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Unreadable At Any Speed

jonfrankel — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:12:53 +0000

A poet friend, Bridget, writes that her boss says she should read William T. Vollman. She wants to know what I think of Vollman. My email back:
“I’ve never been able to read Vollman, he bores me to tears. But that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to. He’s highly regarded and very eccentric for an American literary author. His output is awesome and a little terrifying. He literally has written books thousands of pages long. He is titanic! But again, I’ve never read a sentence of his I felt like completing.”
I’ve never started a sentence of his I felt like completing. And let me say, I’ve read the beginning of his sentences since his first book (1987), You Bright and Risen Angels was handed to me by my friend Josh. He thought I would love it. The first page put me to sleep. Then I dipped into the 7 Dreams cycle, fascinated, in search of one I could read (The Ice Shirts, etc.). There was Whores for Gloria. I love the idea of Vollman. I’ve read he doesn’t have an agent. I don’t know how he managed to do what he has done: write long, difficult books about subject matter that is disturbing to average people. I want to read and love these books but I never will.
How important is it to read things you don’t like because they are important? It is a question that faces me daily, especially with contemporary fiction and poetry. There’s a lot out there of course and some time ago I decided I never had to read a book I didn’t love, if I didn’t want to. I know for a fact I could spend the rest of my life, even if it’s really long, reading only great books I adore. But then I might not read anything less than fifty years old, maybe even a hundred! And at some point, as an author, you do have to know what the competition is up to. And I’m not such a curmudgeon as to believe that there is no decent fiction or poetry being written. The thing is, I’m usually after something more than decent.
I used to read things that were difficult because they interested me, or I felt I needed to. Nightwood is a difficult modernist book I read once, because a friend gave it to me (he was at Columbia, where it is assigned, or was). I read it the second time because I adored it. But Gravity’s Rainbow I read out of a sense of duty. V I could never complete. I didn’t hate Gravity’s Rainbow, I just didn’t get a lot out of it proportional to the effort. I’m happy I read it because it explains a lot about American fiction since 1973, because it was in its way fascinating, and because I felt like I had seen the limit of what could be done in that form of late modernist experimental fiction. Like Finnegans Wake it is a limit I would not even be able to approach, in a sense a dead end, in another sense a treasure trove of techniques. It also means I can write that I didn’t like it with the authority of having read it. I don’t feel that way about Vollman. I can only say, ‘Try for yourself!’
David Foster Wallace is another example. I feel I should read Infinite Jest even if I would hate it because I do enjoy not liking Wallace. Call it envy or jealousy, I don’t care. I’ve never read a sentence of his with any pleasure. I think he has a tin ear and is emotionally, spiritually and aesthetically immature. However, I can’t assert that opinion with any authority! I may be wrong. But I do have to be able to read the damn thing and if I can’t I take that as a strong indication of its quality.
I have read two books by Jonathan Lethem. She Climbed Across the Table was infuriating. I felt like I could just go read Delillo. It seemed like Lethem had made a study of something and then set out to do it. The Fortress of Solitude was a much more accomplished piece of writing, and I enjoyed it as a novel, but it was in the end derivative, more the book of a man who has really good taste in literature. It’s a little like the films of Peter Bogdanovich, as opposed to Stanley Kubrick. But I’m happy I read it and might read something else, just to keep my hand in.
There are others. I could go on. I don’t feel any longer that I need to read things. I’ve got my own thing to say. I’ve paid my dues as a reader long ago. In the end it’s all very subjective. I do believe in aesthetic standards, but I don’t believe they are universally or objectively applicable. There are all kinds of ways to write and read a book, and whether Vollman or Wallace suck or are great, whatever the claims made for them by others, is not important. What’s important is whether you enjoy reading their books. Certainly all of the authors I have mentioned have much to give the reader. But I reserve the right to say I find them to be unreadable.

