A Book A Week - Week 30: Salt, a World History

This week's book:
   Salt, a World History   by Mark Kurlansky

Grade:  A

Yes, this really is a history of salt.  Table salt.  The stuff you put on french fries even though there's plenty on them already.  I loved it.  Salt and french fries and this book.

You remember when I mentioned that a way to make people like you is to engage their nostalgia?  Well, I was victim of that again this week.  One of my undergraduate concentrations was in History, and reading this book was like doing upper division work in history once more.
    I do realize that I have alienated a huge portion of the population by even mentioning course work in history, but if more people read books like this they wouldn't automatically associate history with dry dates and dead generals.

The author wasn't kidding when he titled the book 'a World History,' he really does look at salt production, salt trade, and control of salt as it relates to building the world you and I live in today.  He starts in China, where salt production led to not only the first brine wells, but also cooking with natural gas.  He then moves on to the Romans, the Venetians, the Vikings, the American Civil War, and on to modern times.
    This is not - thankfully - a comprehensive exploration of all things salt across all of recorded history.  I think even I would consider that boring.  The author hits the high points, building his case that salt, the control of it, the production of it, the transport and buying and selling of it, has shaped every culture and thus all of history.

As far as narrative mechanics, the author keeps things interesting, even lively.  If this were solely a scholarly effort he might 'begin at the beginning' and plod through his research in time order.  I'm happy to say that he does not do this (for the most part).  For instance, when talking about salt's role in conquest, he talks about salting fish as a preservative, and how that fish was used to feed the vast Catholic population of Medieval Europe, for whom eating meat on Friday was - literally in some cases - a capital offense.  He jumps from era to era, for instance coming to modern France, then Enlightenment France, the ancient Rome as he talks about the importance of salt not only to make war but to preserve peace.

If I had one quarrel it would be with the recipes.  Yes, there are recipes in this book.  Too many for my tastes.  I get it, people the world over use salt as a preservative and flavor enhancer.  One or two recipes would make the point, but he includes many.  More in the first part of the book than the last, but they're not absent anywhere.  It seems to me almost a cynical inclusion, there to spice up (forgive me) what might seem an otherwise dry treatise.  To me they just interrupt the flow.
   It's also long, 450 pages of dense type.  I didn't mind at all, but if you're looking for a light Summer read you can breeze through in an afternoon on the beach, this ain't it.

Who should read this book?  If you like history books, definitely get this one, it's great.  It's going on my bookshelf next to my other must-have history books.  If you'd rather poke your own eyes out than read history then you should probably avoid it.  Just know you're missing a great read.  

Next week:
 The Panopticon   by Jenni Fagan
 This is debut fiction, the author's first novel.  I had some awful experiences with first novels so far - Twilight and Ready Player One - but I also had a really great experience too: The Golem and the Jinni.  I'll roll the dice again this coming week.

Man Debris

I decided to clean out one of my dresser drawers today.  Not the entire dresser, mind you, just one drawer.  I don't want to set unreasonable expectations or tax myself too much.  There are six entire drawers in this dresser... no need to get crazy.

The driver behind this was my need to get rid of socks with holes in them.  Nothing frustrates me more than picking out a pair of socks and discovering, just before my shoes go on, that my toes have extra ventilation.  But, seeing as how I'm lazy, more often than not those socks will just go back into the drawer, where they wait for the day I forget about the holes and pick them up again.  Hence the need for a periodic cleansing.

This drawer, however, holds more than just socks, it's got lots of flotsam and jetsam.  Junk.  Man debris.  I cleaned it, more or less, when I moved two years ago, but I realized I needed to do a better job.  So I emptied the drawer and found more than I bargained for.  Here's a list:

• My traveling hat, a blue baseball cap I picked up in Hawaii which has been around the world with me twice.  It's faded and worn and I never pack a suitcase without tossing it inside.  It's what makes the planes I'm on land safely.  Tell me I'm wrong.
• Watches.  Two nice ones, one cheap one, and one I won from a claw machine at Dave and Buster's.
• My expired passport, with a photo from twenty years ago, almost.  I look like a dork.
• My old Ray Bans.  I do not look like a dork when I wear these.
• A $5 silver certificate ($5 bill).  Not that I could redeem it for silver any more.  Fuckin' Nixon...
• Key fobs from when I bought my truck.  They have the salesman's name on them.
• Oil change key fob from when I bought my car.  I get the fifth oil change free.  Not a bad gamble by the dealer considering that car doesn't need its oil changed but every 10,000 miles.  Plus, I don't live in Pasadena any more and I'm not likely to drive back for an oil change.
• The warranty card from my new luggage.  That I bought six years ago.
• Old wallets.
• A collar bar.
• Change.  But no pennies.
• An old checkbook from the very first business I started a year after I got out of college.  Yes, it failed.  No, I did not learn my lesson.
• Three handkerchiefs.  I never use handkerchiefs, I don't like walking around with a pocketful of my own snot.  But if I change my mind, I have the hankies.
• Ancient passbooks from a savings and loan that collapsed during the Savings and Loan Scandal while Bush 41 was President.  It's cute, I thought $200 was a lot of money.
• Cuff links.
• Shoe laces.
• A pocket square.
• Oh, and dress socks.  About six pairs had holes.  I threw them out.  Finally.

