A friend in publishing who is obviously not a follower emailed me to wonder what I made of the Panchito upchuck. As part of our back-and-forth, she said she found the confessions a little too unsavory for someone you read for food reasons and called it “the gross-out factor,” which would actually be a good reality show if the Japanese had not already mastered swallowing squid through pantyhose as competition. But when she added that “the prose will defeat all but the stoutest of heart,” I had a happier thought: This is a job for William Shatner. With bongos.