Cooking with writers

Food and authors rank pretty high on the list of things that I like to know more about, so when I ran across The Great New American Writers' Cookbook at the library the other day it was like discovering that someone had figured out how to make wine out of cocoa beans - two vices in one.

I'll admit I haven't heard of a good number of the authors who contributed, and it seemed too obvious that F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway are represented by recipes for drinks. But there was one recipe in the book that made up for any disappointment I'd felt - James Purdy's Baked Chicken and Sausage.

James Purdy is perhaps my favorite author and I never miss a chance to spread the word about this almost unknown American treasure. His works run across many genres: poetry, Southern Gothic, literary fiction, short stories, plays and somethings that don't fit under any label. That contributes to him never having been published by one of the houses with deep pockets. Then there are his characters, usually the type of people who live a little outside the edges of "polite society". They are flawed, but not in the classic flawed hero way. Their flaws are seldom redeemed. I like that.

As this is my "Foodie Friday" post, I'll include Mr. Purdy's recipe. I don't think I'd ever make it myself - there's way too much meat for my tastes. At 84 years old, I'm hoping he's not eating it too often, either.

James Purdy's Baked Chicken and Sausage
Four large chicken breasts split
8 Italian sweet sauces
8 strips of slab bacon
4 garlic cloves
3 small white onions
5 tablespoons sweet butter
Chopped fresh parsley

Brown chicken breasts and sweet sausages in separate skillets in garlic and sweet butter. Place chicken breasts and Italian sausages then in a very large iron pot. Cover with the bacon slices. Cut up garlic cloves and white onions and add them to the chicken and sausages. Cook in very slow oven at least 2 hours, turning occasionally to allow the chicken and sausage to cook evenly. Scatter fresh parsley before serving. Serve with Virginia Spoon Bread and green salad.

My favorite writing books

There are enough books about writing that if you took the time to read them all, you'd never have time to write. (I don't think that's irony, I think it's that the people who write books about writing know that other authors are always looking for way to work on their writing without actually doing it. We're a crowd that begs to be distracted.) I won't pretend to have read even a small percentage of all those books, but I've read enough to know that there are some good ones, some repetitive ones, and some that are just plain wrong. Of the good ones, there are three that are on my desk all the time, right next to my thesaurus and dictionary. In reverse order of which ones I would save if my computer caught fire and the whole desk were about to go up in flames:

3. Coaching the Artist Within by Eric Maisel - Maisel has a pretty cool job, coaching and teaching people to coach writers, painters, actors and other creative types. He's written a lot of books about what stops us from creating, how to get deep down to the part of us that doesn't judge our work before we ever set pen to paper, and most importantly, that creation is Work. It's not magic, it's not a "either you have it or you don't" ability, and it's not easy. Coaching the Artist Within covers all the roadblocks, self made and external, that we allow to get in our way so that we don't have to do the work. I've got several of Maisel's other books, but this is the one that speaks to me when I need a kick in the butt.

2. Room to Write: Daily Invitations to a Writer's Life by Bonni Goldberg - This is a wonderful little book full of writing prompts and exersises that are more than prompts and exercises. Each starts with a few paragraphs explaining why whatever the prompt is exploring is important to a writer, then gives the directions for a short writing assignment, and ends with a quotation from published writers, statesmen, artists, etc. that connects to the exercise. This is the book I grab, open to a random page, and start writing when my muse doesn't show up for work.

3. Bird by Bird:Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott - This is my writing bible. When I am lost and ready to give up, this is the book that reminds that lost is okay and giving up was never really an option. There's good nuts and bold advice about writing in here, mixed in with a lot of "you're not the first person to feel this way and you won't be the last". This is the book of reassurance and compassion that every writer needs to get through those dark days...weeks...and, let's admit it happnes, months.

National Book Critics Best of 2007 List

The National Book Critics Circle has, for the first time, asked its members and former winners to submit the title of the book from 2007 (Well, sort of. See the rules.) they'd recommend for others to read. So, it's not really a best of list, but the "Best Recommended" list.