This is how I know I'm a grown, adult man.  The stuff in my drawer.  I have three jewelry boxes of my father's stuff, and just for grins I took a quick peek inside.  And what did I find?

Old wallets.  Change but no pennies.  Lots of watches.  A collar bar.  Cuff links.  Handkerchiefs.  Key fobs.  Lighters (my father smoked until I was in college).

The apple never falls far from the tree, does it?

A Book A Week - Week 29: The Ocean At The End Of The Lane

This week's book:
   The Ocean at the End of the Lane  by Neil Gaiman

Grade: B-

There is so much more he could have done with this...
   I think it would be wrong of me to judge this book on what I wish the author would have done, though.  So I'll stick to what he did do.

This is, at its base, just a story.  A collection of characters, a setting, and a plot.  Things evolve from there.  Now, as just a story this is a fairly decent one.  A young English boy discovers there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his philosophy.  He gets in trouble, he makes friends and enemies, and the trouble is resolved in a day or two.  Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, and it's done.  It's imaginative and well-written, descriptive and surprising, and moves at a quick enough pace to keep the reader interested.  If the author intended this to be just a story then he accomplished that goal.  But I think he intended it to be more.

I think Mr. Gaiman intended this to be a modern myth.  The main character states his preference for myth stories at the beginning, and the tropes are there: the outcast hero, the journey to a distant land, the betrayal in his homeland, the magical guide.  The family at the end of the lane - where the Ocean is - are three women: daughter, mother, and grandmother.  Maiden, Mother, and Crone.  The Fates.  Whose presence, if you've never read Greek, is a pretty big clue that you're reading a myth.  There is also a big monster to defeat, something huge and beyond his ability, an unattainable goal.  Which the hero decides to deal with in his own fashion instead of listening to the advice of his guide.
    Like I said, all the classic trappings are there, this is clearly intended to be a myth.

He doesn't pull it off.  I'm a fan of ancient myths myself, I loved learning them when I was about the age of the hero of this novel.  If you don't know classical myths then think Grimm's Fairy Tales, the delicious, dark ones, where children kill witches and evil elves steal babies.  Those are myths too, relatively recent ones.  Myths explained things.  Myths were a primitive people's way of understanding the vast, unknowable universe around them.  Myths also had a moral.  Always.  They were allegories of the human condition, usually cautionary tales, that also, for example, tried to explain how people first learned about fire.  Or about hope.  Or about lies.

This story - this attempt at making a new myth - doesn't have a moral.  And, near as I can tell, doesn't attempt to explain anything.  Mr. Gaiman takes a stab at it, the hero of the story is a seven-year-old boy who is baffled, repulsed, and fascinated by adults.  The author takes great pains to show that his hero, as a child, is already a stranger in a strange land where adults rule and the customs are foreign.

But the story never resolves this tension, it never explains anything about the workings of the world or about being an adult, and it never presents a moral.  The story includes all the bits and pieces of a myth, and the storytelling intent, but it never quite comes together.  What was the purpose of the hero's journey?  The resolution of the story makes it impossible for him to learn from his experiences, so... what was the point?

If you're a Neil Gaiman fan you should read this book.  If you like fantasy or fairy tales you should read this book.  If you have never read fantasy or Mr. Gaiman's work you should give it a try, it's a good introduction to both.  It's also a good Summer read, not too taxing on the brain, even though I wish it were.


Next week:
 Salt, a World History   by Mark Kurlansky
 No, this is not the novelization of that terrible Angelina Jolie movie.  I'm going back to non-fiction next week, and a book about the only rock people eat.

A Book A Week - Week 28: Kitchen Confidential

This week's book:
   Kitchen Confidential  by Anthony Bourdain

Grade: A+

You want to know the best way to make people like you?  Engage their nostalgia.  I'm sure Mr. Bourdain did not have my nostalgia in mind when he wrote this book thirteen years ago, but he fed it and nurtured it nonetheless.  It doesn't hurt that he's a particularly good writer, too.

Flashback to... dear God, twenty-four years ago.  Holy crap.  Fresh out of college, I didn't have a car, job prospects across the country were miserable for anyone my age, and I was back living with my parents.  I took a job as a waiter for two reasons:  1) they agreed to hire me and 2) I could walk to work.
   I slaved as a waiter and prep cook for nearly four years, even after I had secured a much better job, because it was hard to leave 'the life.'  It really is hard, trust me.  My friend Mike says the restaurant business is like a toilet that will not flush, the turds just keep going around and around and around.  He's dead right.

'Kitchen Confidential' is the author's memoir, at least up to that point in his life.  Some stuff has happened to him since then.  And I have no doubt that everything in it is absolutely, 100% true.  Because I have similar stories, minus the astonishing substance abuse.  He was a child of the 70's, after all.

