As you know, once in a while -- and pretty darn frequently lately -- I get books in the mail because of this blog. Hurrah. My favorites are books that arrive before publication -- and I try -- I really really do try -- to review them before they are due out. It seems like the least I could do for their authors -- and for the publishers that send them on to me. This time, I am a bit late. Mark Kurlansky's The Food of a Younger Land ( a book that I received as an uncorrected proof for limited distribution) is in bookstores already as a hard back. And, I assume, all the attendant oddities, from typos (which seem to plague the last 75 pages or so, perhaps as the editor got tired as s/he approached the deadline for this limited version) to the absent index and bibliography are gone in the bookstore version. (Ok, the last of these I actually do miss. I love a good bibliography.)
Anyway, for Kurlansky's official site, click here. I loved his book Salt, reviewed right here on this site, so was all set to love this one too. It's quite different -- and was fun -- but I have to admit (at least this limited proof) is a little tiny bit redundant (with whole segments seeming to appear twice, unless my slow reading got a bit out-of-order) and my excitement waxed and waned a lot across the book. It's a worthwhile read, just not quite as much fun as Salt -- perhaps because it is not (mainly) Kurlansky's own prose. (Even George W. Bush liked Salt.)
Why not just Kurlansky? This book is actually a collection of pieces drawn from pieces written by the writers of the Federal Writer's Project of the WPA, a "make-work initiative" created by the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt. (Click here for "More on the WPA.") Perhaps even more relevant in these days of economic crisis, the WPA was responsible for all sorts of things -- including a Writer's Project that put out what are now classic travelogues of the US (called the American Guide Series; see here) as well as collecting slave narratives and writing American Life Histories. Though never published, the Project also collected loads of material on American food and foodways of the era. When? The mid-1930s. Who? Lots of not-so-famous people, as well as names we all now recognize (or should) since the project also employed established writers or folks who went on to be established. Examples include: Saul Bellow, Nelson Algren and May Swenson. They also underemployed -- and underpaid, for example, Zora Neale Thurston, for reasons associated with race and racism.
Despite my yearning for more of Kurlansky's own views, this was an intriguing book, organized into regions, and reporting on a foodscape which seems long gone and for which we are, perhaps, nostalgic. Both the now-exotic (or the always exotic, depending on one's class background and region of origin) and the once familiar appear. From prairie oysters to clambakes, from rabbit to squirrel, from farm homes to New York hotels, this collection of bits and pieces -- ranging from a few sentences to a few pages, gives glimpses into another world.Or should I say worlds? There are various Native Americans represented here, as well as African American history (here called Negro) in its rawest as reported on occasion in a dialectic form. Italians in all their exoticism, Irish, Scandanavians, . . . My favorites might be the one I was most familar with about Horn and Hardart's (I have a vague memory of the automat myself!) -- and a diatribe against mashed potatoes that came from Oregon. But there is much more that is fun and informative; cowboys and lutefisk and coca cola parties. Perhaps a bit of religion here and there, including an Alabama foot washing. From the record of pioneers gathering for annual picnics on the West Coast, served by their children and children's children to all sorts of other examples, there are hints at the already-disappearing nature of all this -- even though the transformative power of highways, railroads, World War II, and much more intervenes between then and now. For those interested in the homogenization of American culture, there is much here to ponder. So too for those inttrigued by the historical entanglements of gender, food and region. Women here are not the women of the 21st century. (Nor of course are the men, but somehow the place of women seems odder, more unfamiliar, at least to me.)
For a whole range of reviews of this book, try here or here or here or here for a video discussion with Kurlansky and for a related NPR story on relevant material in the Library of Congress, try here. This led to this site with pictures and loads of archival material. Wow. Oh wow.
For an argument that Obama should resurrect something like the Federal Writers Prpject and/or the WPA, see this article or this blog post.For some oddities on all this, including perspectives on arts and . . . this site and that one offer hints. Who, by the way, invented the word "wingnuttery"?