Mitt and the Poor

jonfrankel — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:38:49 +0000

Mitt Romney has said in an interview on CNN that he’s not interested in the poor. That’s not surprising, no one is. Certainly not Barak Obama. The fact is the last presidential candidate who was genuinely concerned about the very poor was gunned down in Los Angeles in 1968. Jimmy Carter famously went to the South Bronx as a candidate and promised to do something. But he did nothing and did not speak to the nation about poverty. The last president to care or do anything about the poor was RFK’s nemesis, Lyndon Johnson. Johnson’s father served in the Texas State Legislature where he was an idealist and, at least in terms of policy, a socialist. His mother came from a prominent family. But the Johnsons were poor and Lyndon spent his childhood in shame as a result. As a congressman he brought electricity to his rural district. He did so for a lot of reasons. One was a deal he made with Kellogg, Brown and Root. Another was watching the women in his family become arthritic and hump backed at a young age from hauling water. He never forgot the pain and shame of poverty and used his ill-gotten power to do good. I hope in his epic biography Robert Caro discovers the key to unlock this appalling, brilliant, paradoxical man.
Obama is in a position to speak about the poor. It is his legacy as a politician but also, as a young man, he was a community organizer. But the fact is in America the poor don’t vote. And the poor are overwhelmingly viewed as being black or Latino, even though the numbers clearly show that most poor Americans are white.
The poor in America are an underclass, with a common set of problems that cut across race and ethnicity, although these play a prominent role in how the poor are perceived and exacerbate an already dire situation. The poorest people in America continue to be Native Americans, who are also the most invisible. There are divisions between the urban and the rural poor and now, for the first time, suburban poverty. Oddly, the white poor are despised by liberals, who may not know it. It is easy to talk about rednecks. Rednecks are, fat, stupid, nasty bigots, after all. There is no sympathy for poor whites because they are not perceived as facing racism. But they do face stereotyping and those stereotypes are limiting, infuriating and ultimately defiantly embraced. But again, they don’t vote, so who cares?
It matters that people in this country are poor, and that the middle class everyone panders to and wants to save are falling rapidly into the ranks of the poor. Once there no one will want their vote. It used to be that Americans cared about poverty. After the war, as many Americans of all races rose out of the poverty of the depression, they took with them the memory of what it was like to not have enough to eat, of old people living without pensions, health care, adequate housing or food. They had relatives who were still poor and lived in neighborhoods that were not so rigidly segregated by class. There were unions and civic groups and a legacy of leftist activism, Socialists, Communists and Anarchists. A left center coalition ran the country and incremental improvement was possible.
This doesn’t exist anymore. It is possible today for a man who might be president to say the poor don’t matter to him. He says they don’t need him because they have a safety net. Maybe from the height of a 20 million dollar a year income that safety net has tiny holes. But when you are falling into it from a $40,000 dollar a year income, as you fall to a $28,000, to a $22,000 to an $18,000 dollar income, or no income at all, the webbing widens and the holes become yawning gaps. To be caught by the safety net is to live in constant peril, violence, and uncertainty, knowing the nation despises you. Sadly, it’s also possible for a man who should know better, who does know better, who actually is president and could make a difference to make the same political calculation his opponent does. They don’t vote. They don’t matter.

WHERE’S W?

jonfrankel — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:42:11 +0000

I thought George W. Bush had gone into retirement with his bush hog but no, it turns out he took a job as an Italian Cruise Ship Captain…MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

