Rhythm and Books

Ruth Reichl

It's a testament to Greenwood's growing reputation as a culinary destination that to the list of great food innovators who have visited in the past couple of years, including such luminaries as Alice Waters and Thomas Keller, we'll be adding Ruth Reichl.  She comes to town next Wednesday, June 3, to visit Viking Range, and during her visit, we're pleased to say she'll be signing copies of her new book, Not Becoming My Mother, and speaking at Turnrow.  (Her reputation as a great speaker, as well as food writer, precedes her.)

An enduring figure in the food world, Reichl began as a chef in Berkley during the 1970s, the epicenter of the culinary revolution.  She went on to become a prominent food critic for the Los Angeles Times and later the New York Times, where she bucked the system by giving great dives and obscure ethnic restaurants serious coverage alongside uppity traditional gourmet palaces.  Her popularity extended to several best-selling memoirs — Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me with Apples, and Garlic and Sapphires.

Her influence has only grown with her publishing success.  She currently serves as editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine, and just this month captured two James Beard Awards, one for magazine feature writing and one for multimedia food journalism, to add to her four previous honors.

And while food figures prominently in the opening scene from her new book, Reichl's Not Becoming My Mother focuses on her family and ancestry, especially the women.  A popular and uproarious character from previous memoirs, Reichl's mother takes center stage here and is depicted in more somber tones.  "(M)y mother was a great example of everything I didn't want to be, and to this day I wake up every morning grateful that I'm not her," she writes, which, in context, is not as cruel as it sounds. 

Their relationship was so much more complicated, as any mother's and daughter's can be.  In this brief and lovely meditation, Reichl shows how her mother, separated from her dream life by social mores and the lofty expectations of her own family, became someone a daughter would not wish to mimic.  It was a kind of selfless sacrifice and sad inheritance, a host of generational hang-ups and mistakes that parents so often pass onto their kids.

What's especially potent, aside from the fine writing and observation, is how Reichl puts the story together.  Having long put off analyzing her mother's effects, gathering dust in the attic, she describes how she came to finally uncovering the pieces of her life story,collected in a box of notes and confessional scraps that revealed a side of her mother she never knew.  Her revitalized estimation of her mother, far from being a screed against a terrible family life, is instead a wise and touching tribute. 

Join us if you can for the reading on Wednesday at 5 p.m. or reserve a signed copy here.

A Break from the Trail

Late last week our friend Robert Olmstead dropped in to pay us a visit.  He teaches at Ohio Wesleyan University, so he doesn't make it by too often, but luckily he was touring around the Southeast with the release of his new novel, Far Bright Star.  The novel is the second in what is shaping up to be a loosely connected trilogy, beginning with one of our recent favorites, Coal Black Horse.

We're reading Far Bright Star now and find it to be raw and bleak, wound tight with desert poetry and powerful violence.  The novel is populated by dark, beautiful, difficult horses, and hard riders with jeans stained black from the blood of saddle sores.  Like its predecessor, the book is full of such vivid and unforgettable imagery.

Napoleon Childs — who, with his brother, readers may recognize from the end of Coal Black Horse — leads a cavalry through Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa.  Broken down by hard chase, the men are ambushed in the rough country and left for dead.  Their plight grows only darker from there, as Olmstead, like his masterful depiction of the scenes at Gettysburg from Coal Black Horse, takes the reader into the deeply felt horrors of battle, though mercifully for only 200 pages.  "Hard to read and hard to put down," as one recent review told it.

In real-life, Olmstead is not nearly so grim — and be sure that his fiction, while heavy, yields generous pleasures — but is instead a quiet and friendly soul who seems very much at peace in the world.  He is a pussycat, in fact.  Just look at him in the above picture, cuddling a babe, Turnrow's own adorable mascot Ruby.

Unlike some, Olmstead was not dreading his rather long and winding tour but enjoyed meeting old friends and new fans, the folks who are reading his books.  His upbeat attitude about books and readers in a fast-paced and distracting world was welcome on a bustling day.  Happy trails.... 

Lowboy

John Wray's new novel Lowboy (FSG) has the Turnrow staff and customers abuzz.  The book was brought to our attention by none other than Billie Ainsworth, a discriminating reader who doesn't often go in for this sort of novel — meaning one that is set largely in the New York subway system, following a schizophrenic teenager on his demented quest to lose his virginity and thus save the world from global warming.  Nevertheless, she was somehow intrigued and wanted to know, after she'd read a glowing review, why we didn't have a copy.  (She didn't know about Lowboy's quest to lose his virginity.  "They didn't mention all that," she said warily.)

