Cooked

Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation
Michael Pollan (2013, The Penguin Press)

    In Cooked, Michael Pollan once again displays his great range as a writer. He’s interested in life on all scales, from the large – how long it takes to cook a whole hog – to the minuscule – how many generations of yeast give their lives for a loaf of bread. His view of time is wonderfully deep, as well: our hominid ancestors started roasting meat perhaps two million years ago, but cooking in pots arose much more recently, along with agriculture. And modern life, especially the last fifty or sixty years, is bringing changes to our relationship with food that merit contemplation.

    From a certain point of view, cooking is what makes us human. Pollan cites the anthropologists who hold that this is literally true. “Taken as a whole, cooking opened up vast new horizons of edibility for our ancestors, giving them an important competitive edge over other species and, not insignificantly, leaving us more time to do things besides looking for food and chewing it.” Evolution being what it is, this was a one-way ticket. We are no longer physically capable of thriving without cooking food to make its energy more available to our outsized brains.

    Pollan is interesting in connecting our modern experiences and methods with their ancient roots, so he structures his exploration on the ancient elements of fire, water, air, and earth. This conceit finds its firmest ground in the Fire section, in which he  apprentices himself to some men who cook whole hog barbecue in North Carolina. Their art involves plenty of standing around, so Pollan picks up some good stories, and enough of their craft to roast a pig in his front yard fire pit, as a heroic and celebratory feast.

    The ‘Water’ section, on the other hand, is humble and contemplative. The subject is ‘pot food’, meat or poultry braised in liquid (including wine or stock). “More often than not, onions constitute the foundation of these dishes, usually in combination with a small handful of other aromatic but equally unprepossessing vegetables, including carrots, celery, peppers, or garlic.” This is where Pollan, having found that he can produce meals on a Sunday afternoon that he’ll be glad to see again as evening meals during the work week, proposes a counter-revolution to the middle aisles of the grocery store, where the Food Industrial Complex holds sway.

    Pollan goes into baking bread with the same hands-on spirit, becoming fascinated by the capturing of Air in rising dough. The search for the perfect crumb and crust leads him into apprenticeship with bakers, and into the study of enzymes, bacteria, and yeast; there’s a lot going on in the humble loaf of bread. “To compare a loaf of bread with a bowl of porridge is to realize how much of bread’s power, sensory as well as symbolic, resides precisely in those empty cells of spaces. Some 80 percent of a loaf of bread consists of nothing more than air. But air is not nothing.”

    And so to Earth, and further into the microbial world of beer, cheese, and sauerkraut. The small miracle of fermentation is that when we first feed the micro-organisms, they become capable of feeding us. (There are moments in the process that I think I’d rather read about than see, or smell, but Pollan is always ready to go there.) “Fermentation, like all the other transformations we call cooking, is a way of inflecting nature, of bringing forth from it, above and beyond our sustenance, some precious increment of meaning.”

    As he reminds us over and over, it’s the meaning of the table, where nature meets civilization, where we sustain ourselves with both food and fellowship. The ‘slow food’ movement does not need to be the province only of restaurants; we can have it right at home. Pollan says, “Eating and drinking especially implicate us in the natural world in ways that the industrial economy, with its long and illegible supply chains, would have us forget.” Brewing beer and baking bread help us remember what the world, and we, are really made of. Reading ‘Cooked’ will make you want to do more of it.


Any Good Books
January 2014

God’s Hotel

God’s Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine
Victoria Sweet (2012, Riverhead Books)

    When Victoria Sweet was hired at San Francisco’s Laguna Honda Hospital, she planned to stay two months; she wound up working there for twenty years. God’s Hotel is, in part, the story of how she changed, as her understanding of the practice of medicine deepened and ripened. She also made time to study the history of medicine, as it was practiced by medieval monastics who ran hospices and infirmaries; she wrote a PhD thesis on Hildegard of Bingen, and walked an ancient pilgrim road.

    Laguna Honda was the right home for Sweet because it was possible there for her to be a scholar at the same time she was a doctor, with periods of half-time work and leaves of absence. In this, she replicated some of the pre-modern medicine she was studying, from the time when “medicine had not been a full-time profession but a craft, transmitted through families and learned as an apprentice. Most practitioners, therefore, were not only doctors, but doctors and something else.” That something else might be a scholar, like Sweet, or perhaps an herbalist, a farmer, or a barber. “For the patient, it meant that doctors had more than one point of reference; for the doctor, he or she had time to think about other things in other ways.”

