{"id":31,"date":"2005-09-03T11:59:01","date_gmt":"2005-09-03T15:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/2005\/09\/the-hungry-mind\/"},"modified":"2007-09-03T12:49:39","modified_gmt":"2007-09-03T16:49:39","slug":"the-hungry-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/2005\/09\/the-hungry-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"The hungry mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Los Angeles Times<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Maybe it was one Rachael Ray cookbook too many, but when a memoir called \u201cLast Chance to Eat\u201d by an author I had never heard of landed on my desk, I picked it up and didn\u2019t stop reading until I had finished two more food books with more writing than recipes.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span> Since coming up for air, I notice I am not alone in my craving for meat over glitz. Of the last six review copies publishers have sent me, exactly one is credited to a face way too familiar from the Food Network. The others are all serious writers tackling diverse topics with all the attributes you expect in superb cooking: skill, imagination and flair bordering on sorcery. <\/span><\/p>\n

Even more surprising, these kinds of books are capturing audiences the way Emeril did in the early days of tele-food. \u201cSalt: A World History,\u201d by Mark Kurlansky, has sold a quarter of a million copies so far. That\u2019s the kind of number you would expect from \u201cKitchen Confidential,\u201d the Anthony Bourdain expose that some credit with setting publishers off on what amounts to a literary truffle hunt over the last five years. But Kurlansky never posed with a knife on his cover, nor went on to bite heads off bats (or was it snakes?) on TV. <\/span><\/p>\n

Walk into any bookstore and you\u2019ll see more evidence of this encouraging trend in an age of celebrity. Food books are not just likely to be showcased front and center. They are also titles that could not be further from \u201c365 Ways to Cook Ground Beef\u201d or even its successor, \u201cHow to Cook Everything.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

The teaser table of \u201cnew nonfiction\u201d at a Borders the other day held a memoir built around baklava, an overview of honey called \u201cRobbing the Bees\u201d and the latest installment in the story of Ruth Reichl, \u201cGarlic and Sapphires\u201d \u2014 all arrayed alongside the more predictable books on finance, self-help and celebrity.
\nAt Cook\u2019s Library in Los Angeles, owner Ellen Rose rattles off five titles of \u201cwhat people are reading\u201d to me, and only two are cookbooks. The others are Alan Richman\u2019s \u201cFork It Over,\u201d a collection of his witty essays on food; Diane Jacob\u2019s how-to for wannabe Richmans, \u201cWill Write for Food,\u201d and \u201cPoet of the Appetite,\u201d Joan Reardon\u2019s biography of the late MFK Fisher. <\/span><\/p>\n

But her store carries many, many more choices intended to be savored anywhere but alongside a stove. \u201cThere are so many better books being written,\u201d Rose said. Publishers have moved beyond the pedantic, and Fisher, Elizabeth David and A.J. Liebling are no longer seen as the only real writers in food town.
\nMany of Rose\u2019s customers come in and \u201cwant the next \u2018Kitchen Confidential,\u2019\u2019\u2019 she says. And by that they don\u2019t mean another chef\u2019s variation on Upton Sinclair\u2019s expose \u201cThe Jungle,\u201d but simply a good read that teaches them something about an activity every human engages in, and not just for mere sustenance. No wonder publishers admit they are also looking for another Bourdain, or another Ruth Reichl, whose three memoirs have sold like Big Macs. <\/span><\/p>\n

Both those authors have acquired larger-than-mortal personas, but no longer is that a requirement. Kurlansky\u2019s first book, \u201cCod,\u201d has sold 200,000 copies, which would be impressive for a name chef\u2019s cookbook. <\/span><\/p>\n

Some food books include recipes, but most don\u2019t, which gives them broader interest, thereby yielding them better positioning in bookstores, out of the cookbook cul-de-sac, and potentially more lucrative sales.<\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond the memoir and the expose, there are many ways serious writers are tackling food, including single-subject histories (\u201cSpice,\u201d \u201cVanilla\u201d), biographies (\u201cCooking for Kings,\u201d on Careme; \u201cThe Perfectionist,\u201d on Bernard Loiseau, the French chef who killed himself after losing his third Michelin star), overviews of popular phenomena (\u201cFinding Betty Crocker,\u201d \u201cCook-off\u201d) and, most surprisingly, popular science. <\/span><\/p>\n

