Mini-Reviews: Foodie Nonfiction

Sometimes I have things to say about the books I finish, but not enough for a whole blog post. Enter mini-reviews! This time I focus on two recent non-fiction reads: Real Food/Fake Food by Larry Olmsted, and But First, Champagne by David White. I think both are valuable and worth reading, depending on your interests. Keep reading to find out more.

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Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don’t Know What You’re Eating and What You Can Do About It by Larry Olmsted

I like torturing myself by watching documentaries and reading books about how terrible American food is. Everyone needs a hobby I suppose. Anyway, I learned a lot from this book, such as:

• The difference between the US Department of Agriculture and the US Food & Drug Administration. The USDA is actually designed to serve companies and producers, while the FDA is supposed to protect consumers. However, the USDA is actually the more trustworthy of the two for consumers because the FDA is a useless trash fire that doesn't even bother to follow the bare minimum of its own internal policies, let alone regulate the shit other people do.
• What kobe beef actually is–I'd been looking into this before the trip to Japan, so I was surprised by how everything I read, on the internet or otherwise, was WRONG. Kobe beef is actually a genetically pure strain of cow from a very specific part of Kobe, and the genetics are what gives it its marbling and flavor, not massages and classical music and a diet of beer, as you might have otherwise heard. Also, only 3 restaurants in the US serve actual kobe beef. Everything else is fake.
• Speaking of restaurants, I had no idea restaurants could essentially call food anything they like, even if it's completely incorrect.
• The term méthode champenoise is not synonymous with méthode traditionnelle or méthode classique and can only be used for champagne, not other kinds of sparkling wines. That's because the "méthode champenoise" begins long before the wine is ever bottled and involves what grapes are grown, where, when, how they're planted, how tall they get, when they're harvested, and everything else that's part of the regulations for the winemakers of Champagne.
• I already knew that the olive oil industry was filled with completely fake products and that Italian extra virgin olive oil especially was to be avoided. But I didn't know that the best EVOO to buy is from Australia, which has the strictest regulations regarding olive oil on the planet.

Sometimes Olmsted takes the whole "fake food" thing a little far, like when he complains about Cook's labeling their wine champagne. I mean, it should really be obvious that Cook's isn't from Champagne, based on the price alone. But then maybe to some people it isn't so obvious, idk. Either way, I came away from this book with some great tips on how to read labels and what to look for to make sure I'm getting the most value for my money by buying "real" food.

But First, Champagne: A Modern Guide to the World's Favorite Wine by David White

I enjoyed the first few chapters of this book, which were engaging and well-written. When White got into the modern history of Champagne, however (namely the World War periods), it became sleep-inducing.

I also occasionally felt like White was either soft-pedaling certain facts to make the Champagne houses look good, or didn't bother to do his due diligence in his research. For example, take this passage from the beginning of Chapter Six:

Jay-Z and other celebrities abandoned Cristal after Louis Roederer's president, Frédéric Rouzaud, spoke dismissively of his new devotees.

This sentence makes it sound like Jay-Z and a few of his friends threw a fit because Rouzaud wasn't star struck. The truth is bit more complicated than that. In actuality there was an organized boycott of Cristal in the hip-hop community because they felt Rouzaud's comments were racist, or at least inspired by racism. (Fun fact: the sudden popularity of moscato in the late '00s and early '10s was thanks to this boycott. Jay-Z may have replaced Cristal with Ace of Spades, but most hip-hop artists decided to abandon champagne altogether and instead started drinking moscato.)

I certainly don't know even one tenth of what White does about Champagne, but in the small parts where I did know something, it seemed like White's information was either incomplete or not entirely accurate. That said, I did learn some stuff, the full-color illustrations were fantastic, and it's true that there isn't a book similar to this one on the market. If you're interested in Champagne, or if you're planning a wine tour of the region, this is a good place to start.




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Armchair BEA Non-Fiction

Today's topic for Armchair BEA is non-fiction (also ethics, but to quote Lawrence Block, "I’m not sure there’s any good sense in imposing questions of ethics upon a profession which has muddled along for centuries without any." He was talking about writers, obvs, but bloggers are writers, right???)

I actually read a lot of non-fiction, even though this isn't necessarily reflected on my blog. That's because I don't react to non-fiction the way I do to fiction. With fiction, I pretty much always have something to say; but with non-fiction, I'm usually just reading it to garner specific information, so I only write about it on my blog when I think it's a book that would appeal to a broad range of people or when it's a book I really, really, REALLY think is a piece of caca. Mainly I read books about art and history, because that's my background, but there are so many non-fiction books out there. If you think fiction is overwhelming, look at non-fiction some time.

That being said, there is one--yes, ONE--non-fiction book I think everyone should read, and that's Killer Stuff and Tons of Money by Maureen Stanton. I thought this book wasn't just a portrait of antiques dealing, but of the American dream; and it's one of the VERY few non-fiction books I've read from cover to cover and been entranced all the way through.

For bloggers, I would highly recommend The Blogger Abides by Chris Higgins. Chris Higgins is a professional blogger at Mental Floss, but I think his advice on blogging is useful both for people who look at blogging as a hobby AND for those who want to go professional. Another book I'd recommend for anyone who's interested in writing is Telling Lies for Fun and Profit by Lawrence Block, because 1. it's hilarious; and 2. it gives some really good advice. It might be one be one of my favorite books on writing of all time.

I approach non-fiction books very differently from how I approach fiction books. With novels, I start at the beginning and go through to the end. I obey, aside from prologues (which I refuse to read) the order the author dictates. With non-fiction books, thanks in part to years in grad school, I jump around from introduction to conclusion to footnotes to different chapters. A non-fiction book that keeps me engaged from start to finish is very rare indeed. Nevertheless, I love nonfiction because sometimes it elevates information to an art form.




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Review: HARRY POTTER PAGE TO SCREEN by Bob McCabe

Once upon a time there were people who loved books, and made movies from them. One day they received a magical manuscript and read it, not expecting very much. But soon they realized they were reading the greatest book of all time! Thus the people who loved books made a movie from the book, and also seven more movies, all of which brought the world of the magical manuscript "to life." And everyone lived happily ever after.

Harry Potter Page to Screen is basically the story of how the Harry Potter movies were made. Surprisingly, I loved the hell out of it. I say surprisingly because usually these types of books are either complete fluff or eye-searingly boring, with a lot of mutual reach-around commentary from the people involved. I'm not saying there's not some self-congratulation going on in Harry Potter Page to Screen, but what's there is palatable because the text is really well-written and informative. Bob McCabe did an amazing job of condensing tons of interviews and material into something that was honestly entertaining and interesting to read.

Any movie being made is a small miracle--there are so many things that can go wrong to stop production, and often do. Creating a film is a HUGE undertaking; now imagine creating eight of them with the majority of the cast and crew remaining consistent over the course of a decade! I agree that the Harry Potter films are incredible just for that, and that the set design is top-notch. I'm also interested in how involved JK Rowling was in the films (the answer is very: she had final veto on ANY aspect of the movies, and David Hayman, the producer, said Rowling was the only person in the audience he cared about pleasing) and how they inform the world of the books, and Harry Potter Page to Screen is definitely illuminating when it comes to that.

For some reason I found the story of the creation of the Potter films really moving. Like I started crying on page one of the introduction (note that I am a sap; your mileage may vary). Maybe it was just remembering the books first coming out and reading about the enthusiasm the filmmakers felt for them. There's no doubt that nearly everyone on the project, from the producer to the crew, was dedicated to bringing the novels to life, not just wanting to make a movie. Apparently I get all sentimental when people love books! There's also that the majority of the cast DID basically spend their school years at "Hogwarts" and that the last film was a graduation from their childhood life and into their adult careers. Life did weirdly imitate art in a lot ways.