I have to be careful, because every time I think about a scene in the book it sparks a similar memory of my own time at the restaurant, and things rapidly devolve into 'good times, good times' thoughts and I want to call my friends and ask them if they 'remember when...?'

Mr. Bourdain has had at least two shows on cable TV so far - that I know of - and chances are good if you haven't watched either of them you've at least heard of him.  He writes like he speaks in those shows.  Or he speaks how he writes, whatever.  The cadence is familiar, and despite his lower-class leanings, he did go to Vassar.  For a while.  He knows how to write well and how to engage his reader, is what I'm saying here.

Mr. Bourdain's writing and his unvarnished opinions are delicious, savory bits of literary accomplishment that leave a reader fat and happy.  Here's my very favorite from this book:
     Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food.
     That's what you're signing up for when you decide to read this book.  I love it.

Who should read this book?  Anyone who's ever worked in the restaurant business, of course, because you'll see that things are the same all over.  But, more importantly, I think everyone who has never worked in a restaurant needs to read this book.  Especially those of you who think that you want to be a chef, or own a restaurant or catering business or cupcake store or hamburger stand or what have you, because the author tells it like it is.  This is really, truly, the way life in a restaurant is.  It's not glamorous, it's gross, and you deal with thieves and lowlifes and horrible people all day, every day, 365 days a year.  And that's just the kitchen staff, the waiters and bartenders and customers are even worse.  Read it, and if you still want to be in the restaurant business after you turn the last page then you're made of stern stuff indeed.  Good luck. 
 

Next week:
 The Ocean at the End of the Lane  by Neil Gaiman
 Mr. Gaiman can write a comic book, that's for sure.  And I dimly recall reading 'American Gods' a few years back.  But his most recent TV outing was, hands-down, the worst episode of 'Dr. Who' I've ever seen, and that show's been in production for decades, there are stinkers a-plenty.  I hope he does a better job with this book than he did with The Doctor.

A Book A Week - Week 27: Gone Girl

This week's book:
   Gone Girl  by Gillian Flynn

Grade: A

The first 'A' experience I've had with fiction since May.  People in the know pointed me to this book, told me it was a great read.  I had my doubts, and... great?... well, it had its moments.

I have to say, I really hated the first fifty pages.  Which is less than 10% of the book, but still.  I didn't hate them quite so much as I hated the first three chapters of 'The Crying of Lot 49,' but it was very close.
   See, one of the things I hate most, more than broccoli, more than shrimp, more than almost anything, is writing about writers.  I loathe it.  I refuse to read a story about a writer writing.  It's lazy, it's navel-gazing, and, for Christ's sake, nobody gives a fuck.  If you want to be a writer, then write a story, but if you write me a story about you writing I will go to Starbucks in person and slap you with your own MacBook.*

This novel starts out with not one, but two writers.  Laid off writers, a husband and wife who have both lost their writing/journalism jobs in New York City within weeks of one another.  They move from NYC to Missouri to take care of the husband's ailing mother and Alzheimer's-ridden father, and they've been there for two barely-tolerable years.  The story progresses from there.
  The writing in the first fifty pages is just... I can't say terrible because it's not.  But maybe... rewritten too much?  Rewritten by someone other than the author?  Once I got past those first fifty pages things changed, the narrative got tighter, the pacing picked up, and it was overall a much better book.

We get to know the husband first, on the day he learns that his wife has gone missing.  Nick and Amy have been growing apart since the move from NYC, and things aren't looking up.  Then he makes the discovery that changes his world forever.
   We learn about Amy from diary entries, from the time she first met Nick to their time in Missouri, as their lives are unraveling.  At first we sympathize with Nick, then, slowly, we learn that he is both more and less than he seems to be, and his time with Amy was fraught with unspoken resentment and, eventually, downright hostility.

And there's where any plot discussion has to end.  Because I did like this book - eventually - I have to resist giving away the plot.  It's a murder mystery with plenty of twists.  REAL twists, Dan Brown, not like the sputum you puked up in 'Inferno.'   The story definitely does not end up in the place I suspected it would at the beginning.  Not even close.

For my tastes the writing is a little wordy.  I wouldn't want this story to be Hemingway-spare, but I think the author could have easily cut 25% of the description.  In and among the twists and the plot reveals, we do get a glimpse of the tension in a marriage, of the different things women and men expect from a relationship, and how things can unravel quickly when those needs aren't met.  The people seemed real, the motivations real (if more than a little petty and twisted), and the outcomes real as well.

Go on, read the book.  Power through the first fifty pages, it gets much better.

 * full disclosure:  I actually love 'Barton Fink.'  Which is a movie about a writer... writing.  But it's the Coen Brothers, which means the story's not really about what it seems to be about, and the exception that proves my rule.

Next week:
  Kitchen Confidential  by Anthony Bourdain
   I think Anthony Bourdain and I would get along fine.  While I don't drink quite as much - or at all - and I don't have his love of organ meats or bone marrow, I think we share a sensibility.  I did work in a restaurant for four years after college, I think I know some of the stories he's going to tell.