Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain

 Seeing this wonderful trailer for the new documentary about Bourdain inspired me to finally pick up Kitchen Confidential, which I'd somehow never read. I was fond of Bourdain: though I only watched his various shows occasionally, my partner would generally watch the episode of Parts Unknown that covered whatever place we were traveling to to get recommendations (and then sometimes we'd re-watch the episode after coming back, as a way to revisit our trip), and so perhaps part of my love for the man is because all of his recommendations were fantastic, so I am indebted to him for some really wonderful experiences. We also have some of his cookbooks, and have made some great meals out of them. I like his style, which is a kind of no-bullshit attitude that is leavened with a deep solidarity with people experiencing any form of oppression. And so it was interesting to finally read the book that made him famous — or rather, to listen to it, read by the man himself, in his wonderfully distinctive voice. 

You can see why Kitchen Confidential rocked the foodie world when it came out. I've read a handful of restaurant memoirs, and this one is still by far the most explicit in revealing some of the less appealing sides of the business. And not just the gross stuff, like days-old fish being served up as specials, but also the exploitative labor practices, and more significantly, the hard realities of what they drive people to do. Bourdain is open about the toxicity of the culture in kitchens, and he doesn't exempt himself in his descriptions of it. Actually, one of the most interesting moments is towards the end, when he describes the kitchen of a chef whom he admires, and marvels at how it essentially contradicts almost everything he's said about what restaurants are like. Maybe, he realizes, the chaotic conditions in places he's worked is due in part to...himself, and the way he operates. Maybe he's part of the problem.

It's hard not to read this book through the lens of knowledge about the tragic end of Bourdain's life, and I think it's unavoidable that the many passages about depression, rage, and a sense of futility resonate differently in light of it. From this angle, one could say that this is a book that traces the trajectory of a single man's growth and development, from a bratty privileged asshole to a far more self-aware, and openly flawed, man with a deep appreciation, not just of food, but also of what it takes to make it, and perhaps a renewed sense of moral obligation. Something that is especially wonderful is that this development is very clearly a work in progress, and one where you can see some of the seeds of what came later — one of the final chapters of the book describes a trip to Japan, and it's really fascinating to see Bourdain not only thrill to the experience of a cuisine that's entirely new to him, and recapture an excitement that had seemed somewhat lost, but also to watch as he learns how to travel. It's kind of amazing to see him be so bad at it at first — having to hype himself up to go into a noodle bar and order rather than eating his first Japanese meal at Starbucks, for instance. 

Though the central narrative here is really about Bourdain himself, first, and about restaurant culture and labor, second, there's also a fair amount about food and cooking that's kind of fun and interesting to. It's because of this book, for instance, that my partner disdains garlic presses (and I will admit that in the full context of the entire book, I might be a little more convinced, though I will absolutely keep using it for the garlic that goes in salad dressings). My favorite part was the paean to shallots, which he says are just utterly underused in home cooking, and I fully agree.

Anyways. I don't think Bourdain was a saint (and he would no doubt think you were an idiot if you disagreed), and I don't think his various shows were without problems,* but I have a great appreciation for the man, and this book made it even stronger.

* Total tangent, but something that really annoyed me was that his Istanbul episode was filmed during Ramadan. Wtf? That's just dumb timing, and a poor representation of the city. But on the other hand, maybe it actually did some valuable work in demystifying and unpacking some stereotypes. I dunno. This is part of what makes me a bit leery of Parts Unknown, and I kind of think that it was something that Bourdain struggled with as well — wanting to share an appreciation for travel and different parts of the world, but also being aware of the ethical problems involved, and so much of the awfulness of tourism. You sensed that he felt responsible, and in a complex way, even as he also wanted to refuse that responsibility and pretend it was just about enjoying the food. Or so it seemed to me. In the grand scheme of things, I think it was actually more honest and open about the politics of it all than a lot of other foodie shows are these days. But I haven't really watched enough to make a strong claim in that regard.

How Much of These Hills is Gold? by C Pam Zhang

I had such mixed feelings about this book! I freely acknowledge that probably, part of the problem was that I was drawn to it because I loved Téa Obreht's Inland so much, and I kept wanting it to be more like that, which is ridiculous and unfair. 

That said, this is a challenging book, and a very uneven one. It's absolutely absorbing, and wonderfully vivid, at times, but it also has big chunks that feel utterly contrived. As I was reading, I found myself thinking, "This is made up. This is all just made up." Which, of course, is all fiction, so what was it that was bugging me here? Was it the plot twists? Was it the writing style? Was it that it seemed like the author was trying to say something profound about gender, cultural identity, etc, but it was actually kind of incoherent? Or — to be charitable to the author — was it that the text was subverting my expectations of what The Olde West is "supposed" to be like, when as I recognize that those expectations are largely invented fictions?

Similarly, was the odd pacing — where crucial details that utterly changed your sense of the entire story were casually tossed out at random, and entire years jumped by in a few paragraphs that were so crammed with plot points that they could be spun out into their own novel — a brilliant innovation that was challenging storytelling conventions, or just... clumsy plotting?