Finally, the visuals in Harry Potter Page to Screen are amazing. I loved the photographs of the kids when they were auditioning for their roles (so cute!), and the concept sketches by Stuart Craig were fantastic. A good portion of the book is dedicated to art direction; and although the text for this section isn't as interesting to read, the pictures of details from the costumes and set design are really great. Tea pot earrings for Mrs. Weasley! How perfect is that idea? I want a pair. And the Death Eater masks were incredible and scary.

Harry Potter Page to Screen is a huge, gorgeous, really expensive book (thank god for libraries, huh?) that's totally worth checking out if you're a fan. I liked it.




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Review: THE BLOGGER ABIDES by Chris Higgins

I came across The Blogger Abides entirely by chance on Twitter when Ransom Riggs tweeted about it (apparently he and Chris Higgins are friends, and Riggs wrote the intro to the book). I wasn't planning to review The Blogger Abides here, but after reading it, I realized it's a book a lot of my fellow bloggers and writers will want to read. And definitely should.

Chris Higgins is a freelance writer for Mental Floss as well as some other publications (Wired was mentioned frequently). You've probably read his posts or at least seen them posted on Twitter. In The Blogger Abides, he shares what he knows about freelance blogging: getting jobs, keeping track of payments and taxes, drinking hours, horrible grammar mistakes, dealing with editors, comments, and publicists; how to say no, trading up, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Basically, there's a shit ton of information here, and whether you're paid to blog or not, if you write you'll probably find at least some of it useful.

There was a lot I found really enlightening about The Blogger Abides, for one how a professional approaches blog posts, and writing in general. We're all familiar with posts that mine nostalgia or highlight "This day in history" topics, but I never would have come across one of them and labeled it as such before reading this book. Basically Higgins uses the same strategies most bloggers do as a far as finding topics and writing out posts, but at an increased volume and more professional level, which was something I found really interesting. After starting The Blogger Abides, I decided to challenge myself to write one post every day for the rest of the year just to see if I can meet that expectation of producing content constantly. So far it's been really fun!

Another thing that was really eye-opening for me was the concept of trading up: using blog posts as a springboard for magazine articles, books, and movie deals. Prior to reading The Blogger Abides, I knew that this happened occasionally (The Bloggess, anyone? Fed Up with Lunch?), but I only had a vague idea how. Now I'm thinking, "Hm, which of these blog posts can I turn into a book?" (Answer: probably none.)

Higgins does a great job of giving the reader a better idea of what the life of a professional freelancer entails. I can see someone thinking about going into freelancing and then deciding, after reading The Blogger Abides, that it's not for them. Not that Higgins is discouraging, but he does make it clear it's not easy (but then, is anything worth doing easy?--I felt like the woman in the Dewar's commercial for an instant, there). Do you want to have to keep track of your own taxes, your own retirement, "live small"--i.e., don't spend money on anything, because you won't have it--or worry about contracts and whether or not you get paid? If not, then you should probably just stick to writing for yourself.

As far as specific sections of The Blogger Abides are concerned, the chapter on how to get a job is probably the least helpful, since the answer is you basically have to know people. Fair enough. The chapter called "Business, Blah Blah Blah," about taxes and contracts and retirement savings and all that good stuff, was the most difficult to get through--not because it was confusing or tedious; Higgins actually breaks it down with admirable clarity and brevity--but because that's really not something I want to think about until I absolutely have to. And the part at the end about grammar was hilarious. I literally laughed until I cried over "Hard Road to Hoe." Too funny.

I've honestly only scratched the surface of the material found in The Blogger Abides. There is A LOT (plagiarism, linking, HTML, how to pitch to magazines, research--I want to write Higgins a thank-you note just for saying Wikipedia is NOT a valid source), and it's all really useful and relevant if you're interested in freelancing or just looking to improve your blog. I'm glad I took a chance on this and foresee referencing The Blogger Abides for a long time to come.

Review: TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT by Lawrence Block

I wasn't going to review this book, even though I thought it was excellent. Why? It's definitely a classic and it's something I think every writer should read, but I'm not sure if non-writers would have any interest in it. Probably not. But then Telling Lies for Fun and Profit is so entertaining it might capture the interest of those who aren't its intended audience.

Lawrence Block published his first novel at the age of nineteen (a lesbian erotica, in case you were wondering) and has written about a bazillion novels and short stories since then, so the guy's walked some literary miles. Telling Lies for Fun and Profit is a collection of essays he wrote for Writer's Digest about the craft of writing, and they range from the philosophically abstract (like Sunday writers, see here) to the technical and specific (such as using pronouns, see here). Even though certain aspects of the book are dated (it was first published in 1981), there is a lot of food for thought in this book for writers to chew on.

Block himself says he sometimes contradicts himself (he does), and there are things I find hard to believe or just didn't agree with (no rewriting Block, really?), but agreeing or disagreeing isn't really the point of the book. Nor does Telling Lies for Fun and Profit aspire to teach anyone HOW to write a novel, though Block does offer his own ideas about that. Instead, as Sue Grafton puts it in the introduction, Telling Lies for Fun and Profit is a comfort read for writers--just like any of his fictional characters, Block makes his own experiences relatable and universal. A lot of books about writing only address the difficulties, with the end result of making aspiring writers eager to get a job in a retail or accounting. Block doesn't ignore the difficulties at all, but he does make them seem completely normal and, thus, surmountable.

Block's writing style is also really entertaining and fun to read. I LOL'd several times, and even when I wasn't, I was very engaged. Not to say this is an easy read--it took me about a month to work my way through Telling Lies because some of the essays are really challenging and take some time. But when I was reading I was completely entertained, not something that can often be said for non-fiction. There were also times when I felt like Block was being a bit patronizing toward women, but I'm going to write that off as more of a generational thing than misogyny on his part.

Anyway, I'm really happy I bought Telling Lies for Fun and Profit. It gave me a lot to think about, and was very inspiring. I can see myself rereading this over and over and taking different things away from it each time. I would recommend this book to anyone who considers themselves a writer.

Some passages I particularly liked:

...when I want to write and can’t write I find myself possessed of murderous rage.

I don’t finish half the books I start nowadays, and a good many get hurled across the room after a couple of chapters.

Akin to the nonsense about formula, these same non-writers assume that the development of a series character is a major step toward success, financial security, and a final solution to the heartbreak of psoriasis. “Once you’ve got a character,” they say, “all you have to do is write about him for the rest of your life.” Terrific. Once you’ve got a pair of running shoes, all you have to do is leg it from Hopkinton to Boston. Once you’ve learned the Australian crawl, all you have to do is swim the Channel. Once you’ve hit puberty—oh, never mind.

And his name is Dan Brown:

The unspoken premise in “I wish I had your self-discipline” is that anyone with my self-discipline could do what I do, that a persistent chimpanzee could match me book for book if he could just sit still long enough and work the space bar with his non-opposable thumb. [Did Lawrence Block invent the infinite monkey theorem?]

On pseudonyms:

I had a letter just the other day from a woman intent upon keeping her true identity a secret not only from her readers but from her prospective publisher as well, and wanting to know how she could do all this without getting into a tangle with the tax authorities. I assume she has her reasons.

On acting professionally:

I’m not sure there’s any good sense in imposing questions of ethics upon a profession which has muddled along for centuries without any.

