Book Review: Stanley Park

Stanley Park: A Novel by Timothy Taylor (Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2001. 432 pp)

Born in Venezuela, Timothy Taylor grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia. He attended the University of Alberta and Queen’s University. Taylor published his first novel, Stanley Park, in 2001. His two latest novels, Story House and The Blue Light Project were shortlisted for the CBC Bookie Prize. A winner of the Journey Prize, Taylor works as a contributing editor for Vancouver Magazine and has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers.

Cascadia

Although I am an American, I consider myself, equally (if not more so), a Cascadian. Culturally speaking, I feel a closer affinity to British Columbians than Americans residing on the Eastern Seaboard. Even if my national allegiance lies with a New Yorker, my culinary tradition, weather, and regional tongue align with a Vancouverite.

Given the regional connections between Seattle and Vancouver, I thoroughly enjoyed Timothy Taylor’s novel, Stanley Park.

Culinary Crips versus Bloods 

Set in Vancouver at the beginning of the new millennium, Stanley Park tells the story of Chef Jeremy Papier. Upon completing training in France, Jeremy returns to his native British Columbia, inspired to run a restaurant imparting simple and locally rooted dishes for the Vancouver public. Jeremy’s inspiration extends from his culinary training.

“Crips versus Bloods. Crip cooks were critical. They fused, they strove for innovation, they were post-national. They called themselves artists. They tended to stack things like mahi mahi and grilled eggplant in wobbly towers glued together with wasabi mayonnaise, and were frequently suspicious of butter. Vegetarianism was an option for Crips but not for Bloods. Blood cooks were respectful of tradition, nostalgic even. Canonical, interested in the veracity of things culinary, linked to ‘local’ by inheritance or adoption of a culture, linked to a particular manner and place of being. Blood cooks liked sweetbreads and pot-au-feu. Bloods ate tacos, bratwurst, borscht. They used lard and as much foie gras as they could get their hands on. They made cassoulet to the recipe left by Louis Cazals and, depending on where the Bloods called home, they might like kimchi, salmon planked on cedar, fish stew with sausage, or twice-cooked duck.
Chef Jeremy Papier was Blood” (32-33).

Partnering with a talented culinary artist named Jules and funded by local entrepreneur and childhood neighbor Dante Beal, Jeremy opens the Monkey’s Paw Bistro.

The Kite of Debt 

Despite critical acclaim, debt mounts as Jeremy strains to keep the restaurant afloat.

“People rarely set out to kite in a controlled way. More often financial kites soar out of sight with terrifying speed, the virtual string burning through your fingers. Jeremy could remember precisely how his own went aloft. It started with his line of credit at the Toronto Dominion Bank, $230,000 guaranteed by Dante Beale” (54).

Struggling to survive, Jeremy soon finds the reins of his restaurant in the hands of Dante, his financier. CEO of Inferno Coffee, an obvious allusion to Starbucks, Dante represents everything Jeremy hates—the Crip to his Blood.

When a Blood Becomes a Crip 

A perpetual profit maximizer, Dante shuts down The Monkey’s Paw and remodels the restaurant for a grand opening as Gerriamo’s, a post-national restaurant and product of extensive market research. Dante maintains the employment of Jeremy as executive chef but the arrangement leaves Jeremy bitter and his friend, Jules, unemployed.

As Gerriamo’s grand opening inches closer, Jeremy plans the best menu he has ever prepared.

Stanley Park: A Homeless Sanctuary 

Photo by Trey Ratcliff

In addition to this narrative thread resides a secondary story surrounding Jeremy and his father, a professor studying the homeless of Stanley Park. Living with the park inhabitants, Jeremy’s dad receives uninterrupted access to these peripatetic people.

While studying, the professor encounters the story of the Babes in the Wood, Stanley Park’s unsolved murder mystery from the early 50s when the skeletons of two young boys were found in the dense forest of the city park.

Requesting library research from Jeremy, the father and son draw close as Jeremy relays information about the case and becomes accustomed to the inhabitants and dining rituals of Stanley Park.