Certainly, there are parts of this story that feel incredibly cliché, and not in an intentional way. But it also does have some wonderfully nuanced explorations of the fluidity of identity. 

I don't know. I think Zhang has a ton of potential, but this book...feels like a MFA thesis.

Confessions of the Fox, Jordy Rosenberg

 I have this weird problem, which is that when a book aligns extremely closely with my particular intellectual interests or loves, it makes me uncomfortable. I am far too accustomed to being an outsider, I guess, even within particular communities that I am a part of. So this novel, which is first and foremost an engagement with the 18th century, its history and fiction, and the scholarship written about it, from a perspective that is strongly oriented to studies of sex and gender, queerness, and race, was just so firmly in my wheelhouse that I kept metaphorically looking over my shoulder as I read it, like, this is a joke right? It was super interesting to me to read this with my bookclub, none of whom are 18C lit people (but one of whom is a historian), and to hear about how it came across to them. Academics are so accustomed to thinking that nobody else finds their area interesting that it's kind of revelatory to realize that other people might also be into it.

On the other hand, I also kind of hate the whole trope of scholars working on a discovered manuscript cast as thrilling adventure. This is very much a me problem, not a problem with this book. Actually, Rosenberg's version is almost a parody of this mode, told through footnotes, with a genuinely hilarious satire of the corporate university occasionally interjecting in chirpy all-caps. But I nonetheless found myself somewhat impatient with the repeated mentions of a coded meaning available for those with eyes to see. And frustrated by the half story told in the footnotes about the narrator and his various relationships — I wanted to hear more, which is of course a nice reversal of the historical novel idea, and I also wanted him to get his shit together, which is maybe in part a send-up of the whole tormented genius male academic thing, I dunno. The post-modern footnote aspect is definitely part of the book's charm, and I truly loved seeing scholarship that I care a lot about being cited, but maybe it was just a touch too conspiratorial for me.

But the body of the novel, ostensibly Jack's memoirs, is absolutely gorgeous. So beautifully written, such lush and vivid detail. It was lyrical and warm and sexy and just wonderful. A story you could completely sink into.

Overall, I really can't wait to see what Jordy Rosenberg writes next.

Traveling Black: a Story of Race and Resistance, Mia Bay

 I was thinking this would be sort of like the book about travel in the Polish People's Republic that I read recently, except about African Americans in the US. But it's actually more about how travel creates legal complexities that scramble segregation efforts. Like, it turns out that a big part of how the Civil Rights Act of 1964 actually got reinforced was through the angle of interstate commerce — though it also turns out that Plessy vs. Ferguson was a case about train travel. As Bay notes at the outset, a lot of social history tends to focus on how groups inhabit a given place, not so much how they move from one place to another, or where they vacation. But a closer look at travel, especially in 20th century America, illuminates so many different aspects of society — infrastructure, laws, leisure, relationships of race, gender, class. And the history of segregation and the struggle for civil rights is such a fundamental part of American history (as we are increasingly coming to realize...), and it's really kind of astonishing stuff, when you dive into the details.

It's a fascinating and important history, but it must be admitted that the book is a little dry. Isabel Wilkerson sort of spoiled me for reading history — I'm like, oh, it's not all riveting page turners?? This one feels a bit more academic. And though there are anecdotes throughout that give you some sense of the lived experience behind these various issues, overall the book is more focused on legal history. I bought this book, Driving While Black, at the same time, and it will be interesting to see how it compares.

Minor Feelings: an Asian American Reckoning, Cathy Park Hoang

 This is terrific. A collection of autobiographical essays, loosely gathered around the theme of Asian American womanhood. I'd been thinking about the specificities of Asian identity more after a fantastic panel on Critical Brownness Studies at the MLA earlier this year, and this book returned to some of the issues I had heard about there (especially the position of Asians within a US racial hierarchy organized around anti-Blackness), but it also went in some unexpected, and incredibly thought-provoking, directions. I'm especially thinking about the essay about Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, which starts with the observation that the volumes of writing about her rarely mention her rape and murder, and then goes on to explore how to write about that, as well as an excellent essay on Richard Pryor and stand-up comedy.*

  The more autobiographical essays — especially one about college friendships and becoming an artist — are also fantastic. I found myself reflecting on the difference between essay and auto-theory — these are definitely essays, and I'm still pondering what that means exactly. Certainly, they do not feel self-indulgent in the way that auto-theory often can, and I think that's partly because, although they go in all kinds of surprising directions, there is a consistent theme or idea that holds them together. I like the looseness and whimsy of auto-theory, sometimes, but there's a limit. This book, though, strikes the exact right balance of meta-reflection, a judicious use of the pause to stop and ponder the thing one has just said, or openly worry about whether to say something else. The book's wonderful dry humor is crucial as well — it doesn't appear, as you might expect, in those meta-moments, but at other, unexpected points that provide a helpful leavening in a book that also pulls off the admirable feat of having really compelling moments of intense anger.

Required reading!

* A persistent fascination of mine. If you know of some good writing on stand-up comedy, please, tell me about it.