On titles:

Years ago, when I spent a year reading slush at a literary agency, it sometimes seemed to me as though a full forty percent of the stories I read were entitled “As the Twig Is Bent.” Another thirty-five percent were called “So Grows the Tree.”

Is Twins a good title? Or The Thorn Birds? Or The Shining? How about Coma, perhaps the first novel ever named for what it induces?

On feedback and reviews:

If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen. If you don’t want the peaches, leave off shaking the tree. And if you can’t bear disapproval, keep the stuff in a locked drawer.

Review: THE SUSPICIONS OF MR WHICHER by Kate Summerscale

On the morning of June 30th, 1860, a toddler named Savill Kent was discovered missing. Later that day, his body, throat slashed, was found on the grounds of the Kents' home. Suspicion pointed everywhere--including the parents--but the police were unable to discover who the murderer was. Enter Detective Inspector Jonathan Whicher, one of the stars of the newly formed Scotland Yard detectives division, who was assigned from London to close the case. Although Whicher believed he knew who killed Savill Kent, he was never able to prove it.



The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is a true crime book detailing a case from Victorian England that bears striking resemblances to the murder of Jonbenet Ramsey in our own time, including the media storm surrounding the investigation. I had a few problems with this book, and the major ones aren't really the book's fault. First of all, I listened to it audio. The reader, Simon Vance, did a great job of indicating imbedded quotes using accents and making the text interesting to listen to. But I don't read non-fiction books in the same way I read fiction books--I tend to read them back-to-front and out of order, so listening to a non-fiction book where I couldn't jump around from chapter to chapter at will was a little difficult for me. It also drove me CRAZY that I couldn't see citations (which I certainly hope Kate Summerscale included) or read footnotes.

Secondly, the subject. If anything else, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher reminded me why I avoid true crime. Killing a toddler is some hardcore shit. For some reason I thought, since the murder was a really long time ago, it wouldn't be so bad; but trust me, it is. And if hearing every single detail about the death of a little kid doesn't depress you enough, Whicher's investigation will nicely send you over the edge. Summerscale invests a lot of time in making Whicher appealing--unfortunately, this case is what's called a career-ender, and it isn't likely to end happily or bring about justice for anyone. I suppose, being one of the first detectives to ever investigate a murder like this, Whicher didn't realize that; but still, it doesn't make for cheerful reading.

That being said, if you have any interest in the nineteenth century or Victorian detectives, you should consider picking up this book. There is a ton of delicious detail concerning Scotland Yard in the 1860s, what types of crimes they fought against, how they investigated, what a detective's work routine was like, and so on. Since I never got a look at Summerscale's footnotes or bibliography, I can't swear to the historical accuracy of The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, but based on what I already know her research seems very solid and thorough.

That being said, some of her conclusions, particularly in regard to Whicher and his influence on Victorian literature, seem like a stretch. Summerscale draws connections between Whicher and detectives in novels by Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, and Arthur Conan Doyle. The Big Three of Victorian writers, no? While it seems likely Whicher might have provided some inspiration for some aspects of some of the detective characters in the authors' novels, the direct and pervasive influence Summerscale argues for in this book isn't backed up by solid evidence, in my opinion. Evidence of a solid and pervasive influence would include being close friends with the authors, meeting with them on a regular basis, and plot points in said authors' novels directly mirroring events in the detective's life--which IS the case with Eugène François Vidocq, the world's first private detective and several very popular writers in early 19th-century Paris (see my post about Vidocq at PGP). A random turn of phrase or investigative technique that was probably shared by all of Scotland Yard, on the other hand, isn't entirely convincing. One gets the feeling that if Summerscale would have logically been able to argue Whicher influenced Edgar Allan Poe's mysteries, she would have thrown him into the mix as well.

Meanwhile, her focus seems to be on the über-famous male writers of this era. I started reading Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon around the same time I began The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher (completely by coincidence) and there are a lot of similarities between the Kent case and Lady Audley's Secret, as well--more direct similarities, it seems to me, than any novels by Dickens or Collins. Yet Summerscale only briefly addresses those parallels, I suspect merely because Braddon isn't as famous a writer as Dickens. Not to get all nitpicky or anything, but there are only 6 mentions of Braddon in the book, as compared to 46 mentions of Dickens and 24 mentions of Collins. Even Poe, who at the time of the Kent murder was long dead, receives over 20 mentions in the book. Based on these numbers, I think Summerscale's goal is to elevate the fame of Whicher, not truly investigate the Kent murder's influence on Victorian literature.

Other than that, however, I was impressed with the level of research in The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher. It's certainly not a book I would recommend to everyone--it is not history that reads like a detective novel. It's more of a true crime novel meets historical research. If you don't like true crime or those history books where there is massive infodump, you should probably not read it. But I did learn a lot and think it's a good resource and a fascinating case.

Review: LE ROAD TRIP by Vivian Swift

Are finances, family, or work preventing you from taking the vacation you so desperately need this summer? Then allow to me to humbly recommend this book.

In 2005, Vivian Swift went on a honeymoon to France. Le Road Trip is a memoir-slash-sketchbook of her trip through Paris, Normandy, Brittany, Bordeaux, and the Loire Valley. I don't usually go for travel memoirs, but this one included illustrations, so I figured it was worth a try. Plus: France.



Le Road Trip immediately won me over, before the book even started, with the fronticepiece where Swift warns, "This is not a book with a lot of really useful information in it... what--do I look like Rick Steves?" Swift states the purpose of Le Road Trip is to inspire people to plan their own adventure or remember previous trips, and in that the book succeeds completely. Swift's stories and illustrations brought back my own experiences traveling in France, and soothed the escapist fantasies I get some all a lot of the time. It really does feel like a travel sketch diary, and because of that, it seems as if you're in a conversation with the author.

For example, packing--I am a bit obsessed with the elusive perfectly packed suitcase, so I was immediately taken in by Swift's packing advice. We're both proponents of the single carry-on bag. I lived in Europe for a whole semester with clothes from a single carry-on. Not that I wasn't sick of my wardrobe before a week had passed, or that there were times when I was woefully unprepared for certain weather conditions, but the woes created by a small selection of clothes pale in comparison to the misery of jumping onto a midnight sleeper train with a suitcase the size of a small dresser and discovering you can't even get to your seat because the isles are packed full of stowaways and it will barely fit in front of the bathrooms at the end of the train, let alone in the hallway (yes, this happened to the woman I was traveling with. Never have I been so glad I packed a small bag. Also, never have I been so glad dogs like me, because the stowaways had a lot of them. Most hellish train ride ever!).



Aside from the lovely watercolor illustrations, Swift's writing is fun and irreverent, interspersed with a few quotes and facts, but mainly focusing on her interactions with other people. I loved her "travel tips"--e.g., have a bottle of champagne waiting for you when you get home--and how she approaches travel. A lot of travel memoirs like this might draw pseudo-meaningful connections between travel and life, but Swift deliberately avoids this. She makes it clear she's on vacation as a tourist, trying to have fun and relax, and her experiences are ones nearly any tourist can relate to.

Not that there weren't some things that bothered me, of course. Swift does her fair share of perpetuating stereotypes--Parisians are more rude than New Yorkers? Color me doubtful on that one. And I have never heard of anyone having so much trouble with train station ticketers as she does. But when she isn't making sweeping generalizations about French people--and the incidents of that are pretty isolated--Le Road Trip is delightful and interesting, and gorgeous to look at. Definitely something I'd recommend for Francophiles or armchair travelers.

