can use them at farmers' markets. I didn't know this, and it's a big revelation to me. In fact, there are foodmobile buses - Kingsolver mentions one in Tennessee and I know of one in Austin - that take fresh produce to urban neighborhoods. I am intrigued and wonder if it is really possible for there to be a successful farmers' market in an area that's not very affluent.

The book ends on the happiest of notes, as the author and her youngest daughter celebrate the birth of their first turkey chicks on the farm, a joyous event and the realization of the author's dream to help preserve vintage varieties of turkey.

If you'd like to know more about Barbara Kingsolver's experiment, her family, or resources for learning more about Slow Food International or Slow Food USA, there's a special website (with recipes!) at http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

You can find out about Slow Food USA's Ark of Taste here: http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/programs/details/ark_of_taste/

"Cruelty to Animals" in Rebecca Wells' Little Altars Everywhere

I enjoyed Little Altars Everywhere a little bit more than Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, and one of the big reasons why is the chapter "Cruelty to Animals". It's some strange cross between Flaubert and Benny Hill. I dare you to read it without laughing out loud. In fact, I think if you read it out loud to someone else you'll soon both be in stitches.

Public Speaking

I enjoyed this documentary, directed by Martin Scorsese, which presents Fran Lebowitz doing what it may be she does best: talking. It's not a completely fresh idea, and Fran Lebowitz may be a "character," but she is an independent and very entertaining woman - two things I greatly admire.

Scorsese presents her attractively and I suppose I have to wonder: what was left out? How was the narrative shaped? If I viewed the entirety of her remarks would I have been disappointed?

I remember reading something about John Huston -- or perhaps it wasn't about John Huston -- but that the best directors love actors. Perhaps the best directors love people, and that warmth is an important job requirement, and perhaps it's the warmth of admiring friendship that frames this portrait of Lebowitz.

This movie seems like an intimate portrait, although it really isn't. Perhaps it's the closeness of the camera or the fact that Lebowitz's comedy seems so personal, to spring from a unique personal viewpoint. Her comedy is observational, like Seinfeld's, but so much more personal although not really self-revealing.

I feel as though it's hard for me to come to any kind of judgment about Lebowitz, because I haven't thought about her for a long time (I read Metropolitan Life but long ago) and I suppose I shouldn't let that get about, especially if I'm an admirer of Lebowitz, because it seems to have no effect whatsoever on my extremely dull life.

Her timing is excellent and she's unafraid to use expressive gesture to help convey the import. I see now that gestures do not convey meaning; they convey punctuation.

Let me paraphrase, badly, one of the funniest things (I think) she says in the film. She's talking about her writer's block. She says something like, "I am the foremost waster of time of my generation. I didn't look at the clock from, say, 1979 to 2007, when I suddenly thought, "Hmm .. gotta get busy."

But comedy is hard, and more so for women, and I think she does it very, very well.

"Design Principles: The Studio of Jobs and Ive" in Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs

I was interested in finding out if Walter Isaacson would talk about the connection between design, production and marketing in his biography of Steve Jobs. I suspected that Apple was a perfect example of the close relationship between marketing and design that Seth Godin espoused in Purple Cow.

I've only dipped into it, but the first chapter I chose to read was "Design Principles," and in it, Isaacson does make that connection.

When Jobs returned to Apple, Jonathan Ive was already working there as a designer but was thinking about leaving: he didn't like the way that production and design was organized. After Jobs left, design became an afterthought. Engineers designed the inside of products, according the specifications of function they had also designed, and the job of the design department was to make a case that would fit.

After Jobs returned, design returned to its former role where the design of the product was paramount and the engineers were required to make the components fit - and function - in the case created by the design department.

Jobs was passionate about design, grew close to Ive, and gave him independence in the company structure so that, as Jobs said, "There's no one who can tell him what to do, or to butt out. That's the way I set it up."

Ive was influenced by a designer for Braun, Dieter Rams, whose personal design philosophy was summed up in the phrase, "Less but better." Similarly, Ive and Jobs sought the simplest design that was still functional. What Ive says about this is fascinating to me, and I'm not sure I understand it, and I certainly didn't expect it:

"Why do we assume that simple is good? Because with physical products, we have to feel we can dominate them. As you bring order to complexity, you find a way to make the product defer to you. Simplicity isn't just a visual style. It's not just the minimalism of the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of the complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. For example, to have no screws on something, you can end up having a product that is so convoluted and so complex. The better way is to go deeper with the simplicity, to understand everything about it and how it's manufactured. You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential."

Isaacson explains that Jobs and Ive believed that design was not just the surface of the product, or the way that it looked, but its essence, which includes its function.

In the design of the PowerMacs, for instance, there was "total collaboration" between the designers, the product developers, the engineers, and the manufacturing team as the design went through many iterations.

Ive told Isaacson a story about his visit to kitchen supply store in France with Jobs. They both admired a knife but as they picked it up to look at it more closely, they saw a tiny bit of glue between the handle and the blade. That kind of detail revealed a lot about how the knife was manufactured and represented the opposite of what Jobs and Ive strove for: "products should be made to look pure and seamless."

In Ive's studio, there's a room with computers on which the designers design the models. There's a another room, next to it, a "molding" room in which the computer designs are turned into models. Next to the molding room is another room for spray painting the molds.

Jobs visited the design studio many days; he examined the different iterations of the model and made comments or involved other staff from outside the design department in questions of manufacture or strategy that arose from the design.

Ive said about this, "Much of the design process is a conversation, a back-and-forth as we walk around the tables and play with the models.. There are no formal design reviews, so there are no huge decision points. Instead, we can make the decisions fluid. Since we iterate every day and never have dumb-ass presentations, we don't run into major disagreements."

Isaacson adds that the "packaging of Apple signaled that there was a beautiful gem inside," and that seems to me to be another example of almost seamless integration, here of marketing and design.

Perhaps my view of this is exaggerated, but elsewhere in the book I read that Jobs forced folks from different departments to work together as teams, and furthermore, required that profit and loss be reported only for the company as a whole - not for each department. I think his attitude about the profit and loss reporting might be a reflection of how united he felt that the departments should be because he wanted to foster an operational process in which marketing, engineering and product design were almost unified.