It seems that more former nominees and winners submitted titles than member critics, but maybe that's just a sign that writers are more interested in reading good books than critics. Or maybe they're more excited about recognition for deserving books, even if it's not their own. The NBCC plans to do the list monthly next year, which I think might be going too deep in a shallow pool, but it will get some minimal publicity for books that are getting no help from their publishers.

The fiction winners for 2007 are:

1. Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead)
2. Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke (Farrar Straus & Giroux)
3. Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union (HarperCollins)
4. Philip Roth, Exit Ghost (Houghton Mifflin)
5. Per Petterson, Out Stealing Horses (Graywolf)

The only one of those that I'm familiar with at all is Roth's Exit Ghost, which I started and then quit when I realized I really wanted to read the series in order.

And now for something wrong, oh so wrong!

(Purely personal p.o.v. rant follows. Click only if you're curious about something annoying and offensive to me.)

Fox TV out does itself in the "think like fourteen year old boy who's afraid of real females" department with its graphic art for the new Terminator spinoff, The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Books 71 - 75

71. No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy - Amazing story, amazing characters, amazing writing. In a book only slightly less minimalist than the more recent The Road, McCarthy holds your attention by knowing just when to cut from the violence to the good that keeps most of us from jumping off a bridge. The monster at the center of the story is as completely believable as the sheriff who reluctantly hunts him.

72. I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert - If you're a fan of the show, you'll like the book. If you've never seen the show, you'll find out if it's something you might enjoy. If you've seen the show and not been impressed, the book will bore you. If you don't like the show, why would you pick this book up? All of this is to say, the book is the show, for all its successes and failures. Everything in the book could have been done on the show, verbatim. There's even little sidebar comments, just like during the "The Word" segments on the show. My opinion - I expected more from a book by someone as literate as the real Stephen Colbert is, something beyond the exact same material he does four nights a week. He could have published old scripts and it would have been just as funny.

73. Fire In The Blood by Irene Nemirovsky - Another book discovered by the researchers working on the Nemirovsky biography, this is the story of a middle aged French man and the family and community that keep him from being a total hermit. I suspect that this was only the first draft of the book, and yet, it's still quite readable. Short and with more than a few places where a paragraph or two takes the place of what should have been a whole chapter, the sense of place and characters are what make this a very good book, even when the plot weakens.

74. Dream Angus, The Celtic God of Dreams by Alexander McCall Smith - This book is one of the Myth series from Canonsgate, where well published authors write new stories for old myths, as well as using them for inspiration for contemporary short stories. (That sounds more complicated than it is, really. The publisher's website explains only a little better.) McCall Smith tells the story of Angus, a god of love, dreams, beauty and youth in Celtic culture. This author recognizes that all those things don't guarantee a perfect life for the young god or the humans that aspire to them. The myth stories are classically mythic and the contemporary stories show McCall Smith's ability to see love as painful and beautiful at the same time.

75. The Gathering by Anne Enright - When any group of adult siblings reunite, for any reason, wounds are reopened. When it's a very large family (in this book, eleven brothers and sisters gather for the funeral of a middle child brother), you can simply multiply the internal drama. Anne Enright has done an amazing job of tapping into the pain and love that we try to leave behind when we leave the family home to start our own lives, only to find that we've carried it everywhere and it colors everything we do. The novel is non-linear (and as a fan of non-linear, I'd say it's a little weak in this book) and almost stream of conscious first person from the sister who was closest to the brother who has passed away, both in age and emotion. The jacket blurb teases with a secret that isn't all that surprising and possibly not even that important in the lives of any of the members of the family. It's the entanglement of histories and personalities that make this book (and all families) so rich.

Ok, now we can start the winter holidays

Time rushes on, but there are still old memories to appreciate, such as this Santa Village my Grandfather built out of scraps in 1930. He was a lucky one, never completely without work, although he did go down to one day (at that time, a ten hour day) a week. The light posts are solid copper pipe - the kind that is being stolen out of buildings now because copper is so valuable. It was someone's trash when he built this.

Techy meme

From Sat-8:

Do you have any of the following gadgets, and what kind? when did you get them?