We'd had a copy.  But our backroom receiver spied the book and took it home before it even hit the selling floor.  So we ordered more, being fans of John Wray from his last book, Canaan's Tongue, which is just as brilliant and as far afield from Lowboy as you can get.  Canaan's Tongue is about a nasty gang of river thieves who kidnap and resell stolen slaves, set in the 1860s and based on a real-life character Wray read about in Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi.  The novel, in fact, reads like an exhilarating blend of Twain and Cormac McCarthy, a tremendous work which remains grossly underrated.

From that historical gothic, Wray moves easily to a frenetic and stylized modern thriller about a teenager, Lowboy, who has escaped from the hospital where he was being treated for schizophrenia.  After ditching his meds, Lowboy has retreated into the New York City subway and engages in several strange encounters with fellow travelers.  The depiction of the teenager's disjointed perspective, from naivete to paranoia to obsession, is maturely depicted and, like any good anti-hero, we find ourselves rooting for him, even though we know nothing good can come from his ramblings. 

The equally intriguing alternate storyline concerns a detective, specializing in missing person cases, who must find the teenager before he turns violent.  In order to find out what Lowboy wants and where he's going, he relies on the boy's mother, who is harboring her own secrets.  Their complex relationship, depicted with subtlety and patience, provides a nice balance to the manic passages of Lowboy's quest.

The barreling pace and clever suspense had us gulping up the book in just a few sittings, and we've all been impressed by the writer's fearlessness.  He has a fresh way of luring us into his stories and characters.  Here is a young, raw and vital talent we'll be happy to read for many books to come.  If you'd like to learn more about John Wray, read this interesting New York magazine feature.

On a side note, we met John several years ago when he came to Mississippi to promote Canaan's Tongue.  He and some buddies had built a pontoon raft, which they launched from Helena, Arkansas, and sailed down to New Orleans.  It was a clever publicity stunt, and an even more clever way to get the publisher to pay for a rafting expedition.  His playful spirit continues with the promotion of Lowboy.  Since he won't likely be back down to Mississippi for this book, check out this reading he gave on the New York subway:    

Go here to see parts 2-4.

Sam Was Here

Star maker Sam Haskell signed and read from his new memoir, Promises I Made My Mother, last night at Turnrow, and he was greeted like a favorite son returning home.  Lots of friends and fans turned out to buy books and pay homage to a man who has done much to raise money to help kids attend college in Mississippi, and whose legacy in television is long and accomplished.  As head of the worldwide television division and the William Morris talent agency, Haskell represented such stars as Bill Cosby, Ray Romano, Dolly Parton, Whoopi Goldberg and tons more.

In his first book, Haskell relates stories from his upbringing in Amory, Mississippi, using lessons learned from his mother and his own tenacity to demonstrate how even a small, hopeful kid from Mississippi can climb his way to the top.  His remarks, fueled by his earnestness and gift for inspiring, turned the crowd to butter, bringing some to tears and all to recalling their mamas.  "I wish she could know how many people's live were being touched by her values," he said, describing the 50+ cities he'd be visiting on his book tour. 

In addition to his spiritual message, Haskell also related some entertaining tales from his Hollywood days, including this one, excerpted from his book:

My experiences with three actresses at different times in my career demonstrates how my mother's advice — to give what others need in order to get what you need — works, no matter what the era.

I'd always fantasized about meeting the stars.  When I was ten, I shelved books at the Amory Public Library and took every opportunity to read each book, magazine, or newspaper I could find to learn about Hollywood....

Bette Davis, in particular, fascinated me.  Somehow, she didn't seem like a typical movie star.  She was more handsome than beautiful, and she seemed so grounded.  I just loved her. My fascination never faded, even as I grew older.  I was dying to meet her someday.

In the spring of 1982, after I'd been an agent for two years, I was responsible for covering every single talk show and variety show on television; if there was a spot into which I could book a William Morris client, it was my job to find it.  I got hundreds of William Morris clients on the air, and I was excited to go to the office every day.

I also worked with the producers and packagers we represented, to help them put together their network television projects.  Sir David Frost (and his partners) had come up with a two-hour special called The American Movie Awards.  We sold it to Brandon Tartikoff at NBC as an alternative to ABC's yearly Academy Awards telecast....

At the first production meeting Sir David announced that producer Hal Wallis would get the first American Movie Awards Lifetime Achievement Award.  Wallis had produced so many movies I can't list them all here.  But they included Anne of the Thousand Days, Barefoot in the Park, The Man Who Came to Dinner, The Maltese Falcon, and Casablanca.

