Gourmets and gourmands alike will savor Kaufman’s keen, caustic anatomy of the American palate.
A series of trenchant arguments about the consistency of Americans’ feelings for food, our great common denominator.
Suspecting that the consumption-crazed, binge-and-purge culture is nothing new, Kaufman (English/CUNY) quotes young Washington Irving, who in 1803 marveled over the stunning culinary delectations available in New York City. The author then jumps forward two centuries to investigate the term “gastroporn”: Watching a generous amount of Food Network programming, he gleefully compares the structure and style of X-rated films with the loving close-ups and sensuous phrases that are staples of cooking shows, Emeril Lagasse’s “kick it up a notch” being one example. Kaufman notes that “the money shot”—the finished dish—is seldom the actual product of those ingredients you see the chefs squeezing and manipulating. Even the Puritans were obsessed with food, he declares, speculating as to the full menu of their first Thanksgiving. Kaufman’s jolting chapter on vomiting (he prefers “puking”) displays a masterful wit. He begins by elaborately, eloquently apologizing for raising the topic at all, then lays out a finely researched, deeply ironic chronology of how early Americans viewed vomit. Indeed, it’s never sufficient for him to opine that the Puritans “adored laxatives and diuretics” when he can also dissect the inscrutable food writing of Cotton Mather. As Kaufman slowly returns to the present, he addresses a string of intriguing issues. An indictment of the milk-processing industry includes an account of his adventures within a secret raw-milk collective. Artificial genetic modifications have fundamentally altered many foods, he reveals, the sumptuous oyster in particular. One amusing passage skewers actress and diet/fitness guru Suzanne Somers, whose “misty never-never land of personal, economic and domestic bliss [is] meticulously documented on every overproduced page of her modern gastrosophical masterpiece, Get Skinny on Fabulous Food.”
Gourmets and gourmands alike will savor Kaufman’s keen, caustic anatomy of the American palate.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-15-101194-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers would do well to heed the dark warning that this book conveys.
The nameless resister inside the White House speaks.
“The character of one man has widened the chasms of American political division,” writes Anonymous. Indeed. The Trump years will not be remembered well—not by voters, not by history since the man in charge “couldn’t focus on governing, and he was prone to abuses of power, from ill-conceived schemes to punish his political rivals to a propensity for undermining vital American institutions.” Given all that, writes the author, and given Trump’s bizarre behavior and well-known grudges—e.g., he ordered that federal flags be raised to full staff only a day after John McCain died, an act that insiders warned him would be construed as petty—it was only patriotic to try to save the country from the man even as the resistance movement within the West Wing simultaneously tried to save Trump’s presidency. However, that they tried did not mean they succeeded: The warning of the title consists in large part of an extended observation that Trump has removed the very people most capable of guiding him to correct action, and the “reasonable professionals” are becoming ever fewer in the absence of John Kelly and others. So unwilling are those professionals to taint their reputations by serving Trump, in fact, that many critical government posts are filled by “acting” secretaries, directors, and so forth. And those insiders abetting Trump are shrinking in number even as Trump stumbles from point to point, declaring victory over the Islamic State group (“People are going to fucking die because of this,” said one top aide) and denouncing the legitimacy of the process that is now grinding toward impeachment. However, writes the author, removal from office is not the answer, not least because Trump may not leave without trying to stir up a civil war. Voting him out is the only solution, writes Anonymous; meanwhile, we’re stuck with a president whose acts, by the resisters’ reckoning, are equal parts stupid, illegal, or impossible to enact.
Readers would do well to heed the dark warning that this book conveys.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5387-1846-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Twelve
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
The author’s sincere sermon—at times analytical, at times hortatory—remains a hopeful one.
New York Times columnist Brooks (The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement, 2011, etc.) returns with another volume that walks the thin line between self-help and cultural criticism.
Sandwiched between his introduction and conclusion are eight chapters that profile exemplars (Samuel Johnson and Michel de Montaigne are textual roommates) whose lives can, in Brooks’ view, show us the light. Given the author’s conservative bent in his column, readers may be surprised to discover that his cast includes some notable leftists, including Frances Perkins, Dorothy Day, and A. Philip Randolph. (Also included are Gens. Eisenhower and Marshall, Augustine, and George Eliot.) Throughout the book, Brooks’ pattern is fairly consistent: he sketches each individual’s life, highlighting struggles won and weaknesses overcome (or not), and extracts lessons for the rest of us. In general, he celebrates hard work, humility, self-effacement, and devotion to a true vocation. Early in his text, he adapts the “Adam I and Adam II” construction from the work of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Adam I being the more external, career-driven human, Adam II the one who “wants to have a serene inner character.” At times, this veers near the Devil Bugs Bunny and Angel Bugs that sit on the cartoon character’s shoulders at critical moments. Brooks liberally seasons the narrative with many allusions to history, philosophy, and literature. Viktor Frankl, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul Tillich, William and Henry James, Matthew Arnold, Virginia Woolf—these are but a few who pop up. Although Brooks goes after the selfie generation, he does so in a fairly nuanced way, noting that it was really the World War II Greatest Generation who started the ball rolling. He is careful to emphasize that no one—even those he profiles—is anywhere near flawless.
The author’s sincere sermon—at times analytical, at times hortatory—remains a hopeful one.Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9325-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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