The emotional part of my brain still tells me to look forward to the next stage of Momofuku. The journalist part of my brain tells me I’ll of course cover any new spots. That’s my job. But the critic in me says there are a lot of other restaurants out there that aren’t taking a pause. And they need reviewing.
I’m looking at two bowls of lasagna. These ready-to-eat meals with a 25-year shelf life come from two US-based survival food companies. Preparation is simple: Just add hot water. One can be eaten after about 12 minutes, the other after just six.
Neither looks particularly appetizing. It probably doesn’t help that I’m a picky eater, but they prove hard to swallow. There is no relation to actual lasagna in taste or texture. One is exceptionally salty, with a particularly unpleasant smell. The other has the aftertaste of a protein shake and a disconcerting mouthfeel. However, I’m not starving or fighting to survive in the middle of the apocalypse. Under such circumstances, I assume these would make an acceptable meal—perhaps even an enjoyable one.
It is not modish in polite society today to introduce somebody by their nationality, even worse to affix a definite article in front. One impeaches oneself as provincial when subscribing too rigidly to the importance of borders. So J. M. Coetzee, the South African writer who now lives in Australia, has chosen a crotchety title for his most recent novella: The Pole. Under this banner he suggests to the world again a general atmosphere of existential homelessness for his characters, a sense of time out of joint.
Though thin of plot, the book does have an arc, and its ending will leave readers breathless. As Lispector’s son Paulo Gurgel Valente writes in the book’s afterword: “the novel, with that formidable twist at its end, would have made a great Alfred Hitchcock movie.”
Henry Winkler's memoir begins on a Tuesday morning in October 1973, at his first audition for “Happy Days.” He was almost 28 — quite a bit old for a high schooler — and struggling with something he didn’t know had a name.
“Being Henry: The Fonz... and Beyond,” released Tuesday by Celadon Books, is a breezy, inspirational story of one of Hollywood’s most beloved figures who became an unlikely TV screen icon and later a champion for those with dyslexia.