Mr. Frost said he wanted Bette Davis to present the award.  She and Wallis had done several movies together, including Jezebel, for which Miss Davis had won her second Best Actress Oscar, in 1938.

"Who knows Bette Davis?" he asked, explaining that someone had to call and ask if she's appear.

The room, full of producers, writers, and network executives, remained silent.

"All right, does anyone know Marion Rosenberg, Bette Davis' agent?"

I didn't know Marion, but I raised my hand and said, "I'll call her."  Mr. Frost said, "Thank you, Sam, but Marion will probably make you call Bette yourself.  She's ... tough.  Do you think you're up for the job?"

I'd barely replied, "Yes sir," when the older men in the room started telling me horror stories about Bette Davis, suggesting that I should reconsider having volunteered.  I didn't care what they thought of her, I was determined to talk to Bette Davis.

Sir David told me to call the next morning and then report back to him.

At 9 a.m. sharp I called Marion Rosenberg.  As predicted, she told me I'd have to call Miss Davis directly.  She warned me that there would be many questions and that the way I answered those questions would determine the outcome.

When I got through to Miss Davis's assistant, Kathryn Sermak, she put me on hold.  It seemed like I waited a half hour, but it was probably only five minutes.  While on hold, I prayed that God would help me find the right words.  My prayer was interrupted by a voice I knew all too well.  "Mr. Haskell, this is Bette Davis.... What exactly would you have me do, and how does this involve Mr. Hal Wallis?"

I explained — it probably sounded like a rehearsed speech, but it came straight from my heart — why we were honoring Hal Wallis, and why she was the best=qualified person ti give him the Lifetime Achievement Award.

"What exactly are The American Movie Awards?" she asked.

I explained the idea behind Sir David's show.

She laughed and said, "David will have his hands full with the Academy over this one!"  That led into a fifteen-minute discussion about who I was, my age, where my accent came from, how long I had been an agent, etc.  I must have answered all of the questions correctly, because Miss Davis agreed to do the show.

I thanked her.  No, I gushed; I admit it.  I was about to hang up when she said, "Mr. Haskell, there is one condition.  I want you standing on the red carpet when I arrive, you'll walk me into the theater, and stay in the Green Room with me until it's time for me to present Mr. Wallis his award."

She didn't have to ask me twice.  To get what she said she wanted — "the company of this funny young agent with the heavy Southern accent, who was both earnest and eager" (I guess I was somehow different from other people who had made business calls to her) — she ultimately gave me what I wanted as well: her presence at the awards ceremony.

Naturally, David Frost was overjoyed, and he told everyone at NBC and William Morris how "the kid called Bette Davis and convinced her to be on the show."....

It was a great moment for me.  I'd proven myself to my clients, and somehow made Ms. Davis happy to help me.

A month later I got an invitation to Bette Davis's seventy-fourth birthday party.

The party started at 7 p.m. at Miss Davis's penthouse apartment on Havenhurst Drive in Hollywood.  I arrived at 6:45, and I drove around the block until 6:55.  Then I parked, rode the elevator up, and rang the doorbell.  Miss Davis answered the door herself.  "Well, Mr. Haskell," she said, "how perfectly prompt you are."

She asked me in, and then turned to her assistant Kathryn and said, "That will be ten dollars!" Playing off my quizzical look, she explained, "I bet Kathryn ten dollars that YOU would be the first to arrive."

Miss Davis took me on a tour of her beautifully appointed apartment.  Everyone else arrived "fashionably late," which meant that I had the hostess all to myself for half an hour.  In her living room, Miss Davis showed me a portrait of herself that hung over the mantel.  It had been fashioned after her character Margo Channing in the Academy Award-winning film, All About Eve.  "Now that's the way I want to be remembered," she said.

She also showed me both of her Oscars, displayed prominently in her den, and we discussed her disappointment at not being cast to play Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind.  I couldn't believe she was telling these things to me.  It was incredible.

When Mary and I married the following December, Miss Davis sent us a congratulatory note, and I realized yet again how wrong my father and others had been to think I had thrown my life away by coming to Hollywood.  I was so happy — both to be making good impressions and to be befriending the Hollywood stars of my childhood fantasies.

Sam Haskell signed extra copies of Promises I Made My Mother, which can be ordered here.

To Eat is Enough

As promised last week, the foodie division at Turnrow has returned with their report on the sights, sounds and glorious consumptions of their weekend romp through New York City for the James Beard Awards, the annual gourmet gala that has been described as the Oscars of the food world.  We knew the weekend had gone to their heads when we called to catch up with the division chief and found her scurrying around Manhattan in search of a shoesmith to mend the broken heel of a borrowed pair of "$500 Sonia Rykiels" to complete her Oscar-worthy ensemble.