1. Cellphone? Yes

2. Digital camera? Yes

3. Video camera? Yes, but I have no idea if it still works. It hasn't been out of the closet in three years. It's 8mm, not digital.

4. Video game console? No. I've made it a personal crusade to not have one in my house, but that might be changing soon. Those Wiis look awfully fun.

5. TiVo/DVR? No, still using VHS. I'll probably switch when I can't buy tapes anymore.

6. mp3 player/iPod? No, but if Apple hadn't gotten nasty with it's new iPods, I would have. Silly things don't work on OS 10.3.9.

7. Laptop computer? Yes.

8. Any widget or app on your phone or computer to makes your life easier (commute time calculator, on-time flight alert, zocdoc, etc.)? I have Minuteur and Noise on my laptop to make my writing easier. Minuteur makes it easy to do timed writing exercises, and Noise makes it possible to block out all kinds of ambient sound when I'm working.

How big is a turkey's (carbon) footprint?

This weekend, I'll be attending two big family gatherings, and at each one there will be at least one person who takes it as a personal affront that I eat very little meat. I swear, I make no judgment of people who eat meat, as my reasons for not eating it are by a personal health situation. But there always one person in a crowd who insists that I defend my choice, and since I have no desire to discuss my health with fringe relatives, I try to come armed with a few facts about the benefits of eating less meat. Nothing dulls a heated debate like numbers. They don't change anyone's mind, but sometimes they do bore and/or confound some people.

Here's something interesting from that I found while looking for information on why less meat consumption is better for the environment. The study is ten years old, but given that if the ag business hase improved its energy usage, all branches of it have probably done so at the same rate, the comparisons should hold.

The ratio of energy consumed to produce one unit of protein:
Chicken 4:1
Turkey 13:1
Milk protein 14:1
Pork 17:1
Eggs 26:1
Lamb meat 50:1
Beef cattle 54:1.

I thought that was pretty interesting, because I know a lot of people along with myself who chose eggs and milk products over meat and think we're doing a good thing environmentally. It turns out - we're not.

My favorite Thanksgiving book

It may be the subversive in me, but the one book that I recommend for Thanksgiving reading is Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen. It's not only about Thanksgiving, but that one chapter is guaranteed to get you thinking. There's plenty of food for thought throughout this book, and on a day that's become more about gluttony than thankfulness, more fodder for the brain works to everyone's benefit.

Another electronic reader

Amazon debuted Kindle, their newest entry into the electronic book reader market on Monday, at that means the reviews of people who actually paid for the thing are starting to be posted. (There are lots of reviews on the device's page at Amazon, but the positives mostly come from hand picked testers and the negatives from people who don't have one. So, pretty much useless, in my opinion.)

One of the first real customer reviews to show up on a Google blog search came from XML Aficionado. I appreciate that that blogger isn't taking part in the Amazon kick-back program, that involved embedding an icon on your blog that if used to click through to the Kindle order page and a device is actually ordered, the source blog page gets a $40 Amazon credit. Just 10 clicks and your Kindle has paid for itself! SmugBlog also has a review, although that blogger admits to spending more time using it to look for books rather than reading one, which they finally get around to at the end of the day.

Another positive review from Robert Love, someone who didn't expect to like it as much as he did. He points out something I've been wondering about, though. If this is primarily a reading device, why is the keyboard so big? I get the need for an alpha interface, it is easier to search through what's on the device if you can type in a word rather than scroll everything. But I suspect that the real purpose of that keyboard is to encourage shopping, surfing, and whatever else Amazon will make money off of beyond the purchase of the books.

That brings us to price. Yep, $400 is expensive for almost anyone who isn't a gadget geek or someone who already favors digital readers. I don't think they'll convert many conventional readers at that price. The $9.99 per book price is great, if they have want you want. About 75% of the books I read I get for free (okay, I get them for paying property taxes) from the local library. And their collection goes light years beyond Amazons. I doubt that is going to change in my life time (despite Google's plan to put every written word online).

I'd say the Kindle (and that is a strange name - kindling, right?) is a step towards the day fewer books are printed because more are being bought digitally, but it's a small step. It's not going to change how most people read.