The Offal of the Vegetable World

jonfrankel — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:06:03 +0000

The way marketing with food works is this: you either find some obscure, cheap and largely disliked and ignored food, discover it, dust it off, present it with truffles and start charging top dollar for it. Or, you claim some ordinary thing that people never really stopped eating is broadly disliked and is undergoing a revival. Which causes a revival. The beet comes to mind. Beets figure prominently in people’s grisly memories of childhood suffering, especially the canned or pickled variety. NPR just had a profile of the beet, the despised beet, and its John Travoltaish comeback. But as Travolta said, in the depth of his decline, ‘I never was as good as they said I was, and I never was as bad.’ But the beet has always been the glorious star of spring and the character actor of fall. And so too the Brussels sprout. Brussels sprouts and beets are the offal of the vegetable world. The pork belly of winter fare.
My first encounter with the tiny cabbage was an unhappy one. Not the cream sauced glop of fifties Thanksgivings, no, but a depressing boiled bit business down in Colonial Virginia. They tasted like burnt cabbage. It was not until I grew them, when I was 20, that I appreciated the flavor, which is, well, a little like burnt cabbage, but only in the best sense. Brussels sprouts have real flavor, much more so than cabbage, or even kale or collard greens. They are not going to be a foil for some sautéed garlic, they will stand up to the toasted hazelnuts and nutmeg. And they don’t require a smothering of cheese or a blanket of cream sauce.
My winter CSA included two stalks of Brussels sprouts. The two pounds of kale went in the fridge, but the Brussels sprouts I took apart and cooked that night. They don’t look like much, but two stalks are enough to feed 4 or 5 people, at least, if some of them resist the idea that a vegetable can be the main event on the plate. Meaning children. They can be a lot of work if you have to trim them, especially when they are infested with a flea-sized bug and the flea-sized bug’s excrement. These were not. I removed each one from the stalk with a paring knife and then sliced them in half, except for the tiny ones which I left whole. The rest was simple. Heat some olive oil over a medium flame and add a teaspoon of mustard seeds and a teaspoon of cumin seeds. When the seeds began to pop (be careful not to burn them; if you do, start over), add two tablespoons of chopped garlic, stir for a couple of minutes until golden, raise the heat and add the Brussels sprouts. Toss them until coated, add a good pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper and 1/3 cup of water, cover, and cook until tender. The water should evaporate. Add two tablespoons of red wine vinegar and toss again and then serve. I served them with filet of Pollack baked in tomatoes sauce with olives and capers and linguine. Those recipes are for another day! Brussels sprouts can be prepared in many ways, taking off from this recipe. With a neutral oil you can use panch pora, the Indian mixture of five seeds (cumin, black cumin, fenugreek, mustard and fennel), onions, ginger and garlic, turmeric, hot pepper and finish with grated coconut. Or what have you. In the height of summer a Brussels sprout might be a mean thing, like an intestine or pig snout, but in January? The heat of the sun, stored for months in the creamy yellow heart of the sprout bursts out to make glorious summer.

from The Confessions of Rousseau

jonfrankel — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:39:06 +0000

“Shame made me cyncial and sarcastic.”

-Rousseau

Newt’s Question

jonfrankel — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:59:03 +0000

“Is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of other people and walk off with the money?” Mr. Gingrich asked.

YES!

A Winter Dinner

jonfrankel — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:55:57 +0000

Saturday was the first day of the Ithaca Winter’s Farmer’s Market. It was also the first day of my Winter CSA. I don’t do a summer CSA, because I grow my own vegetables, and I’d rather choose what and how much I’m going to buy. Also, the prices are better when you hunt around farm stands. But in the winter it works out financially, and I like to help support Blue Heron Farm through the winter. Because the winter has been so mild the market reminded me more of late fall. There were piles of fresh looking kale, collard greens, bok choi and cabbages. Cabbage this time of year is usually tough, the blackened outer leaves removed leaving a pale green or purple bowling ball. But Muddy Fingers Farm had beautiful, juicy savoy cabbages, green with a blush of purple. I bought one and decided that for dinner on Sunday we’d have a winter salad, to go with roast chicken (I bought two from Autumn Harvest Farm) and polenta (from Cayuga Pure Organics). Having local, organic, coarse ground corn meal for polenta has been an amazing thing. Cayuga Pure Organics has transformed local food with its beans, grains and flours. The cornmeal is variegated with red and orange and yellow flecks, the grain is coarse and fine and it flows through the fingers into the pot in a steady stream.