Review: SO WHAT ARE GOING TO DO WITH THAT? by Susan Basalla and Maggie Debelius

A PhD is traditionally seen as training for a life of teaching or doing research in academia. But there are thousands of people who get PhDs every year, and only a relatively small number of tenured positions. Where do all those PhDs go? There are tons of reasons why someone with an advanced degree might want a career outside of academia--money, geography, temperament, or maybe they just need a change. Susan Basalla and Maggie Debelius propose to help these lost PhDs find homes outside the Ivory Tower.

I've been trying to find a career outside of academia for about a year now, so when I chanced upon So What Are You Going To Do with That? at the library while searching for something completely unrelated (I think it was the Mad Men cocktail book), you can imagine that I gots all excited. After reading it and trying some of the things Basalla and Debelius suggested (there are a lot exercises to do), my feelings on the book are a little torn. On one hand, none of the things I tried were very helpful. On the other hand, I do think there's a lot of valuable information here, and it did inspire me to keep on searching.



What I personally didn't know until I went through grad school is that it seriously rewires your brain. This is a great thing if you find, or want to find, a job in academics; but if you want to transition into the real world, things that are obvious to most people can be completely obscure to an academic. For example: did you know that most people get information from talking to other people, not from books? It's weird but apparently true. Therefore Basalla and Debelius suggest talking to other people instead of looking at books for tips on how to find a new career (ironic, all things considered, but at least they know their audience). I.e., the dreaded NETWORKING. Gah. Basalla and Debelius make networking in the real world slightly more approachable by basically breaking it down into a research project. Research! Academics know how to do that! They suggest informational interviews, sending someone you admire a gracious note, or e-mailing people who work in a field you're interested in to see if you can ask them a few questions.

Another hurdle is turning a CV into a resume. Curriculum vitaes are über-detailed histories of your academic career. Apparently I've been failing utterly at turning my CV into a working resume, and the chapter on resumes was very illuminating for me.

That being said, I still feel like a lot of the stuff in here didn't apply to me. The books says it's for people with either a master's or doctorate, but everyone Basalla and Debelius talk to are either PhDs or ABD (all-but-dissertation); and many of the jobs people got were more by chance than design.

Still, it would be impossible for any book, especially one like So What Are You Going To Do with That?, to cover every specific problem a person might face. The book is quite general, but it's also very encouraging. More than anything else I think Basalla and Debelius' goal is to assure academics that their degrees and skills are valued outside academia, and there's no reason not to look for a job in the real world other than the fear of failing. They definitely succeed--I was on the verge of giving up, but So What Are You Going To Do with That? gave me renewed energy and optimism in my job search. For that reason I think this is a valuable resource for anyone who wishes they could do something new but feels constrained by their degree and experience.

Weekend Cooking Review: THE FOUNDING FOODIES by Dave DeWitt

I was SO excited about Founding Foodies when I first saw it. I heart cultural history of any sort, whether it addresses dance, art, cooking, literature, film--you name it. Not to mention that one of my favorite things to eat is mac & cheese, and one of my favorite things to think about while making it is that Thomas Jefferson served the first dish of macaroni and cheese. How cool is that? In a way it ties me and Thomas Jefferson together. As a result, I've always been curious about Jefferson and his pals, and how their legacy can be found in food as well as politics. Since many of the men involved in the American Revolution were tavern owners and farmers, it stands to reason they knew their food.

Founding Foodies purports to tell us about the beginnings of "America's diverse food culture," as well as give us original Founding Father recipes like George Washington's beer and Martha Washington's fruitcake. How fun is that?! Unfortunately, the answer is not very fun at all, because this book fails on practically every level imaginable.

My high expectations of Founding Foodies started to plummet in the introduction. Perhaps it's just my years of being in school, but I expect the introduction of a non-fiction book to summarize the topic, lay out the central argument or point of the book, and provide a brief run-down of how that point is going to be made. What was in Dave DeWitt's intro? First, he talks about why he likes Jefferson (he went to the University of Virginia), and then he spends the rest of the introduction defining the terms "foodie" and "founding father." This was worrisome because both of these terms are generally understood by the North American public; so either we as readers are being talked down to, or DeWitt does not know what the fridge he is talking about.

Things, shockingly, did not improve from there. The first chapter doesn't start with the Founding Fathers at all, but with Sir Walter Raleigh, and it takes PAGES before food is even mentioned. The timeline jumps all over the place, from 1492 to 1850, and there is no central argument or point to be had anywhere in this book. Take the chapter on Thomas Jefferson, for example (I was sure DeWitt would at least manage a solid on this one, since he was such a self-professed Jeffersonian), which goes something like this: Thomas Jefferson, man of the world and lover of different cultures, founding foodie extraordinaire. Let's talk about him! Wait, let's talk about his slaves. He fed them! What a guy! Wait, let's talk about tomatoes. Now let's talk about ice cream, but let's discuss muffins while we're talking about that. Now let's talk about Jefferson's garden. What was his favorite vegetable? The debate rages. And why didn't we talk about tomatoes in this section? I don't know! UHG.

Even if there had been a point DeWitt was trying to make, the book is way too generalized to make it. Hey, did you know they served food at the White House? And people ate corn? It's true. They ate corn. I did like that DeWitt included a lot of information about what the slaves ate, but like much of the information in The Founding Foodies, it lacked a whole lot of context.

Furthermore, I really don't think DeWitt has any clue to what someone who would pick up a book like this would be looking for. Just as an example, at no point does he address the famous macaroni and cheese dish. If I've heard about it, it's got to be well-known; and it's one of America's favorite meals to this day. Yet there's NOTHING. ABOUT IT. ANYWHERE, other than a small note in the recipe section that Jefferson did serve a pasta dish with Parmesan cheese. No recipe, no date, no discussion. Does DeWitt know anything about his audience? Anything at all?



Frustrated, I flipped to the bibliography (there isn't a conclusion, which is probably for the best), and realized that was what I should have done in the first place, because many of DeWitt's sources are Wikipedia pages. HE LITERALLY CITES WIKIPEDIA AS A MAJOR SOURCE IN HIS BOOK! Not just a few times, but regularly. In the intro to the bibliography, DeWitt tries to excuse himself by saying he fact-checked Wikipedia to make sure it was correct. Oh, really?! You fact-checked Wikipedia? Why didn't you just use the sources you found while making sure Wikipedia was accurate then, hmmmmm?

To make it matters even worse, the writing style is stupefyingly boring. If I wasn't going to be put off by the total lack of logical organization and saddest excuse for research I have ever come across in a published book, the writing would do it. It's like reading the narration to a History Channel special, and I do not mean that in a good way.

So just to summarize: this author wrote a book that he basically researched using Google. And now we know why it sounds like he doesn't know what he's talking about: HE DOESN'T.

There are some books that make me wonder how on earth people get published, and this is one of them. Even the index is a piece of crap, that's how bad this book is. You can do better. Might I suggest Wikipedia?

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up over the weekend.

Weekend Cooking Review: WHAT I EAT by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio

Several months ago, when I reviewed What the World Eats by Menzel and D'Aluisio, Amanda Gignac suggested I try out What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets by the same authors. Although it contains similar content--photographs of what people eat from around the world--Amanda was totally right when she said that What I Eat is a lot better than What the World Eats. It has better photographs, essays, and doesn't have as many generalizations or preachy moments.

