Tag Archives: Essays

Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain

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Synopsis:
Essays from the chef, commentator, and food chronicler who wrote Kitchen Confidential.

Review:
I picked up Medium Raw through a sale on Audible, drawn in by the chance to hear Anthony Bourdain read his own book. I really really like the sound of his voice, except for the way he pronounces “restaurant” to rhyme with “runt.” (Or another word he’s really fond of that I won’t type here.) I enjoyed but didn’t love it. I was promised way more Top Chef trivia than I got here. I do love the way he describes food and appreciate that he’s got lots of opinions, but sometimes I felt like I was missing some of the references. The best essay was the one about the guy who butchers the fish at Le Bernardin and how he finally got to eat a meal there. He was on an episode of Top Chef so it was great to learn more of his backstory.

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What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell

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Synopsis:
A collection of essays written by Gladwell and published in the New Yorker.

Review:
Bite-sized is how I like Malcolm Gladwell, and What the Dog Saw contains some of Gladwell’s most memorable essays. His profile of Ron Popeil, creator of the Showtime Rotisserie, stands as one of the finest pieces of writing I’ve ever encountered, and this past spring I assigned it to my writing students, who were suitably enthralled. Gladwell gives you the greatness behind the showman veneer, as well as some of the pathos inherent in selling things on TV.

Another essay that gets me every time is the ketchup piece. Gladwell attempts to explain the conundrum whereby there are numerous kinds of mustard, but only one kind of ketchup, despite the efforts of Popeil-wannabes in creating artisanal blends. He connects ketchup’s potency to its near perfect blend of all five tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami, taking stops along the way to discuss the problems with supermarket cola and the history of Grey Poupon.

The third essay I love combines the profile prowess of the Ron Popeil piece with the historical exegesis of the ketchup piece, and that’s the one about hair color. The woman in the profile is a real-life version of Peggy from “Mad Men,” only with far more moxie and determination and self-awareness. I’m hoping the publication of this book will tip off Matthew Weiner to yet another awesome kind of woman he could include in his already awesome show.

Many thanks to the kind folks at Little, Brown and Hachette Book Group for the advance review copy.

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This is Water by David Foster Wallace

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Synopsis:
Subtitled “Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life.”

Review:
This is Water is the text of a speech that David Foster Wallace gave to Kenyon’s class of 2005 at their graduation. It’s a meditation on importance of finding meaning in life. I was prepared to be angered by this work, given Wallace’s ultimate suicide. I have a hard time believing that someone who ended his own life could teach me how to live mine to the fullest.

Surprisingly, Wallace’s speech really made me think. I loved his notion that everyone worships, even atheists, so it’s important to be conscious of the object of your worship. I also liked his reminder that we’re all essentially self-centered. I wish that Wallace had been able to conquer his demons the way the similarly-obsessed Walker Percy did. His is a great loss.

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Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris

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Synopsis:
A collection of previously published works by humorist David Sedaris on the topic of Christmas.

Review:
To the tune of “Frosty the Snowman”

Da-vid Se-daris
Was a writer oh-so-droll
With a quirky style and take on life
That will put you on the floor.

Da-vid Se-daris
Writes the weirdest stuff you’ll see
About the Christmas whore and the Macy’s elves
And deathly children’s pageantry.

There must have been some crazy
In the Sedaris family tree
‘Cause David ain’t the only one
Have you seen his sister Amy?

Oh! Da-vid Se-daris!
Can your stories all be true?
It matters not when you write as hot
As in Holidays on Ice!

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Come Along With Me by Shirley Jackson

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Synopsis:
Short stories, essays, and an unfinished novel by Shirley Jackson, queen of American Gothic and author of “The Lottery.”

Review:
My love for Shirley Jackson has been well documented in this blog, so I was delighted when my husband got me Come Along With Me for my birthday.

The collection opens with “Come Along With Me,” the novel that Jackson was working on when she died at the untimely age of 44. At about 33 pages, there isn’t much of a narrative, just a character study of an eccentric woman, drawn with Jackson’s signature idiosyncratic touch. It’s disappointing that she never completed the novel, because this fragment shows signs of being as complex and rich a work as the puzzling Hangsaman, my favorite of Jackson’s novels.

The stories that follow aren’t, in my opinion, as masterful as those found in The Lottery and Other Stories, but they’re still worth reading. My favorite was “The Bus,” where an elderly woman takes a bus ride into “Twilight Zone” territory. It’s terse and terrifying without being overstated.

Closing the collection are two lectures on writing and an essay on “The Lottery,” Jackson’s most famous short story, in which she discusses the spectrum of reactions to the story. The essays on writing are inspirational in a folksy sort of way, and offer great practical advice on story construction and harnessing the creative process. I will absolutely be rereading these.

Last Night in Paradise by Katie Roiphe

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Synopsis:
A look at sexual mores in the age of AIDS.

Review:
I like a good polemic as much as the next person, particularly when it involves people having lots of sex, mostly because I always feel like that’s nice work if you can get it. Last Night in Paradise isn’t hard-hitting investigative journalism as much as it’s an apologia for all the sex that Roiphe and her friends had in the 80s and 90s: “look, we may have slept around but we are always scared we got AIDS, so that doesn’t make us sleazy like swingers in the 1970s.” Roiphe herself calls this a kind of Puritanism, yet she succumbs to it in almost every chapter, talking about how she herself worries that she’s slept with too many people, or wondering whether or not she and her friends can handle the emotional ramifications of all that “safer sex.” She never quite seems to leave the Upper East Side private school world that she herself came from, and tends to see her experiences as representative of the general population. Her astonishment that anyone would voluntarily choose abstinence belies her inability to consider that there are other perspectives on sex than her own. Continue reading →

Through a Screen Darkly by Jeffrey Overstreet

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Synopsis:
A collection of essays on film by the movie critic for Christianity Today that decry the many of the knee-jerk reactions that some Christians have against popular culture and the arts. Continue reading →

Love’s Executioner by Irvin D. Yalom

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Synopsis:
10 tales of clinical psychoanalysis by a leading psychotherapist. Continue reading →

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Don’t Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff

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Synopsis:
A collection of essays by a frequent contributor to This American Life, Details, Esquire, and more. Continue reading →

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Fingers Crossed, Legs Uncrossed by Jen Limarzi

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Synopsis:
A collection of essays by a bemused New York woman whose life might not be “Sex and the City” glamorous–but whose observations are “Seinfeld” acute. Continue reading →

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