    Sweet’s study of pre-modern medicine was particularly fitting because Laguna Hospital was one of the last places in the US delivering medical care on the ancient model of the monastic almshouse, from which European hospitals developed in the Middle Ages. Combining infirmary, hospice, and shelter, the almshouse served as God’s Hotel, the place of last resort for people who were sick or dying, and poor. Nowadays that includes homeless people, drug addicts, and the former inhabitants of mental institutions. San Francisco had, and has, plenty of such people: even though Laguna Honda operated at a capacity of 1178 patients, there was always a waiting list.

    That was partly, of course, because there wasn’t a particularly speedy turnover of patients. People with dementia, AIDS, cancer, or liver disease could stay until they either got better or died, which might take a long time. Sweet appreciated the chance to practice Slow Medicine, learning to get out of the way of the patients’ own healing processes. Sometimes she is diagnosing, and figuring out an intervention she can make with modern tools; other times, she is reducing medications, or doing her own lab work, or simply sitting with a patient, listening to the silence for a course of action, or non-action, as Hildegard might have done.

    These are mostly hopeful stories, but they are happening in the context of the slow-motion death of the almshouse, which has no place in the imagination of the modern health-care system. With its extravagant use of space, its greenhouse and farmyard from the days when work was part of the patients’ therapy, and its open wards, Laguna Honda was a relic of a by-gone era. Standards have changed, for good and ill.

    Toward the end of the book, these changing standards are physically realized in the erection of a shiny new building right next door, but the old, slow ways have been under siege for a while, at the hands of consultants, city politicians, and medical administrators. The dissolution of Laguna Honda sheds light on how it had worked for so long. Though Sweet treads fairly lightly on the personalities of those who dismantled it, ‘ham-handed’ is not too strong a word.

    The consultants, for example, had a hard time with the sight of head nurses keeping watch over their wards, not apparently doing anything. It looked inefficient, but they were missing the long view. “After the head nurses were cut in half, there were more illnesses and sick days among the staff; there were more injuries, more disabilities, and earlier retirements. Among the patients, there were more falls, more bedsores, more fights, and more tears. And this, in the broader scheme of things–even of economics–is not efficient.”

    Though bean-counting high-tech medicine may seem to have won, God’s Hotel is evidence that these things are cyclical. In addition to a masterful work of medical history and civic anthropology, Sweet has written a manifesto for a return to human-centered medicine, based on a relationship of care as well as knowledge.

    May the day come soon!


Email,
1 January 2014

Following Ezra

Following Ezra: What One Father Learned About Gumby, Otters, Autism, and Love from His Extraordinary Son
Tom Fields-Meyer (2011, New American Library)

    Tom Fields-Meyer is a professional writer whose best story landed in his lap. He has written a wonderful memoir about the childhood of his middle son, Ezra, who is autistic. Beginning in 1998, when Ezra was two, Fields-Meyer and his wife, Shawn, have faced the challenge of raising a child who turned away from the social world in favor of various coping mechanisms, enthusiasms, and compulsive habits. Both as a journalist and as a loving father, Fields-Meyer pays close attention to what Ezra does and says; the day-to-day details are more telling than an abstract psychological or neurological theory would be.

    Having had a mostly secure and successful life, Fields-Meyer is inclined to trust the powers of research and expertise, even in such a theoretically natural realm as parenting. For Amiel, the family’s oldest boy, the books had answers that made pretty good sense; but, Field-Meyer realizes, “Ezra has a different kind of mind.... The wisdom we have drawn on to raise our first child so far isn’t going to be effective with this one. All bets are off. We’re on our own.”

    One of the unexpected things about Ezra is the pattern of his fears. He loves swings and merry-go-rounds, and he likes to climb in places that an ordinary child would quail from. At the same time, he finds noisy circumstances very stressful; he is alarmed by the motor of a water fountain; and he refuses to enter his pre-school classroom for the first week because he’s afraid of a drawing on the wall.

    He gains control of himself through extremes of organization. One of the first quirks his parents noticed was his drive to line up toy animals in precise patterns. The same drive extended his habit, a little later, of visiting animals at the zoo in a prescribed order, and later still, to learning everything there is to know about breeds of dogs. This last has the advantage of being something that he can converse about with dog owners, who recognize their shared enthusiasm along with his peculiarities.