In What the World Eats, Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio photographed families from around the world with a week's worth of food, focusing on how much each family spent. Although it was an interesting idea, the format invited large generalizations. By comparison, What I Eat focuses on individuals and what they eat during the course of one day. This is much better, because it connects food more specifically to a person's lifestyle rather than their nationality. A trucker, for example, logically gets most of his/her food from gas stations and fast food restaurants and needs something that can be eaten one-handed; a German biermeister is obviously going to drink a lot of beer!



The book is organized by how many calories each person eats in a day. I really had no idea what the average calorie intake for an individual was before I started reading this book, but it seems like most people eat between 2200 and 3000 calories per day. Below 2000 calories is mostly athletes who need to be light (my aunt, a competitive rower, once told me she limited herself to 1200 calories a day during racing season--now I know just how low that is!), extreme dieters, workaholics who don't have time to eat, or people living in poverty. Even the fashion model Menzel and D'Aluisio photographed, Mariel Booth, eats 2400 calories a day. One might think that at the other end of the spectrum--people who eat 4000 calories or more per day--there would also be athletes who need energy. But actually, this group is almost entirely made up of men who work outdoors, particularly cold outdoors--with the notable exception of an English housewife who binge eats at 12,000+ calories.

If there's one thing I've learned from this book, though, it's that how many calories you eat doesn't necessarily have a lot to do with how much you weigh, despite what we hear on television. Viahondjera Musutua from Namibia eats about 1500 calories a day and weighs 160 pounds, while João Agustinho Cardoso from Brazil eats more than three times as much--5200 calories a day--yet weighs twenty pounds less! How many calories a dish has and how much food you're actually getting through it also seems to vary wildly: even though extreme dieters Rick Bumgardener and Mackenzie Wolfson eat less than 2000 calories a day, there seems to be a lot more food in their calories than there is in Chinese student Chen Zhen's 2600.



Part of the reason, as explained in Bijal P. Trivedi's excellent essay "The Agony and the Ecstasy of the Calorie," is that all calories are not created equal. When calories were "discovered" by Wilbur Olin Atwater in the 19th century, he was basically looking for a way to measure the amount of energy a person can get from food. But each calorie is made up of different values and behaves differently depending on what you do to it (processing, cooking, etc.), so what exactly goes into a "calorie" and how it will affect your body can be extremely variable.

There are several good essays in this book, which helps to mitigate the preachy tone I didn't like in What the World the Eats and elevates What I Eat to a more serious study of how humans relate to food. Trivedi's essay and Michael Pollan's "The End of Cooking," where he talks about the irony of America's obsession with foodie television and the fact that less and less people are cooking for themselves, were my two personal favorites.

Overall I found this to be a book worth tracking down and think it should definitely be of interest to anyone who likes reading about food. It would also be a great resource if you're planning a trip to any of these countries and want to find out what a typical meal might be.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up over the weekend.

Book Review: HURRELL'S HOLLYWOOD PORTRAITS by Mark A. Vieira

When people think of Hollywood's "Golden Era," images of beautiful actresses and formidable leading men captured in a black-and-white that seems sharper and more brilliant than any color film dominates in one's mind. To a great extent, the definable "look" of Classic Hollywood is attributable to one man: photographer George Hurrell.

In this book, film scholar and photographer Mark A. Vieira discusses Hurrell's career and photographic techniques from 1925 to just before WWII. The book isn't as scholarly--or gossipy--as Sin in Soft Focus, also by Vieira, but it is the best book book about Hurrell that I've encountered so far. It's true that Vieira doesn't break a lot of new ground here (most of the information he gives about Hurrell's encounters with Hollywood's famous stars and his technique can be found in Hurrell Style), but he does present what he wants to discuss in a very readable and accessible writing style. There are several themes running through the book, but Vieira isn't heavy-handed with them, and for the most part this is a straight-forward mini-biography of a photographer. Also, the pictures in this book are very well-chosen to both illustrate the text and demonstrate the best of Hurrell's technique.

Hurrell's Hollywood Portraits sketches the story of an artist always impatient and on the move--Hurrell rarely stayed in one place more than two years before boredom had him dropping everything and moving on to something new, and that included college. Whitney Stine described Hurrell as a painter who turned his hobby of photography into a chance career; but the fact was that even though Hurrell went to school to be a fine artist, he had years of experience working as a retoucher and portrait photographer in Chicago. Even though he kept painting throughout his life, by the time he moved to California in the 1920s, he knew painting was too slow a process for him to make a career out of.


Please note this caption contains a typo; the subject's name is spelled Novarro.

The distinctive "Hurrell style" was characterized by sensuality, what Vieira calls an "almost-scientific" clarity, and abstraction achieved through unique lighting and framing of his subjects. When Hurrell started in photography, portraits where based on paintings (logically enough) and were very stiff and posed. They were also typically in soft-focus: the popular photographic style at the time was pictorialism, also known as the fuzzy-wuzzy school. Although pictorialism was artistic, there were practical reasons for it as well, since negatives at the time weren't very light-sensitive. Photographing someone in soft-focus was much easier on both the subject and the photographer.

Hurrell changed the soft-focus, posed portrait, at least within Hollywood. Partly because of new film and lenses that made it possible to create very sharp images, partly due to his new lighting technique, and partly due to the retouching techniques he adapted for both. Of all three, the lighting was probably the most innovative: Hurrell designed a boom light (like a boom mic, except for lighting) that he could hold and use to highlight the subject from any angle.

Traditionally portrait photographers used three stationary lights to highlight the subject from the front, back, and to shine on the backdrop. Hurrell didn't bother lighting the background, used the boom light to highlight their hair, and then had a reflective surface or another boom light them from below. And because he could move the boom light anywhere he wanted, he could pose the stars wherever he wanted, including the floor (incidentally, photographs of actresses lying on the floor were called "oomph" shots--and if you want to get an idea of what Hurrell's sessions for an oomph shot were like, according to the studio publicity department anyway, all you need to do is watch this scene from Blow-Up).

Flexibility with lighting and more light-sensitive film also gave Hurrell the opportunity to abstract his pictures into patterns of light of dark. He refused to let the stars wear foundation make-up while photographing them because he wanted to sculpt their faces with highlights and shadows that make-up flattened out.



Vieira's descriptions of Hurrell's photographic technique are solid and well worth the read if you're interested in photography. Not surprisingly, though, I was left wanting in his analysis of the images. He only briefly touches upon the abstraction that Hurrell was aiming for, and doesn't go into too much depth in placing Hurrell within the broader context of American photography or fine art.

Vieira also argues in some places that Hurrell captured some of the inner emotions and true character of his subjects. But I think in this case he's being torn between admiration for Hurrell and trying to make him appealing given our culture's current obsession with verism. If Hurrell did happen to catch a star's inner character, then I suspect that it was totally by accident and incidental in any event. From the very beginning, what Hurrell was really gifted at was making fantasy seem like reality. When Ramon Novarro, Hurrell's first celebrity client, showed his series of photographs by Hurrell to his friends, one of them said, "This isn't you, Ramon." That was the point--Novarro wanted to move from silent films to opera because of he was afraid his accent would make him unappealing in 'talkies,' but how to convince people he'd believable as an opera star? The answer was to pose in various operatic roles and have Hurrell photograph him.

And it worked! When Novarro showed the photographs to a studio exec, he was immediately cast in a movie where he could sing four light-opera songs. Likewise, Norma Shearer, Hurrell's next celebrity client, was such a straight-arrow that her own husband didn't believe she could star as a vamp in The Divorcee, until Hurrell took a series of photographs of her in a silk kimono.