The Beard Awards were critical this year, as three of our friends from home were in the running for honors.  (Not to mention Mississippi gal Cat Cora, co-hosting the ceremony with Stanley Tucci and Emeril Lagasse.)  Among them was John T. Edge, a food writer from Oxford who specializes in gastro-sociology, was being inducted to the James Beard Foundation's Who's Who of Food and Beverage in America, an honor shared by only 200 other food luminaries, including Alice Waters and Martha Stewart.  Edge also founded the Southern Foodways Alliance, who earlier in the day held their annual Southern Mafia Brunch, graciously hosted by Ann Cashion, the popular D.C. chef and owner of the famous Cashion's Eat Place and Johnny's Half Shell. 

The Mafia get-together was held at Butter (pictured left), among the hippest of New York eateries. Executive Chef Alexandra Guarnaschelli, known by many for her appearances as a judge on Food Network's Chopped and Iron Chef, served up such fine cuisine that the crew called home mid-meal to gush.  Seared Hudson Valley foie gras on blood orange segments.  Roasted Brussels Sprout ravioli.  Calamari and brown butter.  It was a brunch surely to be seared in their memories, along with table-hopping and hob-knobbing with such fine Southern food personalities as famed Chapel Hill chef Bill Smith, coming soon to Greenwood; Matt and Ted Lee, returning to Turnrow in November with a new book; and Sam and Mary Celeste Beall of Blackberry Farms.

That evening the Greenwood team, looking their best and ready to root for the home team, arrived at Lincoln Center for the awards gala.  First up was John Currence, chef at the very fine City Grocery in Oxford.  He'd been nominated for Best Chef in the South several times, and we feared he was destined to be the Beards' Susan Lucci, but he captured the prize this year on the heels of opening another great restaurant in Oxford, the Snack Bar.  Surely John could not have mistaken the hooping and hollering from the rear of the auditorium as the Mississippi contingent.

Next, our friend, local chef Martha Foose and her debut Screen Doors and Sweet Tea, claimed the prize for Best American Cookbook.  The Greenwood team was positively ebullient, and their ruckus reportedly startled last year's Best Chef of New York winner, Wiley Dufresne several rows ahead, looking aghast as if one of his molecular gastronomic creations had defied the plate and come to life.

Needless to say, the team was in high spirits, only to be lifted by the post-Gala reception, a smorgasbord of star chef sightings and lovely  food.  They chatted up the best, including Mario Batali, unmistakable in his tux and orange Crocs, swapping stories about mutual friend Jim Harrison, one of Turnrow's all-time favorite authors and a fan of Mississippi.  Mario made a handshake deal to plan a trip our way. John Besh, coming soon with a new cookbook, was his usual charming self, having just finished production on Bravo's upcoming new series Top Chef Masters. Jose Andres, head chef of Mini Bar, was a burst of energy and creativity, just as his food reflects.  Intrigued by stories from the Delta, he would end up on the dance floor tangoing with our Martha before the night was through.  And finally, they were pleased to catch up with the West Coast dynamo Thomas Keller, who remembered and adored them all from his excursion to Greenwood last year.

The Greenwood crew wisely afforded themselves some extra time in New York to further sample the city's fare.  It was at lunch the next day, enjoying a salad of warm potato and black olive topped with goat cheese gatine and hoping for a glimpse of Anthony Bourdain at his bistro Les Halles, that our chief truly considered the passion and talent that had made each of their dining experiences possible. The  honorees and attending chefs were not just celebrities, nor were they one of a kind, but they were a sampling of the many fine chefs across the country who have such great energy, creativity and tenacity.  They feed us well, the lucky few who are able to enjoy their creations.

And then there's the setting for all of this passion, that wonderful city, where any restaurant you stop into could offer one of the best meals of your life.  On their way to the airport, the crew stopped in for one last meal at Bar Masa. It's a testament to New York that even a meal on the fly would be so incredible; some of the best sushi they've had in years, in an impeccable atmosphere. Ah, New York.

At the airport, the chief received a text message from a team member, informing her that Ja Rule was on the flight.  Believing she was referring to their friend Jane Rule Burdine, the chief hustled to the gate, only to find it was the rapper Ja Rule, who insisted the girls all take photos with him.  Once boarded, the chief was comforted to find herself sitting next to one of Greenwood's own top chefs, Chef Taylor Bowen Ricketts of Delta Bistro, who would ensure that we not be starved for fine cuisine in the Delta.

