Radical agrarians unite!

The February issue of Gourmet magazine has a great article on Wendell Berry. (Here's a man who pays attention to details.) I've just recently gone back to reading this magazine regularly and I've noticed that the editors are really wonderfully adept at profiling real people who are making a difference in how we eat, shop and think about food.

Berry is described as a man who "was preaching the gospel of small farms and local foods when Michael Pollan was still in knee pants." Pollan's 2006 book,
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, is currently on our '08 book group list (though we, too, are still in caucuses) and I really hope we vote for this one. I will read it regardless but I know it will be a great book to discuss in the group. Both Pollan and Berry approach the subject of food as naturalists, not scientists, and I think this makes them both much more accessible and enjoyable.

"Eating with the fullest pleasure-pleasure that is, that does not depend on ignorance-is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world." See what I mean? I'm hungry for more (to quote my pretend celebrity best friend, Anthony Bourdain.) If you are, too, hungry for more...Berry that is (okay, okay, I'm done.), here's where you start: The Art of the Commonplace (farm-focused non-fiction), Farming (poetry, a hard-to-find chapbook in which he dubs soil "a divine drug"), and That Distant Land (a collection of stories).

Cause célèbre.

Over the weekend I finished Calamity and got started on A Prayer for Owen Meany. To get done in time for February 4th book group I'll need to clock in with an average of about 70 pages per day. To pique your curiosity, in the prologue John Irving writes, "I may one day write a better first sentence to a novel than that of A Prayer for Owen Meany, but I doubt it." Yup, that'll get you going.

I am a firm believer in carefully reading prologues, introductions, and most certainly any lines of songs, poetry or prose an author has taken the time to note on the page immediately preceding the start of a story. They can set the tone beautifully and lessen the jarring effect of going from reality to a new and unfamiliar place. And indeed, when I revisit them after reading the book, they often give sort of a lovely foreshadowing (or even outright clues) of what's to come.

It all comes down to details. And I do believe in the adage, "God is in the details." Life is certainly in the details. Love is in the details. Great Food is in the details. I am quite certain many, if not most, people miss most everything. Particularly when it comes to reading. (And I'm talking about everyday stuff here: signs, emails, instructions.) The fact is, The Details is usually small. And quiet. And subtle. Easily missed. Like Owen Meany?

Spoiler Alert.

Never! Just going on record here to say that I will never (never!) reveal too much here about what I am reading. For example, in my last post I gave a few choice details but I said nothing about the story line one couldn't glean from the back cover or at worst from the first chapter. The things I kind of "work out" in these lines mainly involve the connections I make while reading that I can discuss without actually giving away the story. I may ask a question or two, mainly of the rhetorical variety but also in hopes someone will actually post a comment(!) one fine day. (I'm breathless with anticipation...no seriously, someone throw me a bone!)

And when I sometimes make those leaps, you know, light bulb moments, about a book I really just need to share and/or compare notes. I can still see myself in the mirror, bleary-eyed in the early morning, toothbrush stopped mid-stroke, after finishing Choke (Chuck Palahniuk) the night before. Book group often serves this purpose. And my husband has a line up on his bed side table of things I'm done with and want him to get to so I can talk to him about them. Either option is sometimes not immediate enough when I just need to get it out when the ideas are fresh and then move on to the next thing.

I'm now about two-thirds through Calamity and I just have to say again how much I love it (note the fact I now refer to it with just the one word - a term of endearment.) My friend Sarah will sometimes describe books as making her "brain feel all tingly" and this one definitely fits that bill for me. I'm not sure I will really write more about it. I guess we'll see.
It had been bothering me that my post about Bel Canto came at the half-way point and then I fell mute on that subject. I recently realized that's actually about perfect. To discover any more than that is up to you.

As you can see from my Book Group Bull Pen there is just the one book at the moment. It is our last on this year's list. That is about to change! We meet February 4th to discuss A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving) and also to choose the next twelve books we will read. I have been working on my list and have more ideas this time than ever before. We've changed our structure a bit and rather than choosing one book from each member we will choose from one master list. When I think that the choices we make will probably amount to a large percentage of my reading for the next year it is a weighty charge. In the past I've had one book I'm super excited about bringing to the group and that tends to eclipse the other books I offer. I'm also a procrastinator (understatement alert!) so I leave it until just before group. This time I want to be sure I do my due diligence and bring some options I feel really good about.