What Hurrell and the studio publicity departments fed the public wasn't reality--it wasn't anything close to reality. Take, for example, this photograph of Joan Crawford before and after retouching. Even taken with my crappy cell phone camera, you can see a dramatic difference in the two images. Before retouching, Crawford has wrinkles, sunspots, and freckles; after retouching, she looks not just twenty years younger, but probably better than she looked when she was twenty years younger! The Joan Crawford of Hurrell photographs never existed, and the images in his portraits are idealizations, not reality.



In the opening paragraph of this book, Vieira wrote, "Hollywood aped our culture, fed our culture, and to certain extent was our culture." Considering that, one has to wonder if he's drunk a bit of the glamor koolaid. If he has, one can hardly blame him--everyone drank the koolaid, even the people who were actually living the reality! Hurrell himself said of pre-War Hollywood, "Those days were like a storybook.... We were the children of the gods." When Cecil Beaton visited Hollywood in 1930, he wrote, "Apollos and Venuses are everywhere. It is as if the whole race of gods had come to California. Walking along the sidewalks... I see classic oval faces that might have sat to Praxiteles. The girls are all bleached and painted with sunburn enamel." Ann Sheridan reflected, "There was a certain kind of fantasy, a certain imagination that is not accepted now. The world is too small."

I think Sheridan has the right of it: pre-War Hollywood was a time and place where the line between fantasy and reality was indistinct, maybe even non-existent, and the pictures--both still and moving--that were based on fantasy were so powerful they produced their own reality. It's said that a picture is worth a thousand words. That may not be true--in fact, photographs often need words in order to make sense--but I do know a picture, no matter how fabricated, is more memorable and convincing than any description in words. The stars of Hurrell's portraits were envisioned as eternally young, beautiful, and ready, and thus that's their enduring image.

Weekend Cooking: WHAT THE WORLD EATS by Faith D'Aluisio and Peter Menzel

If there's a book just asking to be made into the PBS version of No Reservations, it's this one. Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio go around the world and take photos of families with a typical week's worth of food, comparing diets, prices, and a bit about the food culture of the country.

Any foodie worth their salt is interested in what other cultures consider staple foods, so this book is really fascinating, just as I expected it to be when I read Natasha's review of it at 1330v. I was surprised at what parts I found most interesting, however. The variation in what a family spends on food in a single week, for example, can be really mind-boggling. One family in Bhutan feeds 13 people with a little over $5 USD a week; a family of four in France, meanwhile, spends close to $420 USD a week on food! Of course, the French shopping trip included things like wine, cheese, croissants, sausage, and other things I personally wouldn't want to do without. Big spenders on food also have a lot more variety in what they eat. And if there's one thing I've learned from this book, it's that meat is a big expense. Nearly a fourth of the French family's budget was spent on meat, while the Bhutan family only ever ate eggs and a small amount of dried fish for protein. In fact, almost all of the big-budget weekly meals devoted the majority of their money to meat.

I also loved the addition of the family members' favorite foods, just because something like that is always so personal and random. People tend to go either really broad ("everything") or really specific ("spaghetti carbonara"). Unfortunately, we don't get that information for every family, so that was a bit disappointing. The recipes were another odd addition, as the probability of me making something with ingredients I've even heard of, let alone can find, is pretty small.

On an ideological level, I had some issues. This book can get very preachy and the authors definitely have a point of view, one in which McDonald's and processed food is evol. No, I don't eat at McD's; and yes, I am one of those people that's all about fresh and seasonal food, but that's partly because my family is German and I was raised that way.

There's a reason processing and preservatives exist--because eating McDonald's is better than starving. Since the start of civilization, the fight against starvation has been one that requires a way to preserve food for a long time, and nowadays we're pretty good at it. Maybe it's not as healthy as eating everything fresh, but unless we're all going back to being hunter-gatherers (and I can tell you right now I'm not), that's reality. The authors rightly point out that there's a cruelly ironic dichotomy between the fight against obesity in the US and the fight against the hunger that exists in other parts of the world; but they seem more concerned with the former when one would think the latter is more important.

There's also a colonial tone of romanticizing the "primitive life" of non-Western cultures here, an "Oh, look how we're destroying the simple lives and eating habits of these people with our wickedly advanced grocery stores and fast food restaurants" message that I found to be annoying. And if Menzel and D'Aluisio think that this book doesn't invite generalizations (as they say in the introduction), they're deluding themselves; it's titled WHAT THE WORLD EATS, not What a Select Group of People Eats. Overall, though, I think this book is worth at least paging through if you're interested in food and culture. It contains a lot of good information, and the photographs are very interesting (Menzel and D'Aluisio should consider designing supermarket window displays). Plus this book inspired me to compose my own mini-photographic essay! Here is what I eat in a day:

Name: Tasha (31)
Favorite food: Miso soup

Breakfast:

I'm not a big breakfast person and usually just have coffee with cream and peanut butter toast.

Lunch:

Not a big lunch person, either. Today it was chicken enchiladas with what I have to say were some pretty sub-standard tortillas and Spanish rice.

Snacks!

I ate three chocolate chip cookies. Munch munch munch.

Dinner:

Dinner's my big meal. This chicken piccata with noodles and asparagus tips looks really unappetizing, but it tasted all right. I literally ate everything on this plate.

After dinner:

I usually have some wine late at night. Also another snack, but tonight I wasn't that hungry.

Total cost: No idea, that would require way too much math. I do think we spend between $150-200 a week on food for four people, though.

To find out more about Menzel and D'Aluisio's current project, check out this lecture Menzel gave at EG4:




Mini-survey time! About how much does your household spend on food every week? What's your favorite food?

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up over the weekend.

Book Review: SIN IN SOFT FOCUS--PRE-CODE HOLLYWOOD by Mark A. Vieira

Aside from being vaguely aware that there was some sort of up-tight rule book preventing nudity, sex, and cursing in olde timey movies, I didn't know much about the Hays Code or anything about "Pre-Code" Hollywood until I picked up this book. To say a movie is pre-Code is something of a misnomer: there had been guidelines governing so-called decency in film since the 1920s, and the Hays Code (nick-named after William Hays, but officially known as the Motion Picture Production Code) was instituted in 1930. However, Hollywood completely disregarded the Code and did mostly whatever they wanted up until 1935-ish, putting the onus of censorship on pre-production hand-wringing by the studios and SRC (a studio-sponsored censorship board), as well as locally--meaning a lot of films were cut down by state and municipal censorship committees before being shown. In many cases, these cut versions are the ones people are familiar with, not the director's original vision. If you're watching a movie from the 1930s and it feels like there are scenes missing, that's because there probably are.

Using contemporary reviews, scripts, production photographs, and--when available--the complete uncut film itself, Vieira reconstructs for us these pre-Code films and how they were made. I adore the idea of this project and Vieira executes it beautifully: the book is filled with fabulous stills from pre-Code movies; and while Vieira's writing style is probably more academic than most people are used to, I wouldn't say it's dry. It's filled with juicy gossip and portrayals of all the major early Hollywood players. Vieira also isn't afraid to give his personal opinion of a film and whether it worked or not, which is great because I've never even heard of most of the movies in here, and have seen less than a handful.


Dorothy Mackaill as a secrety-turned-prostitute in Safe In Hell, 1931.

One of the more interesting threads in the book is the history of censorship in Hollywood. Whatever happened to free speech, you're no doubt thinking. In fact, free speech didn't apply to movies because they were considered a commercial product, like chewing gum or cigarettes, not an artistic statement (of course, nowadays corporations are considered "people," so that argument wouldn't hold water). This adds a whole new layer of understanding to the films of auteurial directors like Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford, who wanted to prove that film can be an art form. Censorship began before a film was even shot (the suggested subversion of Norma Shearer, known for her good-girl roles, starring in Divorcee gave the SRC fits), and was applied regardless of taste. To the censors, it didn't matter if a movie was good or not, as long as it didn't portray something someone disagreed with or was afraid of. Fortunately, there were people in Hollywood who did care about making good movies, and supported those who wanted to make them.