Spring, Ali Smith

 I love Ali Smith, and I've been enjoying the Seasonal Quartet, but I kind of hated this one. It felt sensationalistic and gross. The blend of magic and realism was exactly wrong for a representation of immigration detention centers, and the characters seemed utterly false. I don't know if I just wasn't in the right mood for it or what, because even Smith's style, which I typically love, came to seem twee and grating.

I'm determined to read each book in the quarter in its season, but I might wait until the very end of summer for the last one, to let the grumpiness wear off...

The Biggest Bluff, Maria Konnikova

 I started playing poker in graduate school with a group of friends, and quickly fell in love with the game. We played pretty regularly (like every other week) for years, and I missed it terribly when I left. I'd come to think of myself as being a decent player, and when I was in Vegas for a friend's bachelorette weekend, I even spent a few hours at a cash game, and came out of it $100 richer. Then, last January, I signed up for free poker lessons from Poker Powher, this super awesome organization that teaches women to play poker (for free!!!), and reconnected to my love for the game. I also discovered I wasn't nearly as good as I thought I was, heh heh, but after three months of weekly lessons, and lots of (free) practice games, I got a whole lot better. And now I just want to play all the time.*

I had posted something about all this on facebook, and a friend recommended Konnikova's book. I'll confess, I was a little skeptical, but I got the audiobook from the library (read by the author, which is always nice), and 10 minutes later, I was hooked. This is a really great book. It's not so much an account of how Konnikova learned to play poker (and play it well) as it is an investigation into the nature of poker as a game, and more broadly, into the way people conceptualize luck and risk. What does it mean to gamble? Why do we think of poker as gambling, but not, say, attending a PhD program in the humanities (surely the riskier endeavor, with more on the line). I've been super fascinated by these questions for awhile — not just because I am the graduate of such a PhD program, and have dealt with the roulette-like job market more than once, but all the more so during the onset of the pandemic, which was a particularly vivid illustration of the totally illogical way people understand risk — and Konnikova brilliantly shows how examining poker is actually the ideal way to study them.

On the way, you get some fun stories about the eccentric characters she meets, and a few brief scenes of the heart-pounding, nerve-wracking experience of playing Hold 'Em (especially as a woman, an aspect of the book I particularly appreciated). If you're an aspiring poker player, what you get in this book is not really a set of lessons for how to play, but a philosophy of play that helps you wrap your head around its particular combination of luck and skill. A lot of poker lore is focused on the idea of bluffing and tells, and yes, that stuff matters, but it's not quite as all-encompassing as some movies make it out to be (though I do think the mental aspect of the game is one of its biggest challenges, and one I'm still very much learning). The Biggest Bluff is really useful in the way that it carefully sorts through all those aspects. But the particular pleasure of this book, I think, is that Konnikova also subtly, gradually, draws out the beauty of poker — the things about it that make it, really, the perfect game.

It's a really fun read, and a much more intellectual one than I'd expected. Highly recommended!

* Free games are great, but they're really not the same as playing for money. Hence I am currently seeking a generous patron, interested in sponsoring me...

The Black Unicorn, Audre Lorde

You may be thinking, wow Kasia, you already abandoned the blogging, so soon? But actually, I've been a terrible reader. This might actually happen to me at the end of every semester — I get so excited about having additional reading time that I start running around like a headless chicken, picking up every book I pass. So I'm in the middle of, like, 12 books right now, and that's the main reason why I haven't posted.

But I did finished Audre Lorde's Black Unicorn. I pretty much always have a book of poetry going, usually in the bathroom (sorry poets). Lorde is in what I've termed my pantheon, aka, the collection of authors whose complete works I intend to read. Her work is so, so amazing. My first introduction to her writing was actually Cancer Journals, which is not where most people start, but it's an incredible text — she writes about her mastectomy and cancer treatment, and it's just a completely mind-opening work on gender, intimacy, self, illness. If you haven't read her, I think Sister Outsider is really the place to begin. What makes her essays so astonishing is the incredibly straightforward way that she moves through her ideas. We often think of difficulty as a marker of intelligence, when it comes to critical theory, but Lorde's writing is extremely accessible. As I write this, I'm wondering whether I'd call her ideas complex, and I'm really not sure — but certainly, they are profound. 

This was my first forray into her poetry, and it's actually very similar, in some sense, to the essays. The language is mostly fairly simple, but there's just an incredible force to her words, and you find yourself re-reading them over and over, working through the enormity of what is being said. For example:

TO MARTHA: A NEW YEAR

As you search over this year

with eyes your heart has

sharpened

remember longing.

I do not know your space now

I only seek a woman whom I love

trapped there

by accident.

but such places do not change

so much

as what we seek in them

and faith will serve

along the way

to somewhere else

where work begins.

This is writing that is openly spiritual, full of feeling, connected to a sense of ancient, elemental ways of being, and that's the kind of thing that can be difficult for soul-less intellectuals like me, heh heh, but truly, Lorde's writing is the closest I come to religion, and these poems feel like sacred texts.