“Then he lay back in the ferns to let it all flow over him. Jeremy stood at the centre of his own diagram, the Professor thought. In the thick of his own woods. A joined drama. People turning against the wind, returning to Eden. Those seeking reconciliation with the stable rhythms of the earth, with their own beginnings. Here, in the park, where out of desperation, for lack of options, a living theatre of rootedness had been reborn from distant tragedy. In Jeremy’s kitchen, where a sense of lost connection played out in culinary theatrics about the return to a familiar soil” (194).

Global or Local? 

As the two narratives intertwine, questions of culture, rootedness, and place in a globalized society become apparent. Which aspects of life are we willing to submit to the tides of global commerce? Which ones will we fight tooth and nail for?

I find the topics of Stanley Park particularly current despite being a decade old. With society questioning food in the wake of Food, Inc. and The Omnivore's Dilemma, Stanley Park offers a fictional addition to this “food” canon.

Even though I struggled at times to discover the connections between the novel’s storylines, I enjoyed the local flavor of Stanley Park. A product of Cascadia, the culinary tradition of Vancouver resembles Seattle’s tradition. I enjoyed the themes present in Stanley Park and applaud Taylor’s writing. If you are interested in food or Vancouver, read this book.

Verdict: 4 out of 5

---

Posted by: Donovan Richards

Affiliate Links:

Powell's Indie Bound Amazon

Book Review: The Shipping News

The Shipping News: A Novel by Annie Proulx (New York: Scribner, 1993. 352 pp)

Born in Norwich, Connecticut, Annie Proulx earned her B.A. at the University of Vermont and her M.A. from Concordia University. While working as a journalist, Proulx published works of fiction in various magazines before publishing her first novel, Postcards, in 1992, winning her the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Of her many awards, she notably won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for The Shipping News and she adapted her short-story, Brokeback Mountain, into an award-winning feature film. She currently resides in Wyoming.

The Dinner Table 

There’s something pristine about a populated dinner table. The scent of freshly prepared food. The peace of a successful day finally completed. The joy of hearing about a family member’s day.

In many ways, a meal functions as the focal point of our social lives; we unite under the common need for sustenance. While reading The Shipping News by Annie Proulx, I couldn’t help but think that the dinner table unites the threads of this novel.

But before we explore the importance of food, let’s develop a plot. Set mostly in Killick-Claw, a small town on the wind-battered coast of Newfoundland. Our protagonist, Quoyle, contributes “the shipping news” to the local newspaper, The Gammy Bird. Escaping the drama and pain around the death of his scorned wife, Quoyle journeys with his daughters, Bunny and Sunshine, and his aunt to the eastern Canadian island of his ancestors in hopes of beginning life anew.

An Average Man 

By all definitions, Quoyle is an average man. In fact, Quoyle’s only positive contribution to society resides in his effect on others:

“The truth was Punch had noticed that Quoyle, who spoke little himself, inspired talkers. His only skill in the game of life. His attentive posture, his flattering nods urged waterfalls of opinion, reminiscence, recollection, theorizing, guesstimating, exposition, synopsis and explication, juiced the life stories out of strangers” (9).

Having found gainful employment in Killick-Claw at The Gammy Bird, Quoyle seeks to integrate his family into community life. His daughters befriend children their age; Quoyle creates relationships with his co-workers; and he becomes enamored with a single mother named Wavey Prose.

Abrupt Descriptions of Natural Beauty 

Photo by Thibault Roland

Aside from all these strange names, Proulx spends extensive page-space amplifying the natural and dangerous beauty of this Newfoundland town. With terse descriptive phrases escaped from verbs, Proulx’s writing style is distinct.