The "grapefruit scene" in Public Enemy depicted domestic violence.

So what were the censors cutting? Girls in skimpy clothes, people saying "Dammit to hell!" and whatnot? There was some of that, yes, but also orgies, homosexuality, prostitution, drug use, abortions, transgender issues, sexually transmitted diseases, bestiality, violence--you name it. The U.S. in the midst of the Great Depression wanted to see gritty "reality," not be fed platitudes. And the reality of pre-Code movies heroized sexually aggressive and confident women, violent gangsters, and general rule-breaking.

If you're interested in Hollywood history, this book is a delicious and interesting read. It's worth getting for the film stills alone, I think, but contains tons of information about a fascinating period of time filled with awesome creative talents who were constantly pushing the envelope. After reading this book, I'm amazed any picture ever got made; but they did and they continue to, and I think it's safe to say the world is a better place with pre-Code films than without them.

Book Review: THE HURRELL STYLE, 50 YEARS OF PHOTOGRAPHING HOLLYWOOD by Whitney Stine

When George Hurrell came to California in the 1920's as an aspiring artist, his dream was to paint. Little did he know that his hobby of photography would quickly propel him into a career of photographing the world' most famous movie stars for Hollywood studios. From 1928 to 1978, Hurrell photographed for MGM, Paramount, Samuel Goldwyn, Twentieth Century-Fox, Warner Bros., and many other studios, capturing the likenesses of every actor from Ramon Navarro to Keith Carradine.

Johnny Weissmuller, photograph by George Hurrell, 1932

This is an odd book; it wasn't quite what I was expecting. It's more of memoir than a history, but it's organized by actor, chronologically, so there isn't really a narrative. I wouldn't say there's much of a focus, either; Stine gives us some background on the stars--especially the less familiar ones--and Hurrell tells stories about how he took the photographs, which may involve his technique or personal anecdotes about the stars themselves. I wouldn't say it's boring, because Hurrell's stories are really interesting; and although he is clearly recounting these incidents to Stine through a long series of interviews, you can tell he's quite the character.

Tallulah Bankhead, photograph by George Hurrell, 1936

To evoke different types of reactions in the actors, Hurrell would play music, dance around the studio while clicking away on his camera, or shout random phrases for no reason. Some of the stars he got to know really well and others he only met once, but his perceptive descriptions of their personalities is definitely of interest to anyone intrigued by movie history; and his descriptions of technique, such as how he framed the shots and developed some of the prints, is most certainly relevant for anyone who's serious about practicing, or likes to read about, photography.

Anna May Wong, photograph by George Hurrell, 1938

That being said, the book as a whole just feels blah and is kind of tedious to read. For one, the organization of it into star-by-star essays makes reading it seem very repetitive. Here's this one actor Hurrell photographed, and here's this other actor, and here's this other famous actor. O-kaaay. For another, there is zero analysis in this entire book. I've read wikipedia entries with more insight than these essays. And it's a shame, because Hurrell's work wasn't just promotional pablum; some of the photographs in the book are freaking amazing. You can tell he's more interested in the abstract shapes of the shadows than making a portrait per se, and that's true to some extent of nearly all the really good photographs in this book. Unfortunately, the great stuff is watered down by a lot of Hurrell's more average work.

Veronica Lake, photograph by George Hurrell, 1941

There's a lot to say about these photographs: how they played with the stars' image, issues of sexuality and exoticism, vanity; and the influence of Pictorialism, Japonisme, and abstraction in Hurrell's work. But you won't find any of that discussion here. I understand Stine is a film historian and not an art historian (I'm sure there's a HUGE difference), but even a half-assed attempt at addressing these topics would be better than nothing.

This book is a great resource if you're looking for basic information about Hurrell or classic Hollywood movie stars, but for something more in-depth I personally would search elsewhere.

Book Review: A YALE ALBUM: THE THIRD CENTURY by Richard Benson

As indicated by the title, this is a photographic history of Yale University from the nineteenth century through the 1990s.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting much from this book. I ordered it for a research project I was thinking of doing, but then lost interest in. I figured I might as well flip through it before I returned it to the library, and was surprised by the amount of great information and great photography that was contained in its pages!

For someone from Colorado, Yale seems pretty highfalutin. So you can imagine my surprise at seeing the nineteenth-century photographs of the university, which show practical, blocky buildings; tiny classrooms packed with cheap, very worn seats; and descriptions from undergrads stating they came to Yale expecting "an assemblage of Parthenons and cathedrals" and instead getting "rather dingy halls, [and] boxes...." Why, that sounds like the university I went to!


Pictures of Sterling Law Buildings, Yale University, 1930-1960. Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.

The architecture we now associate with Yale only came about in the twentieth century thanks to generous financial gifts and support from New Haven. This is the "New Yale," and includes iconic buildings like Sterling Memorial Library and Harkness Tower. The stone facades were artificially aged to look like they'd been standing since Yale's establishment in 1701 and hid the real architectural foundations, which consisted of twentieth-century-style steel construction.

The book isn't all about Yale's architecture, though; it's also about the "college experience" and how the university developed key aspects of its institutional character. There's an entire chapter on the arts, which is very interesting, and Paul Mellon looks super-nice and I want to give him a hug. There's also an entire chapter on the development of the library, which the book mentions frequently and definitely treats as the centerpiece of the school.

To be sure, this is a very pro-Yale narrative. Even the secret societies are painted as traditional and supportive rather than über-creepy (they still seem creepy, though--sorry, Benson); and unless you're specifically looking for it, you'll probably miss the fact that female undergraduates weren't accepted into the university until the '70s. The freaking nineteen-seventies!!!! Behind the times much, Yale? Although there is one picture of a black arts student and one or two of Asian students, I don't think anyone will be surprised that the portraits in this album are mostly of white males, despite the book's claim that, "the earlier conservative nature of the [university's] population had been transformed" in the 1960s. Yeahhh, still don't see Yale as a center of non-conformity, sorry. But going to Yale still looks like a total blast!

In spite of its one-sided nature, I think this book is great. It really does give one a sense of what going to Yale has been like through the last 100-ish years. The pictures are evocative of a privileged collegiate experience, and the descriptions are interesting and to the point. Overall this is a fascinating snapshot of one the US's greatest universities--minus most of the weirdness and snobbery that many might associate with it.

I definitely recommend this book if you have any interest in the subject.

Book Review: MAN RAY IN PARIS by Erin C. Garcia

Some people get all the luck, and no one's a better example of that maxim than Man Ray. An American painter, he hung out with 291 crowd and paid the bills with fashion photography. He met Marcel Duchamp in New York City after the Armory Show and the two quickly became besties. They couldn't talk, since Ray didn't speak French and I guess Duchamp refused to speak English (?); so they communicated through games like chess. Which quite frankly, is ADORKABLE. When Duchamp decided to return to Paris, Man Ray followed, and immediately found the perfect community of artists and intellectuals to hang with. Within a matter of weeks, he had his first gallery showing, was fluent in French, owned the perfect apartment and studio in Montparnasse, invented his own photographic process, and was flooded with commissions for photographic portraits and other projects.