Anyone who wrote off food books as the equivalent of romance novels, with recipes to be read in bed or travel via armchair, should be amazed to see how much interest there is not just in food but in how food works. <\/span><\/p>\n

Harold McGee\u2019s \u201cOn Food and Cooking\u201d was first issued in 1984 and sold so steadily that Scribner published an updated version late last year. Beth Wareham, editor of the revised edition, says 100,000 copies are now in print, after four months. The book has done so well, she says: \u201cWe raised the price. By $5.\u201d
\nMcGee\u2019s gift is to make the chemistry, history and context of food so clear and compelling his chapters can be read as easily as a novel. But Ellen Rose said he is also capturing a new and growing audience of young cooks who want not just recipes but real understanding of how cooking works. \u201cIt\u2019s really caught on with the young Hollywood actor set,\u201d she says. \u201cA whole slew of 20-somethings want to learn how to cook, and they buy that book.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Unlike Bourdain and Reichl, McGee is not a food professional, which makes him an even better example of the sea change on the publishing front. Most of the \u201cnew\u201d authors are actually nobodies to the Food Mafia, as the tight circle of food writers and professionals in this country is mockingly known. A historian has written the just-issued biography of Alexis Soyer, \u201cThe People\u2019s Chef,\u201d while \u201cFinding Betty Crocker\u201d is by a video producer, Susan Marks. Mark Kurlansky, who produced two hits with \u201cCod\u201d and \u201cSalt\u201d that were written as history, calls himself a \u201creluctant food writer,\u201d according to Maya Baran, marketing director at his publisher on both books, Walker & Company. <\/span><\/p>\n

Angela Miller, a literary agent in New York, sums up the shift by saying: \u201cA lot of people who don\u2019t write recipe books have strong feelings about food. We\u2019re seeing more general nonfiction writers who want to write about food.\u201d She adds: \u201cIt\u2019s been accepted that food is part of culture,\u201d and, even better, \u201can intellectual part of culture.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was an editor at Simon & Schuster in the early Eighties when food was looked down on; it was marginal,\u201d Miller says. But once Frances Mayes\u2019s \u201cUnder the Tuscan Sun\u201d and Peter Mayle\u2019s \u201cA Year in Provence\u201d struck platinum, she says, editors became much more receptive to food narratives, as she calls them. <\/span><\/p>\n

Ellen Rose recalls that when she opened her shop 15 years ago, the few serious food books being published were \u201creally intellectual, reference books.\u201d Today big publishers will put publicity muscle behind the right title, books such as Jeffrey Steingarten\u2019s \u201cThe Man Who Ate Everything\u201d and Anne Mendelson\u2019s \u201cStand Facing the Stove,\u201d on the history of \u201cJoy of Cooking.\u201d And the wave shows no sign of peaking. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSomehow food is being brought into a broader context than what we eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner,\u201d Maya Baran says. \u201cThere are undercurrents.\u201d She is busily acquiring biographies of celebrity chefs gone for centuries and \u201cdesperately hoping they sell so I can keep acquiring them.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Jane Dystel, another New York literary agent with a fat roster of cookbook authors, sees another phenomenon at work with recipe-free books. \u201cTwo or three years ago I was at an IACP conference where this was a very, very big subject,\u201d she says. \u201cAfter that everyone goes back and does memoirs instead of cookbooks. I\u2019ve been seeing that over the years in general: I think in general people like to read about people, so if that can be part of learning how to cook . . . .\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

No wonder stores are well stocked with not just memoirs of food professionals, including those of Jacques P\u00e9pin, longtime restaurant critic Mimi Sheraton, British food writer Nigel Slater and restaurateur Sirio Maccioni of Le Cirque, but also of amateurs out to tell their own stories a bite at a time, as in \u201cFried Butter\u201d or \u201cThe Language of Baklava.\u201d The literary quality is often high enough that they warrant reviews in major publications. <\/span><\/p>\n

Many of these books will be summer reading for Ellen Rose\u2019s customers. \u201cA lot of people come in and stock up on paperbacks when they\u2019re going on a cruise or off to Europe,\u201d she says. While they\u2019re away, \u201cthey can\u2019t cook, so they read.\u201d Others will be recreational reading for empty-nesters: \u201cPeople who can\u2019t cook anymore want to read.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

