But what separates a food writer from someone who just happens to write about food? As with any compartmentalizing of genre, there is something in the title that implies a diminishment, as if today, as in ancient Greece, the act of eating were too frivolous to be worthy of serious meditation. Matro aimed for comedy in the excesses of his dinner-party verse, but the tone of Archestratos’ work isn’t so clear, and he was disdained by later scholars for daring to imagine that, in compiling an index of culinary pleasures, he was “laying the foundation of some science likely to improve human existence.” Still, when contemporary food writers (and, I suppose, I am one) stray from celebrating flavors to probe the larger issues surrounding the parade of dishes to our tables — exploitation of labor, abuse of animals, climate change, the homogenizing of cuisines and cultures under globalization, systemic injustices that allow millions of people to go hungry each year — some readers complain. Food should not be political, they insist. Food is universal; food unites us. Let us have our cake in peace.
If you approach these tales with the proper frame of mind, the ridiculous aspects become sources of delight—no different from the outrageous elements in a play by Ionesco or Beckett. Perhaps we should simply classify the locked room mystery as a branch of absurdist literature, and leave it at that. The entrance of the orangutan is exactly what such a story needs and deserves.
You want spoilers? Let me give you some.
Like all great plagues, tuberculosis inspired great art, operatic tragedies and literature, including Bram Stroker’s Dracula. Panicked by a mysterious illness ravaging their village, residents of Exeter, Rhode Island, turned to a folk remedy popular at the time: if the heart of a corpse contained blood, it was believed that it showed it was living off the blood and tissue of living family members—that the corpse was preying on the living. As a result, the village exhumed 19-year-old Mercy Brown on January 17, 1892. She would go on to inspire the character of Lucy Westenra in Stroker’s gothic novel.
To experience “Recitatif” for the first time is to remember that books, at their best, teach us how to read them. The story is so simple yet at the same time so ingenious. We wonder: Is she really doing what I think she is? Then you realize: Yes, she is. In the spirit of that fresh approach, I won’t be more specific about the experiment. In fact, I might suggest you read Morrison’s story first and Smith’s introduction afterward. The pieces are very much in conversation with each other. Equally important, both seek to be in conversation with us.
Amanda Pellegrino's debut novel "Smile and Look Pretty" deftly explores the world of assistants dealing with all manner of mistreatment in the name of working their way up.
Chuluun, a young Tibetan Buddhist monk in present-day Mongolia and the protagonist of “When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East,” has two weeks to find the reincarnation of a tulku, an enlightened teacher. He’s asked to do this not because he’s uniquely qualified to identify the child who is destined to help carry on his faith, but because he has “indomitable patience.”
From ancient Egypt to Silicon Valley, Duncan is an ideal tour guide: witty, engaging, knowledgeable and a fount of diverting anecdotes. The book skews toward the literary, but anyone interested in the 2,200-year journey to quickly find what one needs in a book will be enlightened, and will never again take an index for granted. The well-designed book also includes nearly 40 illustrations. As might be expected, the index — created not by the author but by Paula Clarke Bain — is magnificent.