We are drawn to the horrific with good reason. We understand that, in our soft mammalian bodies, evolved from predatory primates, we are at risk of accident and violence. We know loss and grief. Even hamsters exhibit self-preservation, but presumably they lack our foreknowledge that all creatures tread the edge of the abyss. One of the quirks of Homo sapiens, however, is that we get a thrill from the abyss. Perhaps its proximity fires up our primordial synapses. In a world of stationary bicycles and decaffeinated coffee, of streetlights banishing the ancient night, do we miss that shiver down the spine?
The shiver is not new. The Penguin Book of Murder Mysteries celebrates how the nineteenth century added a modern twist to the ancient theme of bloody murder. Gradually, the suspenseful race of pursuers hot on the trail of a culprit began to entwine toward the denouement with a parallel story of how they gathered and deciphered clues. This narrative updating wed venerable kinds of epic stories, such as quest and vengeance, to the sense of mystery formerly limited to supernatural narratives. The Gothic cobwebbery festooning many early crime stories—much of which now looks as silly to us as a haunted fairground in Scooby-Doo—met the fresh new idea of legal justice. Although there are occasional earlier examples of crime-solving, the murder mystery as we think of it nowadays centered upon a detective figure interested at least in the conservative notion of the restoration of “order,” and at best in the liberal ideal of justice. The genre could not have evolved before modern notions of a codified legal structure and organized police—ideally a commitment to evidence versus torture, clues versus accusation. In every society, of course, the evolving system has been structured to protect the dominant group, so corruption and bigotry polluted each system. But at least there was beginning to be a system.
In seventeen years it will be the 200th anniversary of Monet’s birth, yet he might still be the best way to introduce someone young to art – and not just modern art. This is partly because of what he didn’t paint. He didn’t do historical or religious subjects: no need to know what is happening at the Annunciation (let alone the Assumption of the Virgin) or what Oedipus said to the Sphinx or why so many naked women are attending the death of Sardanapalus. He never painted a literary scene for which you need to know the story. None of his paintings refers to an earlier painting. He was the first great artist since the Renaissance never to paint a nude. He painted portraits but it didn’t matter (except to him) whom they were of. You don’t need to know the history of art to appreciate a Monet picture because he wasn’t much interested in the history of art himself (though he revered Watteau and Delacroix and Velázquez). He had even less interest in the science of visual perception. His art was secular and apolitical.
Grandmama didn’t wear her Sunday best, or even her Friday best, to Jr. Food Mart on date night with Ofa D. She’d drape herself in this baby blue velour jogging suit sent down from Mama Rose in Milwaukee. Grandmama was the best chef, cook, food conjurer, and gardener in Scott County. Hence, she hated on all food, and all food stories, that she did not make.
But Grandmama never, ever hated on the cuisine at Jr. Food Mart, our favorite restaurant that served gas.
There are foods I don’t associate with a specific memory so much as with the act of remembering. If all my favourite breakfast foods were laid out before me—smoked salmon and capers, ful mdammas, soft goat cheese and honey—I would reach for labaneh and zaatar first. As ubiquitous to the Lebanese breakfast table as buttered bread is to others, labaneh and zaatar are extraordinary in their simplicity, a constant, evergreen staple. When I feed friends a morsel of labaneh and zaatar on whole wheat pita, I’m not offering them a relic of my childhood so much as an invitation into the fullness of my family—a piece of who I am, and who I’ve been, when I’m at home: a daughter, a sister, an aunt.
Labaneh—or labneh, depending on one’s dialect—is what happens when you strain the whey out of yoghurt. A thick, creamy spread possessed of a beautifully fermented tang, it’s first salted, then made pillowy by folding in lashings of olive oil. I only speak Arabic with my family, and I only eat labaneh when my mother gives me some; in fact I’ve only made it once, last month, under my parents’ roof. Labaneh, like language, is something I receive with gratitude and love and a little guilt; it’s not something I produce reliably myself.
I’d never tasted or even considered the boozy, spiced mixture of mincemeat before, but Smith’s headnote conjured up a dad-and-daughter moment that soothed me even as I longed for it. And in a moment when every inch of kitchen countertop was already covered in cookies and the necessary accoutrements scattered about, Smith had sold me: I was craving mincemeat.