And some will be picked up by Food Mafia wannabes, books such as Amanda Hesser\u2019s \u201cCooking for Mr. Latte\u201d (fantasy primer for a food writer) and \u201cSoul of a Chef,\u201d Michael Ruhlman\u2019s recounting of his year at the Culinary Institute of America (calling the next Thomas Keller). Rose says Sheraton\u2019s \u201cEating My Words\u201d sells because \u201cif you want to be a restaurant critic, that is the blueprint.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

But Rose will also be catering to \u201creaders,\u201d the kind who she said are as likely to spend time on \u201cA Meal Observed,\u201d Andrew Todhunter\u2019s exhaustive ruminations on Taillevent in Paris, as on Philip Roth\u2019s \u201cThe Plot Against America.\u201d If it were fiction, \u201cA Meal Observed\u201d could not be more writerly. <\/span><\/p>\n

Todhunter\u2019s previous books were on extreme sports and climbing, which apparently makes him a publisher\u2019s dream. Scribner\u2019s Wareham, for one, sees a big void in food books on science but believes \u201cit\u2019s hard to find a really good writer.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people are going to write about food they adopt this precious, gooey voice,\u201d she says, and also \u201cget too caught up in minutiae.\u201d Cookbook writers trying to write nonfiction, she says, are \u201clike Michael Jordan playing baseball \u2014 it doesn\u2019t really translate.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Too many books, Wareham says, are \u201crecipe headnotes gone bad and gone long.\u201d \u201cAlso, there\u2019s a perception that food writing doesn\u2019t have to be very good, and it does. It\u2019s the same standards you judge a novel by.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Lee Stern, cookbook buyer for Barnes & Noble, notes that many of the books that most exemplify the trend toward recipe-free treatises were not targeted for the food audience. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cKurlansky\u2019s \u2018Cod\u2019 and \u2018Salt\u2019 were actually history books,\u201d he says, adding that a forthcoming tome on ice meets the same criterion. To name two other best-sellers Eric Schlosser\u2019s \u201cFast Food Nation\u201d was filed under culture and Patricia Volk\u2019s \u201cStuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family\u201d shuffled off to memoirs. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPublishers like to hedge their bets, with seven subjects listed on the cover,\u201d Stern says. \u201cBut a book has to be in one place in the store.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Only when it is first published does it have a shot at a front table, and only when the chain decides it has \u201cwide popular appeal.\u201d No food book will set sales records if its audience is too narrow; everyone wants the equivalent of \u201cSideways,\u201d the art house movie that hits the multiplex. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe 50 percent\u201d of all books on food wind up segregated off in the cookbook aisles at Barnes & Noble, Stern says, particularly those that are \u201crestaurant dish-dirt\u201d books, such as Jeremiah Tower\u2019s memoir, or \u201cpure food memoirs \u2014 Ruth Reichl\u2019s, Jacques P\u00e9pin\u2019s \u2014 that are entirely on their life in food and not much else.\u201d Books on \u201cfood in a culinary context,\u201d such as the several now out on honey, or Mort Rosenblum\u2019s takes on olives and on chocolate, also wind up there. <\/span><\/p>\n

But the less obvious books have the best chance at breaking out of the confines of food and hitting the best-seller list. Baran noted that her Car\u00eame biography \u201cdid not get reviewed in many food publications \u2014 general interest media sold that book.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Both Stern and Wareham cited Julie Powell\u2019s forthcoming book, an outgrowth of her Julie\/Julia blog that is due this fall from Little, Brown, as a model for a food narrative. Wareham sees it as a metaphor for dealing with unhappiness in life; Stern says it crossed over so agilely that \u201cwe haven\u2019t decided where to go with it.\u201d
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a memoir, but it\u2019s structured around cooking every recipe in \u2018Mastering the Art of French Cooking,\u2019 he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a story and an idea that will have interest that transcends interest in food and food writing.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAs far as the consumer goes,\u201d Stern says, it doesn\u2019t matter if a book is about food. \u201cIf it\u2019s a good book or a good subject, it sells.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Los Angeles Times Maybe it was one Rachael Ray cookbook too many, but when a memoir called \u201cLast Chance to Eat\u201d by an author I had never heard of landed on my desk, I picked it up and didn\u2019t stop reading until I had finished two more food books with more writing than recipes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-meat-over-glitz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gastropoda.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}