“These waters, thought Quoyle, haunted by lost ships, fishermen, explorers gurgled down into sea holes as black as a dog’s throat. Vikings down the cracking winds, steering through fog by the polarized light of sun-stones. The Inuit in skin boats, breathing, breathing, rhythmic suck of frigid air, iced paddles dipping, spray freezing, sleek back rising, jostle, the boat torn, spiraling down. Millennial bergs from the glaciers, morbid, silent except for waves breaking on their flanks, the deceiving sound of shoreline where there was no shore. Foghorns, smothered gun reports along the coast. Ice welding land to sea. Frost smoke. Clouds mottled by reflections of water holes in the plains of ice. The glare of ice erasing dimension, distance, subjecting senses to mirage and illusion. A rare place” (209).

Food Means Family

Having considered the plot, food truly unites this novel. Every chapter revolves around breakfast, lunch, or dinner. As characters interact and plot progresses, the events remain disproportionately glued to the dinner table and the rhythms of sustenance.

“A platter of fried herrings with bacon rashers and hashed potatoes. A quart jar of mustard. Beety back and forth, stepping over Warren the Second who wished to live forever beneath the tablecloth or with the boots but could not decide. Quoyle and Wavey were supper guests, full of kind laughter and praise for what they ate. Boiled cabbage. And blueberry tarts to finish, with cream. Double helpings from every dish for Quoyle. Although the cabbage would produce gas” (325).

In all honesty, I did not love The Shipping News. Despite intriguing characters and a beautiful setting, I found the plot rather boring and Proulx’s terse writing style crafty, yet laborious. Nevertheless, I affirm Proulx’s attempt to root her story around the dinner table. Quite often when we pause to remember our day over a steaming platter of goodness, we generate an element of thankfulness. The Shipping News is well-written; its prose and characters offer ample evidence for its place as Pulitzer Prize winner. But, the book wasn’t for me.

Verdict: 3 out of 5

---

Posted by: Donovan Richards

Affiliate Links:

Book Review: The Spirit of Food

The Spirit of Food: 34 Writers on Feasting and Fasting toward God edited by Leslie Leyland Fields (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2010. 284 pp.)

Residing on Kodiak Island Alaska, Leslie Leyland Fields and her family operate a commercial salmon fishing business. On top of the family business, Fields teaches Creative Nonfiction in the Master of Fine Arts program at Seattle Pacific University. She has written seven books and numerous essays.

Our “Thing”

When I was dating my wife, I would often hear the question, “What do you two have in common?” While we enjoy similar bands, movies, and comedians, we do not have a “thing” that defines us. Some couples’ “thing” is theater, for others, it is season tickets for a pro sports team. We, on the other hand, just enjoyed spending time together. Is spending time together a “thing?” Perhaps. But if so, it is a rather boring “thing.”

However, I loved cooking with Tara. We would find a recipe and spend our evening combining ingredients and hopefully presenting something edible at the conclusion of our efforts. In my mind, cooking was our “thing.”

The Depth of Food

Although I spent little time considering the deeper meaning behind our prepared meals, introspection tells me that our time in the kitchen provided valuable formation in our relationship. Simply put, there is more to cooking than assembling ingredients and eating them. The Spirit of Food offers answers to the deeper questions behind our food.

Photo by Sidious Sid

Throughout the book, authors inquire about the theological significance of food. Of course, at its basic level, humanity needs food for survival. But, could food function at a deeper level? Does it connect humans together in community and in communion with God? With chapters from novelists, theologians, poets, priests, chefs, and essayists, The Spirit of Food approaches this subject from diverse views and disciplines.

Beginning with gathering food, this book explores the significance behind preparing food, eating food, fasting, communion, and feasting. We read of the joy food brings, the depression of food disorders, and the unity around a communal dinner.

Food as Miracle

From the first chapter, The Spirit of Food suggests that a divine miracle occurs when a person prepares a meal. Essayist Patty Kirk writes,

“Just as God combined parts of his creation – lights and dark sky, dirt and breath – to make other things, we also combine things – berries and sugar and lemons and heat – to make other things and pronounce them good” (5).

As Kirk states, the central thesis of this tome orbits around the notion of food transporting humans into a closer relationship with God.

