TBP BOOK CORNER

Just throwing a shoutout to a couple of recently-read books:

Gilligan’s Wake by Tom Carson. Yes, it’s (sort of) what you think it is: a Joycean spin on the seven stranded castaways as they meander through American history in the 20th century. Every character has a chapter to call their own, from Gilligan’s pathological delusion that he’s Maynard G. Krebs and it is forever 1959 in San Francisco, through the Sikpper’s service with JFK and RMN in WWII, Mr. Howell’s unwitting role as a Communist fellow-traveller, Mrs. Howell’s morphine addiction (???!?), Ginger’s disastrous night with Sammy Davis Jr at Frank’s house, the Professor . . . well, you’d just have to read one to believe it, and Mary Ann’s bizarre physical condition, all coming together in a Tommy Westphal-type ending. The book bogs about 85% of the way through, but I enjoyed it anyway.

The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation by David Kamp. Think of this as a more focused and much more gossipy companion piece to David Brooks’ Bobos in Paradise and you’ll be on the right track. Kamp takes about a fifty-year view of the figures behind the rise of the Foodie Nation, looking unblinkingly at figures like James Beard, Julia Child, Craig Claiborne, Alice Waters, and the like. (There were several points in this book where I found myself wishing he’d blinked a little. Then I consider that maybe he did.) This book isn’t about what this figures did to change the American palate so much as it is about how they did it. I feel he could have spent more time discussing the recent influence of Food Network and how it’s elevated eating and the contemplation of eating into entertainment. Or how Food Network has now descended into VH1 without Michael Ian Black or Flavor Flav. Jane and Michael Stern told the story of America’s changing tastes better in their book “American Gourmet,” but that book wasn’t as entertainingly sleazy as this one is. It’s your choice.