One title I've known for some time will be on my list: How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read (Pierre Bayard). From the Wall Street Journal: "...is an amusing disquisition on what is required to establish cultural literacy in a comfortable way. Lightly laced with irony, the book nonetheless raises such serious questions as: What are our true motives for reading? Is there an objective way to read a book? What do we retain from the books we've read?" I can't imagine a book group worth it's salt could find a reason not to read this book. Then again, perhaps I've chosen it precisely to find out if buried deep within our lackadaisical group there still lies some serious readers. (Mmmm, a real live litmus test.)

How's that for a spoiler?
;)

Core Curriculum.

Page 157. Special Topics in Calamity Physics is deeply, densely, wonderfully referential. So much so I'm quite certain I am missing a lot more than I am getting. (Visit Book Nerd Corner at the right and click on the "Book Porn" link and take a quick peek at the seventh image down, the piece by Jonathan Callan. One could argue it quite perfectly represents this novel.) Sometimes this awareness of missing out can be terrifying but I feel quite safe in Pessl's hands. She is somehow familiar; a kindred spirit. I understand her brain. Her process. Her insane (but not) leaps. I can follow and do so so willingly.

Already I know this is a novel I will (and must) go back to over and over. Each chapter is named for a classic book and I try to see the connections; the reasons she chose each of them. Some seem obvious but it would be foolish to assume anything this tantalizing writer does is obvious. Layer after layer and endless parenthetical bits of even more information, references, even the occasional "visual aid."

I veer back and forth between thinking too hard about the writer's intentions and being totally engaged in her story. (Details in this book causing such a different type of distraction for me than the disconnected descriptions in What the Body Remembers.) The main character, Blue van Meer, is charming. A brilliant high school student whose only long-term relationship is with her father, she has changed cities, schools and homes throughout her academic life. In order to give her some footing on scholastic terra firma her senior year, Blue's father decides to finally settle them so that she may attend the prestigious St. Gallway School, where she is immediately, mysteriously accepted by the most elite clique. This seems to occur with the unsolicited help of the beautiful film studies teacher, Hannah Schneider, who is about to turn up dead.

Beating around the post.

Ugh. Am I actually about to blog about not blogging? Is that better than not blogging? Or just absolutely pathetic? Also pathetic...my reading so far this year. I even went to my book group last night (gasp!) after only getting to page 27. Our book this month was
What the Body Remembers (Shauna Singh Baldwin). I do like it and will certainly continue. Baldwin is so far seeming to be one of those writers who has an overt passion for details (dare I say minutiae?) which can be a little distracting. What is it they say? The thing we despise most in others is the thing about ourselves we can't abide? (See post: Italian Soul.)

I had been hoping to get some significant reading in on a weekend business trip to Milwaukee (you heard me) but alas my order from overstock.com did not arrive in time for my departure. (Have you beeen? Something about the ability to simultaneously order a book and a beautiful German flannel duvet cover at over half off really rocked my world.) Of course, the flight from Minneapolis to Milwaukee lasts all of 43 minutes (plus there's the warm chocolate chip cookie interruption if you're lucky enough to be flying Midwest Airlines) so it really is better suited to The Magazine. Which I try not to venture out and about without. Ever. And somehow a big comfy bed all to myself, a giant flat screen quite literally at my fingertips and no need watch anything animated was a bit irresistible. And did I mention the complete and utter mental exhaustion of spending seven hours at a bridal show? Smiling?!

So the book I schlepped to 'sconi and back with barely a glance was Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Marisha Pessl). (Finally, a writer more parenthetical than I. I think I like it! AND she's funny.) It did serve me well as a security blanket. My comfort item. How scary is an airport during questionable weather without a book? I'll never know...

Of course worst case scenario you can always pick up a magazine: Saveur for food and travel porn, Gourmet for recipes and compiling your next grocery list, Giant for the coolest music and culture and the occasional celebrity fix without a dumbass young actress or Britney in sight, and if you're at Our Very Own Mpls Int'l airport, Metro for Our Very Own local food, entertainment, arts and culture, Vanity Fair (for the articles!), Wired to totally geek out, Harper's (for the articles!), and if you read any magazine article this month make sure you check out the cover story in the December issue of the Atlantic Monthly. Written by Andrew Sullivan, Why Obama Matters is a real eye opener. You can also find it on their web site right now.

Well, hell. I made a little something happen there after all...