Food as Metaphor

Discussing hollandaise sauce, Chef Fred Raynaud suggests,

“In the first step toward making hollandaise, which is also the first step toward redemption, the shell is cracked and broken open, and the yolk is separated from its rightful place. The yolk is tossed into a cold stainless steel bowl. Lonely and isolated, with one mission in mind: the yolk must unite two substances that chemically cannot be united, our sinful nature with a Holy God. In order to do this, the yolk must endure terrible suffering” (86).

While in the kitchen, the actions we take in preparing a meal carry profound symbolism.  As a necessary part of daily life, the “breaking of bread” provides opportunity to understand the depths of spiritual analogy in our food.

Food Leads Us to Jesus

The Spirit of Food, also, contains the famous passage from For the Life of the World by Theologian Alexander Schmemann. In it, he writes,

“We offered the bread in remembrance of Christ because we know that Christ is Life, and all food, therefore, must lead us to him” (207).

Food Can Be Inconsistent

Sadly, the format of this book leads to an inconsistent read. With each chapter penned by a new author, the quality of the content varies significantly. Also, I found a few glaring typos that missed the editor’s eye.

Nevertheless, The Spirit of Food suggests that our daily meal is a time to remember the life and death of Christ. Just like my wife and I found joy in cooking during our dating years, many people throughout the world understand a special connection between preparing food and the deeper meaning of life. Despite the inconsistency from chapter to chapter, if you are interested in diving into the spiritual aspect of food, I recommend this book.

Book Review: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel by Aimee Bender (New York: Doubleday, 2010. 304 pp.)

Author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, a New York Times Notable Book; An Invisible Sign of My Own, an L.A. Times pick of the year; and Willful Creatures, Aimee Bender lives in Los Angeles and teaches creative writing at the University of Southern California. Her most recent book, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, won the SCIBA award for best fiction and an Alex Award. Her short fiction has been printed in many publications allowing her to receive two Puschart prizes.

A Case for Food and Family

Food is one of the most basic needs for human beings, the symbol of community, and an opportunity for aesthetic and gastronomic excellence. Food is the central ingredient at the dinner table and, by default, the reason around community. When I think of the qualities that define a nuclear family, the dinner table comes to mind.

At the table, a family connects; it recaps the day; and it nurtures healthy relationships. Of course, such musings offer a romanticized view regarding the meaning of a family dinner. Perhaps, some families find more meaning in TV dinners and hectic schedules, but the occasional family dinner seems to carry significance.

Tasting Emotion

What would happen, though, if the perfectly cooked meal betrayed the secrets a parent tirelessly works to conceal. In The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Aimee Bender ponders this very scenario. Bringing the magical realism of José Saramago and Gabriel García Márquez to popular fiction, the author’s book is as accessible as it is fantastical.

The tome’s protagonist, Rose Edelstein, realizes at a young age that she can taste the emotions of the people who have prepared her food. As such, both family dinners and school lunches become almost unbearable.

Bender illustrates Rose’s budding tastes:

“But the day was darkening outside, and as I finished that first bite, as that first impression faded, I felt a subtle shift inside, an unexpected reaction. As if a sensor, so far buried deep inside me, raised its scope to scan around, alerting my mouth to something new. Because the goodness of the ingredients – the fine chocolate, the freshest lemons – seemed like a cover over something larger and darker, and the taste of what was underneath was beginning to push up from the bite. I could absolutely taste the chocolate, but in drifts and traces, in an unfurling, or an opening, it seemed that my mouth was also filling with the taste of smallness, the sensation of shrinking, of upset, tasting a crowded sense of her thinking, a spiral, like I could almost even taste the grit in her jaw that had created the headache that meant she had to take as many aspirins as were necessary, a white dotted line of them in a row on the nightstand like an ellipsis to her comment: I’m just going to lie down…” (9-10).

Where food functions somewhere on the spectrum between a necessary utility and fine art form for most people, Rose suffers under the weight of secrets no child should be expected to bear.