A winter salad is one of those things that are infinitely various. I make them through the winter months, with whatever root vegetables I get in my CSA and local cabbage. They key is to salt the tougher roots and cabbage, and combine them with other shredded, julienned vegetables, toasted nuts or seeds, dried and fresh fruit, garlic and scallions. Sometimes I use parsley, sometimes cilantro. Often I add avocado, which is in season. Fruit can be citrus, grapefruit, tangerines or oranges, or apples, or pears. I toast walnuts, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds, pecans or almonds. Dried cranberries, raisins or cherries are great. And I barely plan. Is there celeriac? Turnip? Beets? Watermelon radish or daikon? Sprouts? It’s all good.

I squeezed lemons on the chickens, inside and out and salted them, then rubbed a mixture of minced garlic, olive oil, dried rosemary and a little black pepper in the cavities, on the skin and up between the skin and breast meat and the between the thigh and the body. I rested it breast down in a dish to marinade in the lemon juice for a few hours and come up to room temperature. Then I roasted the birds in a 425 degree oven, breast side down, on a bed of chopped onion, carrot and celery, until the back was browned and crisp, flipped them and finished them breast side up. About a half hour into it I added quartered potatoes and rutabaga pieces.

To make the winter salad:

4 cups shredded cabbage (shred it as finely as you can)

1 beet, peeled and julienned

1-1/2 teaspoons of salt

Combine salt and beets and cabbage in a bowl, mix thoroughly, rubbing the salt into the vegetables. Leave for at least an hour.

1 cup julienned carrot

1 cup julienned daikon or watermelon or other winter radish

1 stalk celery, thinly sliced on a bias

1 apple peeled and sliced into bite sized pieces

¼ cup chopped parsley

3 T walnut Oil

3 T red wine vinegar

1 clove minced garlic

¼ cup toasted nuts and seeds (toast them in a skillet over low heat, don’t burn!)

¼ cup dried cranberries

Black pepper to taste

Combine the apples and remaining vegetables (not the parsley) and garlic. Add the oil and vinegar and mix thoroughly. When the cabbage and beets are done macerating, combine with the vegetables and taste to see if you need more oil or vinegar. Garnish with parsley, nuts and cranberries. Toss it again after everyone has looked at the mix of colors.

After the chickens came out of the oven, I let them rest on a platter and returned the roasting pan to the oven to finish the potatoes and rutabaga. I made the polenta: into 6-1/2 cups of boiling salted water I slowly whisked two cups of coarsely ground cornmeal and stirred it, over medium heat, for 25 minutes, until it behaved like a single organism, pulling away from the sides of the bot, big lazy bubbles winking and popping at the surface. Cover it. Remove the roasting pan, plate the potatoes and rutabagas, pour off most of the oil and make a pan gravy with white wine. Carve the chickens and pour the polenta into a bowl, to be served like mashed potatoes.

These dishes can be altered by circumstance. I might have roasted parsnips and celeriac, might have added avocado and tangerines instead of apple to the salad and used extra virgin olive oil, lime juice and cilantro. Or lemon juice, olive oil and parsley. Or what have you.