    Ezra also makes an extensive mental catalog of various animated characters, starting with Thomas the Tank Engine, and the Sesame Street characters, moving on to the Simpsons and the complete catalogs of Disney and Warner Brothers. Fields-Meyer says, “Each obsession arrives mysteriously and unannounced, like a phantom that sneaks into our home in the night and seizes my son, snatching his focus. Nor can I ever imagine what might catch his attention next.”

    But whatever it is, he will try to use it to engage Ezra, to grab moments of attention and conversation, and to provide him with moments of restful order, some relief from the jangle of his senses. “Over time, though, I come to realize a reward: Ezra understands that another human cares about what he cares about.” With such connection comes a way for his parents to reach Ezra, to guide him, and help him learn to control himself.

    All this goes on in the context of a vibrant family life. Shawn is a rabbi, and Ezra’s brothers Ami and Noam have their own rounds of karate and violin lessons, Hebrew school, and visits with cousins. What do his brothers make of Ezra? They have never not  known him; they know he’s different, and they know he’s their brother. This is not saintliness, but it is compassion and fellow-feeling.

    A small spoiler: Following Ezra ends with his Bar Mitzvah, which is a signal triumph, celebrated by the village of family, friends, and teachers that has helped raise this special young man. It’s a fitting wrap-up to this lovely book, a worthy entrant in the growing literature of autism parenting stories. Beginning by discarding all expectations, and all hope of ready-made answers, Fields-Meyer has found a path for fatherhood in his son’s footsteps. “It wasn’t about finding the right expert for my child; it was about learning to be the right parent.”

Email edition,
December 2013

Religion for Atheists

Religion for Atheists: a Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion
Alain de Botton (2012, Pantheon)

    Of late, there are plenty of famous books about what may be toxic, or false, about religion. In Religion for Atheists, the philosopher Alain de Botton offers a gentle rejoinder, still from an atheist’s perspective: perhaps there is a baby in with all that bathwater. The book is a beautiful and elaborate thought experiment about the way our social institutions might be reshaped to meet the needs our churches used to meet. People living in a rational, non-theistic society still need ways to live in community, to search out and transmit moral ideas, and to assuage the fears and worries that come with living on earth.


    De Botton’s examples of religion are chosen from Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism - if you care about the differences, you’ll have to fill in those blanks yourself. It’s good to take that step back, though, because it’s the big picture that matters. He’s talking about the qualities a Catholic Mass, a Jewish seder, and a Buddhist tea ceremony have in common. Their ritualized character has a protective effect: “In essence, religions understand that to belong to a community is both very desirable and not very easy.” 
   
    In communities, we injure and abuse each other in ways large and small. There is, as yet, no secular equivalent to the Jewish Day of Atonement, though de Botton thinks it might be a good thing if there were. It’s not that he believes the religious laws about how to treat each other arise from anything more than human nature and experience. Ascribing them to divine sources, and forgetting we did so, is just what people are apt to do. “But if we can now own up to spiritualizing our ethical laws,” de Botton says, “we have no cause to do away with the laws themselves. We continue to need exhortations to be sympathetic and just, even if we do not believe that there is a God who has a hand in wishing to make us so.”

    Those exhortations could conceivably come from existing cultural stores. We could make inspirational saints of our literary and political heroes, mentally engaging with their examples of courage and selflessness. We could read Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary for instruction in the mysteries of marriage–though, as de Botton admits, the educational system we currently have is very poorly configured for that kind of instruction, being so determinedly value-free. “We have implicitly charged our higher-education system with a dual and possibly contradictory mission: to teach us how to make a living and to teach us how to live. And we have left the second of these two aims recklessly vague and unattended.”



    Architecture comes in for similar contemplation: what could we supply ourselves with that could supply the sense of perspective found in a great cathedral?  “Being put in our place by something larger, older, greater than ourselves is not a humiliation; it should be accepted as a relief from our insanely hopeful ambitions for our lives.” If we had the right point of view, seeing the ocean or the stars could have that effect for us; we should be looking for, or creating, rituals and sacred spaces through which to have that experience.