“Truth was, it was hard to see George eat those cookie halves without hesitation. Without tasting even a speck of the hurry in Janet’s oatmeal, which was so rushed it was like eating the calendar of an executive, or without catching a glimpse of the punching bag tucked beside every chocolate chip” (64).

Not only does Rose encounter the feelings of those preparing the food, she is able to distinguish between the factories that process and regions that grow the food.

A Family Affair

Coupled with this sixth sense in the narrative is Rose’s complicated relationship with her older brother, Joseph. Blessed with intelligence beyond his years, Joseph prefers the comfort of his room to conversation and community of any kind save his one friend, the aforementioned George.

As the story unfolds and Rose grows up, the family secrets that tortured her grow into surrealistic symbols of a family, perfect on the outside, but cracked on the inside.

The Particular Sadness of this Book

Although Bender writes from an excellent premise, I find The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake to be flawed. First, the purpose of magical realism is to critique systems, institutions, culture, and/or relationships. In this story, the fantastical portions do not serve any greater social commentary than to remind the reader that family life is difficult.

Second, the book ends much too quickly. With quick chapters and 300 pages, Bender is unable to create much depth in the characters. With the twist she creates at the end of the narrative, the book really needed a microscopic examination of the characters.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the read. In The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Aimee Bender focuses on the importance of food in uniting a family. By imagining a character with a unique sense of tasting other’s emotions, the author manufactures an entertaining read much more accessible than other authors in the magical realism category. If you enjoy the genre and are looking for an easy read, I recommend this book. 

Book Review: The Art of the Commonplace

The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry by Wendell Berry; edited by Norman Wirzba (Berkley: Counterpoint, 2002. 352 pp)

Born in rural Kentucky, Wendell Berry is a farmer, critic, and prolific author. He has published many works in novels, essays, poems, and short stories genres. Berry received his B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of Kentucky before attending Stanford University’s Creative Writing Program. He obtained a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and taught English at New York University before taking a position on faculty at the University of Kentucky.  After a decade of teaching, Berry purchased a farm in the Kentucky countryside where he currently works and writes about the virtues of connecting with the land. Berry has won numerous awards including the T.S. Eliot Award, the Thomas Merton Award, and the Cleanth Brooks Medal for Lifetime Achievement from the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

Urban Jungles

Living in a city, I sometimes find nature a nuisance. Snow might display beautiful characteristics as it coats a meadow, but it certainly exhibits headache-inducing qualities when it materializes during the commute. Vibrant evergreens coating a mountain convey the finest forms of art, yet no tree stands in the way of a property owner desiring a better view. Urban life is ultimately divorced from the land. A simple block-to-block walk downtown provides little to no evidence of ecology. The Art of the Commonplace decries these realities as it presents a case for an agrarian-minded society.

Berry’s collection of essays is divided into five parts: a geobiography, understanding our cultural crisis, the agrarian basis for an authentic culture, agrarian economics, and agrarian religion. In these sections, Berry makes the case for a counter-cultural understanding of society, a way of life rooted in and sustained by the land.

Critiquing the System

Central to Berry’s thesis is a scathing critique of consumerist culture and industrial business practice. Where our ancestors lived in unity with the land, we exist in tension with the land. The Art of the Commonplace contains prophetic passages where Berry takes the form of a minor prophet beating the drum of repentance in the face of giant institutions.

Along these lines, Berry writes,

“It is possible to make a little economy, such as our present one, that is so shortsighted and in which accounting is of so short a term as to give the impression that vices are necessary and practically justifiable. When we make our economy a little wheel turning in opposition to what we call ‘nature,’ then we set up competitiveness as the ruling principle in our explanation of reality and in our understanding of economy; we make of it, willy-nilly, a virtue. But competitiveness, as a ruling principle and a virtue, imposes a logic that is extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, to control. That logic explains why our cars and our clothes are shoddily made, why our ‘wastes’ are toxic, and why our ‘defensive’ weapons are suicidal; it explains why it is so difficult for us to draw a line between ‘free enterprise’ and crime. If our economic ideal is maximum profit with minimum responsibility, why should we be surprised to find our corporations so frequently in court and robbery on the increase? Why should we be surprised to find that medicine has become an exploitive industry, profitable in direct proportion to its hurry and its mechanical indifference? People who pay for shoddy products or careless services and people who are robbed outright are equally victims of theft, the only difference being that robbers outright are not guilty of fraud” (233).

