Airport Reading

On Wednesday, I spent nearly ten hours at LaGuardia for reasons I still don't quite understand. I made the best of it by reading, among other things, David Foster Wallace's `Consider the Lobster' from the essay collection of the same name. It's a brilliant piece on the annual Maine Lobster Festival that not only reports on its attractions (or, more likely, detractions) but reflects more generally on the practice of lobster preparation and eating--something unavoidable when the festival boasts of having the World's Largest Lobster Cooker:

Since [...] the assigned subject of this article is what it was like to attend the 2003 MLF, and thus to spend several days in the midst of a great mass of Americans all eating lobster, and thus to be more or less impelled to think hard about lobster and the experience of buying and eating lobster, it turns out that there is no honest way to avoid certain moral questions. 

And so, DFW asks: "Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?"--while quite cognisant of the groans that such a question is bound to elicit: "A related set of concerns: Is the previous question irksomely PC or sentimental? What does `all right' even mean in this context? Is it all just a matter of individual choice?"

What I like best about this piece is its honesty. DFW--like most of us, probably--is genuinely confused about cooking and eating lobster. And so, with his usual bite, DFW asks questions that are astute and Socratically penetrating.

After thorough consideration of lobster physiology (lobsters, it turns out, are rather tactilely sensitive and cannot easily be rendered unconscious because of the distribution of their nerve bundles, and the fact that they produce no natural opioids might mean that their experience of pain is not at all like ours or that it is, and they just aren't as fortunately equipped to cope with it--in short, the data on lobster pain is inconclusive), DFW goes on to reflect on his own lay reaction to the lobsters awaiting their fate outside the World's Largest Lobster Cooker and finds it difficult not to see their frantic and impotent movement as an expression of their unhappiness or fright, even if of a more rudimentary sort than our own. "... and, again, why does rudimentariness even enter into it? Why is a primitive, inarticulate form of suffering less urgent or uncomfortable for the person who’s helping to inflict it by paying for the food it results in?"

But, after comparing aspects of the MLF to a "Roman circus or medieval torture-fest," he reels back, saying:

My own immediate reaction is that such a comparison is hysterical, extreme—and yet the reason it seems extreme to me appears to be that I believe animals are less morally important than human beings; and when it comes to defending such a belief, even to myself, I have to acknowledge that (a) I have an obvious selfish interest in this belief, since I like to eat certain kinds of animals and want to be able to keep doing it, and (b) I have not succeeded in working out any sort of personal ethical system in which the belief is truly defensible instead of just selfishly convenient.

DFW is visibly torn, and this leads him into a final barrage of questions, genuine questions:

Given this article’s venue and my own lack of culinary sophistication, I’m curious about whether the reader can identify with any of these reactions and acknowledgments and discomforts. I am also concerned not to come off as shrill or preachy when what I really am is confused. Given the (possible) moral status and (very possible) physical suffering of the animals involved, what ethical convictions do gourmets evolve that allow them not just to eat but to savor and enjoy flesh-based viands (since of course refined enjoyment, rather than just ingestion, is the whole point of gastronomy)? And for those gourmets who’ll have no truck with convictions or rationales and who regard stuff like the previous paragraph as just so much pointless navel-gazing, what makes it feel okay, inside, to dismiss the whole issue out of hand? That is, is their refusal to think about any of this the product of actual thought, or is it just that they don’t want to think about it? Do they ever think about their reluctance to think about it? After all, isn’t being extra aware and attentive and thoughtful about one’s food and its overall context part of what distinguishes a real gourmet?

Seriously Socratic. When do you ever get something so self-examining in a food magazine?

Yes, best of all, Gourmet, which gave DFW the assignment,  actually published the piece in their August 2004 issue. I know that the magazine was reputed to be the more substantive of Conde Nast's two culinary monthlies, but really, DFW is no feel-good food writer--he sets out to challenge his reader, intellectually and morally. I never did hold a subscription, but I can lament the loss now.

Photo credit: Clarita Berger via Gourmet.

End of Quarter

Last night I had a dream of us both dangling from the same tree--you, me, and a cell phone. Speaking the lost tongue of flowers. Unanswerable questions, godlike indifference. My how you shine, lucky tango! You have merged with the world, taken its will within you, some would say fallen but we know plucked. All is aphrodesia. Bring on the Apocalypse! You are my found object. - Lemon, Lawrence Krauser

Papers are in, the Quarter for me officially over. It feels good. I've been catching up on fiction--most recently, Lawrence Krauser's first novel, Lemon. I'm really not sure what to say. It's strangely solipsistic, or maybe claustrophobic, just a man and the lemon with which he's in love--at close quarters, too close quarters. There's not enough of a perspective from which one can resolve just what it is that one is witness to or evaluate what's going on. But maybe that's part of the point. It's beautiful regardless, strikingly poetic. My favourite bit is towards the end, where Wendell takes his lemon-love to a gallery, and the reader is treated to a short history of lemons as they have appeared in art throughout the ages.

But all of this closeness has me ready to break out into the world again, beyond books of any sort. A walk through the wintry neighbourhood is a good place to start.

Eating New York

In all seriousness: what does one do in New York City? I am lucky enough to be able to make trips twice a year, and just about every time that my boyfriend's parents pick us up from the train afterwards, they ask us what we did, and all that we can say is this: "We shopped a little, but mostly, we ate," and then offer them each a pretzel-croissant from City Bakery or whatever other tidbits we thought were worth toting home. And, of course, they just look at us quizzically, as though we should have gone to the MoMA or at least seen something on Broadway--we just spent the day in Manhattan, for crying out loud!

Call me a philistine if you'd like, but after a string of late nights writing on something like `Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind', I would far rather sit down to a lovely lunch at Prune than brave the crowds at the MoMA. (Why is everyone who visits possessed by the urge to photograph the art? Do they plan on contemplating their pictures of it when they get home from their trips? I don't get it, and all of that jostling just makes me want to leave.) And lunch at Prune was lovely indeed. I really like the atmosphere there. It's a small place--probably seating no more than twenty--with a charming old bar, vintage mirrors lining the walls, penny tile on the floors, plenty of stools, tables, and cafe chairs salvaged from another life, and an open kitchen for the curious to peer into. It's a place with a sort of quiet, unassuming sophistication. And, the food, of course, was fantastic: skate wing in a brown butter-lemon sauce with capers, kale with parm and olive oil, poached pear in vanilla creme, and espresso mousse. So much so that there were actually leftovers from our much anticipated trip to Doughnut Plant, like the roasted chestnut doughnut pictured above. I assure you that it made for a well-balanced breakfast this morning.