    As for art, imagine a museum that put Mary Cassatt’s paintings of mothers and children side by side with the great visions of the Madonna and Child, to give us a sensual experience that connects to our longing for nurture and comfort. Atheists, de Botton says, are sometimes inclined to deride that longing as irrational and childish, when in fact it’s profoundly human. “That there is no sympathetic mother or caring father out there who can make everything all right for us is no reason to deny how strongly we wish that there could be.”

    Some of the prescriptions in Religion for Atheists seem as though they might be possible, while others can scarcely be imagined, like the travel agent who would prescribe the right destinations for our spiritual ills. Very few secular organizations have attained the longevity or cultural sway of our major religious institutions, and the book does a good job of explaining why that is. It’s also very beautifully written, and handsomely produced. You wouldn’t have to be an atheist to enjoy it.



November 2013

Among the Janeites

Among the Janeites: A Journey through the World of Jane Austen Fandom
Deborah Yaffe (2013, Mariner Books)

   The idea that lovers of Jane Austen were a breed apart was already current in the late nineteenth century, when literary critic George Saintsbury coined the term ‘Janeites’. There were already people who read all six novels every year, and gossiped about the characters as though they were real people; and they were already thought a little odd. But this was a phenomenon mainly among the compulsively literate.

    Now, in the internet age, we have a whole range of other ways to love Austen. The conversation has spread to internet discussion groups and fan pages (the Jane Austen Facebook page has 800,000 fans); her novels have been adapted for movies and television; and the bookstores are full of mugs and t-shirts bearing pithy Austen quotes. Deborah Yaffe’s Among the Janeites takes in the full spectrum of Austen’s presence in “the solemn pantheon of classic English literature and the exuberantly commercial realm of pop culture.”

    Austen fanatics, especially the bookish ones, can be marvelously eccentric. Some have elaborate psychological theories: Is Mr. Darcy’s distaste for small talk a symptom of an autism-spectrum disorder? (Never mind that he is fictional, or that autism wouldn’t be named for a century after his appearance.) Did Austen’s mother have a borderline personality, and do the novels’ cast of matronly characters reflect it? More than a few people think so. There’s a fellow in Florida who has even darker notions of the intentions behind it all; he’s been kicked off many of the internet chat boards for contentiousness.

    Austen serves for some people as a focus for travel. The Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) offers tours on which the travelers visit Jane's portable writing desk at the British Museum, and go to Lyme to see the stairs that the foolish Louise Musgrove falls from, in Persuasion. At Chawton, where Austen lived in her last days, the gift shop “seems to crystallize the tensions implicit in the whole project of our tour, which at times seems like a wrestling match between the real Austen and her fabricated everything-for-sale brand.”

    Inspired by visions of Gwyneth Paltrow, others like the fancy-dress aspect: JASNA’s annual meeting features a costumed ball, for which Yaffe commissions a dress, and orders a corset (but who knows how to fasten her into it?) This is more or less the literary equivalent of Civil War reenacting, with a similar competitive urge to be more-authentic-than-thou, though the whole enterprise is delightfully fake. You can’t really light a hotel function room with candlelight nowadays.

    Many of the fancy-dress crowd came to the books by way of filmed adaptations, especially the 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries in which Colin Firth goes for a dip in a pond, emerging with a dripping wet shirt – a scene, of course, that was never envisaged by Jane Austen. It was conjured by a screenwriter who felt the need to give the whole thing a bit of sizzle for the modern audience. This was a wildly successful scheme, if the “mugs, coasters, key chains, fridge magnets and notepads” bearing his alluring face are any indication.

    It’s not only filmmakers who feel the urge to revise and extend Austen’s remarks; there’s a sizable cottage industry in fan fiction, published on websites and e-books. Yaffe duly read dozens of these works. “The writing varied from excellent to execrable, the pacing and plotting were frequently amateurish, the temptation to substitute melodrama (war! murder! international drug smuggling!) for Austen’s psychological nuance seemed ever-present, but the exuberant silliness was irresistible.” (My experience: The P.D. James mystery, Death Comes to Pemberley, is disappointing; Shannon Hale’s Austenland is terrible.)*

    I’m not doing justice to the many pleasurable details of Yaffe’s journalistic adventure, but you can trust her conclusion: “Beyond our passion for Austen, what most obviously unites our disparate group is something we have in common with the members of every subculture–of every culture, really: the desire to share with other human beings the things that bring us joy.”

Email edition October 2013