BEANS

jonfrankel — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 13:54:34 +0000

Black Eyed Peas

I don’t like holidays, but I do like food. My way through holidays is to cook. For Christmas (not my holiday…a savior ain’t in the cards for MAN), I love the Sicilian tradition of seven fishes, even if they aren’t all fish. One of my old dear friends who died too young, Peter Catanzarro, came from an Italian family in Canarsie. I loved hearing his story of Christmas dinner, the calamari and the scampi. I loved his food. He cooked Chicken Catanzarro, a simple Italian American dish that was ambrosia in his hands. He would prepare it in his tiny galley kitchen and we would eat it in front of the TV, seated on foam chairs, with 2 litre bottles of Pinot Grigio from Astor Liquors. Another friend who died too young and was a fabulous cook was Jon Greenberg. Jon had lived in Rome and came back with a serious Italian food muse. When he moved in next door we used to cook together, keeping the doors of our two apartments propped open. We stewed octopus and bought the first widely available organic, free-range meat at the Union Square farmer’s market. He browned a rolled veal shoulder roast in mire poix and braised it on top of the stove in white wine. Jon always served lentils at New Year’s. Beans on New Year’s is a Latin tradition. Down south they make black eyed peas. After the New Year’s eve dinner and booze, it is fitting to have humble beans and greens. This year I made Black Eyed Peas with kale. I had forgotten to soak the beans overnight. That’s no big deal with black eyed peas. They cook very quickly. Instead I covered them with water, brought them to a boil and let the rest for an hour. Then I cooked them with a smoked pork bone for several hours. I added kale and finished it with parsley, scallions, and vinegar, and served it with jalapeno peppers, smoked ham and grilled Italian sweet sausage on the side. Smoked meat goes beautifully with black eyed peas.

4 cups black eyed peas, picked over and rinsed
¼ cup olive oil or lard
1 large onion diced
1 large carrot diced
1 rib celery diced
½ large green pepper diced
¼ cup chopped garlic
1 smoked ham hock, ham bone or other smoked pork bone
1-1/2 teaspoons dried thyme
2 teaspoons cumin
1 Tablespoon smoked paprika
2 bay leaves
Black pepper
salt
1 bunch kale chopped
¼ cup minced parsley
¼ cup chopped scallions
¼ cup vinegar
Cooked ham and sausage
If you soak the beans overnight you will have to make a stock of the vegetables, the bone and water first. I prefer actually starting with dried black eyed peas or bringing them to boil in a pot of water and letting them rest for an hour to absorb the water.

In large pot heat the olive oil and sauté first the onions, until golden, then the carrot, celery, pepper and garlic until soft and fragrant. Add the spices and grind in some pepper (but don’t add salt) and cook briefly. Add the beans and turn them over until coated with the oil, then add the ham bone and cover with enough water to make a soup. Bring to a boil and simmer, adding water if necessary, for 2 hours. When the peas are starting to get salt, add a teaspoon or so of salt. After the beans are cooked turn off the heat and let them rest for a few hours. Bring back to a boil, add the kale and cook until very soft. Check for salt. Meanwhile heat the ham and fry the sausage if you are using them. When ready to serve add the parsley, scallions and vinegar to the soup. Serve with rice, meat and chopped jalapenos peppers. Now you have luck for the whole year! It’s twenty fucking twelve, we need it!

Breaking News!

jonfrankel — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:51:34 +0000

Kim Jong-Un has surged ahead of other GOP presidential hopefuls in Iowa, edging out Ron Paul (at 24%) with 26% of likely GOP caucus goers. Romney is in 3^rd (20%) and Gingrich has dropped to 15%. The margin of error as usual in GOP contests is huge.

Tim Tebow, Christian

jonfrankel — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:01:24 +0000

This morning the news was all about Tim Tebow, the quarterback for the Denver Broncos. The lead of the story was that he is a great quarterback and an aggressive Christian, proud of his faith. I don’t really give a shit about football, but I REALLY don’t give a shit about his fucking faith. Please, Christians, during this holiday season, make an effort to keep your faith to yourselves. Faith is nothing to be proud of, and the rest of the world is sick and tired of hearing about your Christianity. Rick Perry is always ready to point out that a person is a good Christian. I’m sure they exist but I’m equally sure it’s because they are good people and that their Christianity has nothing to do with it. However, I believe in tolerance, and I don’t wish to rain on your parade, so long as you keep it to yourself. And if you must, wear those crosses around your neck, but forgive me (you are, afterall in the forgiveness business) for wondering if you’re expecting a party of vampires to descend upon you at any moment.