In Berry’s mind, the contemporary industrial economy shoulders much of the blame regarding what is wrong with the world. Not only does capitalism create a system where efficiency requires low quality and high profits, but also it compels business leaders to act right up against the barriers of what is legal. In such instances, it is no surprise to see broken laws and broken people.

Eating Strawberries on a Cold, January Day

Moreover, the industrial economy creates a civilization incapable of sustaining itself. Berry laments,

“Most of us, for example, not only do not know how to produce the best food in the best way – we don’t know how to produce any kind in any way. Our model citizen is a sophisticate who before puberty understands how to produce a baby, but who at the age of thirty will not know how to produce a potato. And for this condition we have elaborate rationalizations, instructing us that dependence for everything on somebody else is efficient and economical and a scientific miracle. I say, instead, that it is madness, mass produced” (85).

Forget growing a potato, I could not tell you when they are in season. As a child, I vaguely remember my mother buying blueberries in mass quantities because they were in season. Today, I am a grocery store away from an infinite resource of blueberries year-round. While I have not taken a poll of my generation, it seems that most people my age are in a similar position. The seasonal connection to the land by way of fruits and vegetables has slowly gone the way of the buffalo.  If I do not understand the seasons, how can I expect to establish a green thumb?

Ultimately, Berry argues that our industrialized economy has created a consequentialist culture focused on efficiency.  Berry asserts,

“Logically, in plenitude some things ought to be expendable. Industrial economics has always believed this: abundance justifies waste. This is one of the dominant superstitions of American history – and of the history of colonialism everywhere. Expendability is also an assumption of the world of efficiency which is why that world deals so compulsively in percentages of efficacy and safety. But this sort of logic is absolutely alien to the world of love. To the claim that a certain drug or procedure would save 99 percent of all cancer patients of that a certain pollutant would be safe for 99 percent of a population, love, unembarrassed, would respond, ‘What about the one percent?’ There is nothing rational or perhaps even defensible about this, but it is nonetheless one of the strongest strands of our religious tradition – it is probably the most essential strand – according to which a shepherd, owning a hundred sheep and having lost one, does not say, ‘I have saved 99 percent of my sheep,’ but rather, ‘I have lost one,’ and he goes and searches for the one” (154-155).

In short, reconnecting ourselves to the land both through a local economy and an agrarian-based religion reminds us of the power of pursuing the one as opposed to neglecting it by rationalizing that the 99 are enough.

Let’s Pack Our Bags, We’re Going to Eden!

While I appreciate and typically side with the critiques posed by the Art of the Commonplace, I find the conclusions to be slightly utopian in nature. In other words, Berry’s urge to reconnect with nature seems slightly akin to arguing that humanity ought to go back to a place and time before the fall, living a reconciled life in God’s Creation.

The fall, in my estimation, significantly alters humanity’s relationship with nature. Granted, industry possesses a poor track record of domination over the natural world. Nevertheless, biblically mandated stewardship does not negate the possibility of development. As with most things, the extremes on both sides of the economic argument fall into untenable positions. Business provides valuable opportunities to assist those in need; local economies connected to nature remind humanity that it is a creature and not a creator.

Even though I do not find anything inherently evil about urban life, Berry’s writing presents a counterpoint to the dominant views. As a society, we ought to remember and enjoy the natural world and humanity’s connection to it. Berry’s economic, cultural, and religious positions found in the Art of the Commonplace are wholeheartedly worthy of study. He poetically renders his positions unashamedly; his critiques remind us that business as usual will never solve all of the world’s problems. For this reason, I recommend this book.