Rrose Selavy, Marcel Duchamp's feminine alter-ego. Photograph by Man Ray, 1921.

So basically Man Ray is pretty kick-ass and interesting. As for this book about him, well, it wasn't what I was expecting. I thought I would get a lot more out of it.

It's super-short and literally took me less than half an hour to read. For someone completely unfamiliar with Man Ray's work, this would be a good introduction, but for everyone else I think it's pretty sparse. It covers a very short biography of Ray, then dives right into his photographs, which are very interesting. But there isn't much information about them. And there's absolutely nothing about his interest in alchemy or how some of his photographs are homages to other paintings, or about the short films he made with the surrealists, or anything really.

It is cool to look at all the different processes Ray experimented with during his years in Paris, especially solarization and Rayographs. But really I think you could find a more informative book just about anywhere.

If you do want to check out Man Ray in Paris, I'd recommend getting it from the library.

I read this book as part of Paris In July, a challenge hosted by Book Bath and Thyme for Tea. Click on the button for more details.

Fun link of the day: l'Etoile de Mer, one of the many movies Man Ray directed in collaboration with the surrealists.

Book Review: GLAMOUR--WOMEN, HISTORY, FEMINISM by Carol Dyhouse

Say the word glamor, and immediately images spring to mind of Hollywood starlets in black and white photographs, wearing furs and gowns of silk and satin, with dark eyes and even more darkly painted lips. But glamour was a Scots word originally meaning magic; and the photographers and cinematographers of early Hollywood intuited the link between the magic of movies and the fashion and lifestyle of their stars so well, that eventually the two became inextricably linked in the American mind. Magazines like Glamor (US) started out selling sewing patterns based on the clothes seen in movies, and quickly moved to presenting the entire Hollywood lifestyle in its pages: fashion, cosmetics, hair, potions and lotions.


Jean Harlow. Photograph by George Hurrell.

As Dyhouse points out in this excellent book, glamor isn't always fashionable, and sometimes is quite unfashionable; but it and the start of beauty consumer culture are inextricably linked. For numerous reasons, but mostly thanks to old-timey Hollywood. Does this quest for beauty and glamor represent female empowerment, or the patriarchy of the male gaze? Are the women who actively participate in it laboring to achieve an unhealthy ideal of feminine perfection? Dyhouse addresses these complex questions through a study of glamor's visual and material culture from the early 1900s to the twenty-first century.


Princess Ira von Furstenberg. Photograph by Cecil Beaton.

Although I focused on American glamor in the paragraph above, the majority of this book discusses British glamour. While both countries were influenced by Hollywood, in the UK glamour was regarded with more suspicion than in the US. The upper-classes had a long tradition of favoring reserve and conservatism in fashion, and the middle- and lower-classes likewise were partial to dressing with respectability and modesty (this explains so much about British fashion). Glamour was seen as lurid, the stuff of pin-up girls and pulpy romance magazines, and the complete opposite of English respectability--though luxurious and attractive, nonetheless. Think of the film Rebecca--British in all but its producer--and how the elusive title character is seen as a glamorous, ideal woman by the insecure and young protagonist. "I wish I were a woman of 36, dressed in black satin with a string of pearls!" she says at one point. But by the end of the film, Rebecca's glamor and beauty are revealed to contain only a heart of stone and the morals of an alley cat.


Judy Garland. Photograph by George Hurrell.

In fact, it's surprising how unorthodox and non-conformist glamor's consistently been portrayed in the last century. In the '50s and '40s, it was associated with open--one might even say aggressive--sexuality; in the '60s, the decade of youth culture, it was seen as middle-aged; in the '80s, nostalgic. It's always been associated with beauty and fashion, but is much more abstract than either, and therefore can be more broadly applied. Whereas concepts of the former often exclude minorities and lead to "white washing," glamour tends to apply to women of all national and ethnic associations. It also seems to go hand-in-hand with feminism, although this is a problematic relationship--Dyhouse describes one Suffragette who wanted women to be less focused on their looks, but believed that in gaining legal and social autonomy they had become more so. There are also many modern feminist scholars who think glamor debases women.


Marilyn Monroe. Photograph by Cecil Beaton.

This study as a whole is really fascinating and well-written. Dyhouse takes a complex subject and analyzes it in a very clear, logical tone. Although it is super-repetitive, I didn't really get bored, possibly because the subject itself is so interesting and very pertinent to women today. How important should beauty and conforming to society's definition of an ideal woman be? This is something every woman must struggle with on a daily basis, as we grow up and as we get older. Dyhouse, however, concludes that whatever body or identity issues women have, glamor is not to blame. It is, first and foremost, about aspiration. Luxury, escape, and perfection can all exist within the enchantment of glamor, something many working-class women appreciate. It's all a temporary illusion, but an illusion that allows a woman to manipulate the world so that it sees her as she wants to be seen. In the end, glamor--even of the pedestrian cosmetic type--is still a kind of magic.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the subject of 20th century visual culture or women's history! Thanks to Inbooks, Zed Books, and Three Pipe Problem for sending me a copy to review.


Musical Notes: "Which?" by Jeri Southern

Book Review: ART AND MADNESS: A MEMOIR OF LUST WITHOUT REASON by Anne Roiphe

"Normal life beckoned with all the appeal of soiled bedsheets. I wanted to dance in the dark, cheek to cheek, with something dangerous, something that would make me feel alive."

I'm not big on memoirs. In fact, I haven't read a single memoir since I started this blog, nor have I had any desire to do so. But when Jenny from Lit Endeavors tweeted the above quote from Art and Madness, I knew I had to at least give it a try.

Roiphe, a writer of several books both fictive and non, lived in the beatnik heyday of New York City--but not as a writer, as an object of desire. With her primary focus in life being to inspire a great artist, she banged her way through the fifties and sixties--and not monogamously, either. Supposedly all these men were famous, but the only one whose name is even vaguely familiar to me is George Plimpton, and I think that's because I was confusing him with George Peppard from Breakfast at Tiffany's.

My embarrassing lack of knowledge about who these people are aside, the book isn't really about that. It's not a dirty tell-all, it's a coming of age story. Roiphe grew up amidst the upper-class, post-War conformity of Park Avenue, where everything a woman did, including going to college, was meant first and foremost to catch her a husband. Even though Roiphe rebelled against everything her parents' generation stood for, she still suppressed her own desire to create and write and channeled it into the support of the male "geniuses" who surrounded her. Her gradual realization that she had her own voice that was worth expressing, that she could and should be more than just a man's support, is the real narrative of this book.

A few weeks ago when I reviewed The Ghost of Greenwich Village, I complained that the reader got no sense of the beatnik era from the story. That is sooo not the case with Art and Madness. From Hiroshima and the Kennedy assassination, JD Salinger and Freud, men who drink like fishes and keep mistresses on the side, to the beginnings of feminism and free love, the sense of place and time in this book is palpable. It's like watching Mad Men, only more awesome because the mad men in this case are writers. You can see how 1950's conformity--at least on the surface--was a response to the chaos of war and, as Roiphe put it, to the ungrieved-for dead; and you can understand how and why Roiphe's generation violently reacted against that sensibility to create the counter-culture movements of the 1960s.

That being said, I wasn't totally entranced. The book starts to get repetitive and, as I've mentioned, I'm not that big on memoirs to begin with. But the story is interesting and Roiphe's writing style, though seriously old skool, is wonderful and poetic and reminiscent of the clicking of typewriters and smokey sub-basement bars--in other words, totally appropriate to the setting of this book.

If you have an interest in this era, Roiphe's life is definitely worth reading about.