Special thanks to Carol Puckett and the folks at Viking Range for letting us tag along.  And congrats to our friends who won their respective and distinguished honors.

Waveland

We accidentally booked a reading by Frederick Barthelme  during Greenwood's downtown arts walk, Art Alfresco.  Even though the Hattiesburg writer spent many years as a conceptual artist in New York City, the event seemed like an ill fit. 

On the night of the event, art lovers, alongside the merely curious, filtered through the bookstore in large numbers, viewing the photographs of local photographer Mary Rose Carter while sampling free hors d'oeuvres.  Children scuttled around the store like billiard balls, and the socializing was noisy.  Who would sit and listen to a reading amid such chaotic art?  It suited Barthelme fine, who much preferred intimate conversation to reading or speaking in front of a crowd, much less an unwilling one.

Barthelme has been living and writing in Mississippi for 30 years, yet he's rarely mentioned among the state's most popular contemporary writers, some of whom no longer live in state.  He seems to prefer the anonymity.  Nevertheless, his work deserves a closer look by Mississippi readers, who are so proud of their native storytellers.  You won't find the hallmark themes and aesthetics of typical Mississippi and Southern literature in his fiction, but in many ways he's doing for the Gulf Coast suburbs what Larry Brown did for the rural hills — simple, unadorned, observational stories of average people, somehow content to be down and out.

There's little that distinguishes Barthelme's fiction as particularly regional.  Among the handful of folks who bought copies of his new novel, Waveland, they nearly all were or knew someone from Waveland, Mississippi, the coastal town that was virtually wiped clean by Hurricane Katrina.  The author was careful to explain that Waveland, in his novel, is more a state of mind. 

Some nice coastal imagery and a general sense of obliteration aside, Barthelme is mostly concerned with emotional terrain, and what makes this novel so addictive is that he doesn't write about Waveland with ponderous metaphors and contemplation, but with his famously sleek prose that has, over the course of his career, received high accolades. (Margaret Atwood noted his "hard, shiny, man-faceted insect's eye for the surface of things ... second only to Raymond Chandler," and Brett Easton Ellis called him "one of the most distinctive prose stylists since Hemingway.") Those who are "sick of Katrina" will be relieved to know there's barely mention of the storm at all.

If a plot must be described, then Waveland is about Vaughn Williams, a middle-aged, non-practicing architect, recently divorced and now living with his landlord, Greta.  Together they hang out and watch TV with Greta's other tenant, a one-handed, possibly gay Gulf War vet.  Vaughn's ex-wife, Gail, begins to reassert herself into his life, and after her twentysomething boyfriend beats her up, she invites Vaughn and Greta to move in with her. 

If it sounds like a sitcom, Waveland can be enjoyed on that level, like a show you watch habitually for the character interactions and skewed world view.  But Barthelme's fiction is not about plot.  The real substance is in the cracks — the asides, the conversational subtext, the epiphanies that carry his protagonist from one slow-burning conflict to the next.  It could all be mistaken as maudlin and mundane were it not for the deft tone he strikes and the begrudging concern we feel for his characters. 

Barthelme teaches creative writing at the University of Southern Mississippi, where he also edits the esteemed Mississippi Review.  For a better idea about his fiction, go to the website and read his Primer on Story Writing (surely some of the most useful and liberating writing advice we've ever read), which suggests that writers "mean less" and "don't ... make too much sense."  The author approaches his craft from this vantage and, like so much modern and conceptual art, readers may be fooled by the simplistic style.  Think smart beach reading that doesn't beat you over the head.

We have signed copies of Waveland at our online store.

Mississippi Sweep

Turnrow's foodie division reports back from the James Beard Awards ("the Oscars of the food world") in New York City:  Greenwood's own Martha Foose has won the book award for American Cooking.  Our love of her book Screen Doors and Sweet Tea (of which we have signed copies) has been documented numerous times on the blog and is apparently shared by the wider food world.  Congratulations, Martha ... we're stuffed with pride.

As if Martha's victory weren't enough to celebrate, the foodie division reports two other Turnrow friends who have been recognized.  John Currence, chef at City Grocery in Oxford, has captured the award for Best Chef in the South, and writer John T. Edge, also of Oxford, has been inducted into the James Beard Foundation's Who's Who of Food & Beverage in America.  A big night for the Mississippi team ... and the Turnrow foodie division, who will post a full report here soon.  Thanks to their outstanding reporting, as we've seen nothing at the James Beard Awards blog that attests to Mississippi's dominance at this year's awards.