Book Review: The Namesake

The Namesake: A Novel by Jhumpa Lahiri (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003. 304 pp)

Born in London to Bengali immigrants, Jhumpa Lahiri moved to the United States at the young age of 3. Her first published work, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000. In 2007, Hollywood adapted The Namesake into a feature film.  A recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, Lahiri is a member of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.

Home for the Holidays?

Thanksgiving introduces an exciting portion of the year. I love sleeping in, wearing pajamas into the living room, and seeing a football game on the television. The turkey is already cooking in the oven and my stomach reminds me that I will enjoy feasting with family later in the day. I really enjoy watching football on Thanksgiving; my wife and sister, however, want to watch the parade and they jokingly call me a name, “turd” let’s say for sake of an illustration. These circumstances define my particular family. Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, the Namesake, exhibits the emotions of a particular family existing in an unfamiliar culture.

The Namesake follows an Indian family (the Gangulis) transplanted from Calcutta to the suburbs of Boston. Over a thirty year period, Lahiri develops a subtle storyline around a husband, wife, and the turmoil of their second generation children as they attempt to exist in an American culture while clinging to the slivers of their ancestral Bengali culture. In a sense, the previous cultural traditions and expectations of Calcutta produce a perpetual curiosity in those associated with the family. Lahira writes,

“For being a foreigner, Ashima [the mother and wife of the family] is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy – a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been an ordinary life, only to discover that the previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect” (49-50).

We Are Named, Then We Are Known

In addition to the unhinged character of living in an alien culture, The Namesake portrays the tortured nature of Gogol, the son of the Indian transplants.  Lahiri exquisitely explains the importance of names in the early chapters of the book. Simply stated, each person in Bengali culture receives a formal name and a family name. The formal name is used in professional and formal settings, while the family name is reserved for family and friends. In Gogol’s case, the formal name – typically given by an elder figure in the family – had yet to finish its expedition through the postal system when the Ganguli family became ready to be released from the hospital. For this reason, Gogol’s parents provided his family name, “Gogol,” on the official birth certificate. This seemingly small oversight provides Gogol with a lifetime of turmoil. In naming the central protagonist by his family name, Lahiri invites the reader into the Ganguli family.

We Are What We Eat

Additionally, The Namesake develops its fascinating story around the convergence of culture. The author illustrates customs through the consumption of food. Each special occasion offers the Ganguli family with an opportunity to host other Bengali immigrants. These instances are occasions for feasts! Lahiri spends pages depicting the preparations the Ganguli family takes in order to facilitate such banquets. On the other hand, Gogol’s time spent in romantic relationships during his time spent in New York City portrays his Americanized culture. He eats well, sometimes drinks too much, and partakes in the popular cuisine of the city. Therefore, Lahiri creates a dichotomy through food between the culture of Gogol’s family life and the culture of his social life.

Although my experience at Thanksgiving in no way resembles the familial occurrences in The Namesake, Lahiri’s simple and engaging writing style invites you to be a part a particular family. I highly recommend this book.

Book Review: The Omnivore's Dilemma

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

By Michael Pollan. (New York: Penguin Books, 2006. 450 pp)

Michael Pollan is a contributing writer for New York Times Magazine and the Knight Professor of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He has written seven books and countless articles on current agrarian issues. In 2010 alone, Pollan added the Social Justice Champion Award from the California Center for Public Health to his many recognitions as well as being named to the Time 100, the magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people. He lives with his wife and son in the San Francisco Bay Area.

When I was young, I vividly remember receiving harsher punishments when I lied about my misdeeds.

Something about human nature compels me to hide when I have made a mistake. If I broke my mother's precious vase yet denied it, grounding became inevitable. But if I immediately told my mother about my mistake, she would be disappointed but certainly not angry.

It probably took longer than necessary for me to understand that while transparency might entail consequences, those consequences were better than the ones I would face if I had lied about my actions. In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan seeks to expose what the food industry has hidden behind the pre-packaged meat and cereal boxes.

 

Ubiquitous Corn

Pollan divides The Omnivore's Dilemma into a three-course meal. In the first part, he traces the steps of a McDonald's combo meal from his plate to its source.

