If letters made sounds when we opened them, sounds expressive of their contents—if, from the freshly unsealed envelope, there rose a lover’s sigh, or an alcoholic belch, or a rasping cough of officialdom—the letters of Hunter S. Thompson would have released, I think, a noise like nearby gunfire. Like the crackle of some endless small-arms engagement. Pop, pop, pop, deep into the night.
Huddled on a chaise on the upper deck of the Orient, the dahabiya that I had chosen for a cruise down the Nile, I sipped hibiscus tea to ward off the chill. Late in February, it was just 52 degrees in Aswan, where I had boarded the sailboat, but the scenery slipping past was everything the guidebooks had promised: tall sandbanks, curved palms and the mutable, gray-green river, the spine of Egypt and the throughline in its history.
I’d been obsessed with Egypt since childhood, but it took a cadre of female adventurers to get me there. Reading “Women Travelers on the Nile,” a 2016 anthology edited by Deborah Manley, I’d found kindred spirits in the women who chronicled their expeditions to Egypt in the 19th century, and spurred on by them, I’d planned my trip.
Beside my chair were collections of letters and memoirs written by intrepid female journalists, intellectuals and novelists, all British or European. Relentlessly entertaining, the women’s stories reflected the Egyptomania that flourished after Napoleon invaded North Africa in 1798. The country had become a focal point for artists, architects and newly minted photographers — and a fresh challenge for affluent adventurers.
I have never been to the Black Sea, but for years I have felt it in the distance, waiting. Of the four countries that Caroline Eden visits in Black Sea, her second book of culinary culturology, I have only been to one: Romania. It is also the only country of the four whose cuisine I am personally connected to — I grew up on the Romanian cooking of my grandmothers. When asked what Romanian food is like, I’ve usually described it as somewhat akin to Turkish food, and I felt justified in this vague answer as I read this book.
In Black Sea, Eden has successfully created, in her own words, “a way to ‘eat the culture’ and taste the journey.” She makes her way west and south along the coast of the Black Sea, starting with Odessa, Ukraine, then traveling through the port cities of Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey, where she spends the bulk of her trip (and the book) between Istanbul and Trabzon. Even though I have never been to any of the cities and towns she visits and I have not eaten many of the foods whose recipes she includes, the flavors of the dishes, the rhythms of her interactions with the people she encounters, and the faces in the photos all felt familiar.
The street, it would seem, no longer calls to photographers as it once did. But why? After all, as anyone who lives here knows, New York has no shortage of drama on its sidewalks and in its subways. With the right eye, surely someone could again make the kinds of pictures that Gilden unearthed from his archives, and give the genre his or her own idiosyncratic spin. It seems, though, that the motivation has been lost. Perhaps the explanation is simple: while the streets might still be a circus, we no longer think of them as the biggest stage upon which we strut and fret our hours. Instead, we have vanished into our virtual worlds, halls of mirrors from which it is becoming ever more difficult to escape.
Every page is infused not only with Basinger's knowledge, but her overwhelming adoration for the tuneful, silver-screen tales that changed her own life. The book is a passion project, organically rendered, and shot through with longing for an age where sophistication was as subtle as it was scintillating. The Movie Musical! is more than a love letter to a great American artform; it's a symphony.