Behind the billboard advertisements and catch phrases of McDonald's, Pollan uncovers a sea of gas-guzzling corn growing in America's heartland. In between harvest and the dinner table (or the car if you are in a hurry), the kernels of corn enjoy heavy government subsidies and meet the most technologically advanced machines in the food industry.

Corn finds its way into the supersized Coke in the form of high fructose corn syrup, the Big Mac through the highly concentrated corn fed to the cattle in order to fatten them up, and the French fries by means of the corn oil used to fry the spuds.

 

The Grass Really Is Greener

As a second course, Pollan investigates the sources of organic food — both from a meal made by ingredients purchased at Whole Foods and a dinner crafted by elements found at local organic farms.

On the Whole Foods side of the organic spectrum, Pollan learns that there are minimal differences between Whole Foods and its industrial brethren. While it's true that less processing exists in these organic supermarkets, Whole Foods sells organic TV dinners. And a quick glance at the ingredients label of some items reveals organic high fructose corn syrup.

Additionally, fruits and vegetables ship from all over the world to provide customers with a cornucopia of options. Although Whole Foods provides more transparency in what it sells, the organic label provides little difference from its industrial counterpart when food is produced on such a massive scale.

On the other end of the organic continuum, Pollan profiles Joel Salatin, an organic farmer whose holistic agricultural methods create a desirable alternative — in the eyes of the author — to the industrial organic structures of Whole Foods.

The source of the roasted chicken Pollan shares with close friends in Virginia can easily be traced back to Joel Salatin's PolyFace Farm, where the chicken lived and grazed. Pollan argues that when chicken and cattle eat grass as nature intended them, the animals are not only seemingly happier, but the meat we eat is healthier.

In fact, he asserts,

“Conventional nutritional wisdom holds that salmon is automatically better for us than beef, but that judgment assumes the beef has been grain fed and the salmon krill fed; if the steer is fattened on grass and the salmon on grain, we might actually be better off eating beef” (p. 269).

 

Foraging in the Forest

As a final serving, Pollan attempts to remove all parties from the food chain, desiring to hunt and gather all of the resources needed to make his own meal.

Taking this task to heart, the author spends extensive time wading through the ethics of hunting, killing, and eating animals. After a suitable justification is found, the hunting and gathering commences.

Pollan describes an underground culture in the Bay Area known as the Slow Movement. Meant as a reaction to the fast-paced lives of seemingly everyone in our culture, people in the Slow Movement desire to stop and smell the proverbial roses.

Under the guidance of some new friends from this movement, Pollan hunts and gathers the ingredients for his final meal: a braised leg and sirloin roast that found its way to the dinner table through the barrel of the author's gun, and mushrooms that found their way because their camouflage failed them in front of Pollan's watchful eye.

 

The Value of Transparency

Of course, Pollan makes no claims that one of his meals is intrinsically more valuable than another. Even though his writing tends to betray the fact that he leans toward local farmers and hunter/gatherer methods for food sources, the core question remains the same: Where does our food come from?

Food exists commonly in everyday life to the extent that nobody questions what the body intakes. Sadly, upon further inspection, there is no easy answer. (For further information on the debate, check out Ethix conversations with Greg Page and Peter Dill)

Ultimately, Pollan calls for transparency in the food industry. The concrete wall built around the food industry only leads to further issues of public health, whether it is obesity or E. coli. Yes, opening up slaughterhouses might lead to a drop off in meat consumption. But eating less meat might be a better practice.

As with any industry, opacity tends to bring further problems. Although Nike and Wal-Mart currently run highly ethical companies, past mistakes once hidden under the cloak of efficiency give both companies a negative perception in the eyes of the public. Transparency does not always maximize profits; transparency provides an open door for consumers to investigate and purchase with a clean conscience.

The Omnivore's Dilemma is thought-provoking and Pollan's writing is engaging. I highly recommend this book.
 
Originally published at the Center for Integrity in Business.