In the upper right-hand corner of certain pages in my copy of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Notes From Underground” (1864), you will find dime-size stains of a curious orange-yellow hue.
The provenance of this tattoo is unmistakable: Cheetos.
The volume thus carries an inviolable truth upon its pages — a truth slightly less exalted, admittedly, than Dostoevsky’s insights about alienation and disaffection in his dark, gnarled novella, but still valid: Person or persons unknown obviously snacked while reading. Person or persons unknown ate a bunch of Cheetos while turning the pages, thus transferring the notoriously adhesive Cheetos residue from fingertip to margin. (DNA tests are pending. Any more questions? See my attorney.)
The combination of Dostoevsky and the munchies may seem violently counterintuitive. We like to think of art as a pristine, genteel, even quasi-sacred realm, a place that remains gloriously free of grubby, everyday realities. If even “Notes From Underground” can be compromised by the baser appetites, what’s next? Goethe and guacamole? Mozart and Chex Mix? This cognitive dissonance is highlighted in a current beer commercial, in which two guys smuggle a couple of cold ones under their jackets during a night at the opera. What makes the moment allegedly hilarious is the wild juxtaposition: beer and “La Boheme.”
Yet food and drink and entertainment have always overlapped, always intermingled, always exchanged fist-bumps and high-fives, and not just in football stadiums and in living rooms with big-screen TVs. A provocative argument, we like to say, gives us “food for thought.” Certain works of art “nourish the soul.” Both art and food, we believe, are required for sustenance. Both literature and film are filled with images of people eating and drinking, sometimes with erotically tinged abandon, from the lip-smacking lasciviousness exhibited by Albert Finney in “Tom Jones” (1963), based on the 1749 Henry Fielding novel that is as thick as a deep-dish pizza, to “Babette’s Feast,” the 1988 movie based on Isak Dinesen’s short story. And we mustn’t forget the gustatory splendors of the 1996 film “Big Night.” Many sumptuous meals are described in “Literary Feasts: Inspired Eating From Classic Fiction” (2006), a book by Sean Brand, including Leopold Bloom’s morning pick-me-up of grilled kidneys with pepper and similarly tasty scenes in the novels of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, among others. “Savoring the arts” has multiple meanings.
This week, the University of Chicago Press kicks off “The Edible Series,” a slate of books by different authors exploring the cultural, historical, social and economic histories of specific foods. “Hamburger,” “Pancake” and “Pizza” are scheduled to be published Wednesday, with “Hot Dog” to follow shortly. The rest of the lineup is just as enticing: “Pie,” “Beer,” “Cake,” “Caviar,” “Fish and Chips” and “Lobster.” (What — no “Cheetos”?)
Writing the biography of a specific food isn’t a new idea, concedes Andrew F. Smith, series editor and author of “Hamburger” and several other books about food and food culture. After all, Smith’s first book — abut the tomato — was published in 1994. Over the years, dense academic studies of particular foods have been common. Food books “are great vehicles to look at so many other things,” Smith said.
But what really turned up the burner under the trend, he explained, were the books by Mark Kurlansky: “Cod” (1997) and “Salt” (2002). They sold extraordinarily well — and suddenly, everybody wanted a piece of this particular pie. “Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages” by Anne Mendelson, was published last week by Knopf. “The Hamburger: A History” by Josh Ozersky was published earlier this year.
These aren’t cookbooks, mind you, although some do include recipes. They use a humble, simple food as a jumping-off point to look at politics, geography, sociology and psychology.
“There’s a huge interest in food,” Smith said from his home in Brooklyn, by way of trying to explain the ever-expanding smorgasbord of food books. “Americans are more concerned about food than ever before. And we’ve figured out that TV dinners and Jell-O and marshmallow salads are not the only things in the world.”
Sprinkle in Americans’ increasing recognition of ethnic foods and a curiosity about other cultures, and you have “a perfect storm — in the good sense,” Smith added.
The books in the Edible series combine straightforward historical data with affectionate ruminations on how the food shows up in culture: movies, music, TV shows, billboards, slogans. In “Pancake,” Ken Albala offers this persuasive observation:
Pancakes taste best when consumed in periods of sloth on protracted weekend mornings. They must be savored without hurry or premeditation, ideally in dressing gown and slippers, at the kitchen table or maybe even in bed, and preferably in excess, just to the brink of nausea. The combination of grease, syrup and flour should create just the right leaden effect on the stomach so as to prevent any further activity for several hours. Pack the numb and bloated carcass in a comfortable chair with a newspaper or in front of the TV …
Snacking while reading is, of course, a high-risk occupation. “I wouldn’t eat a hamburger and read,” Smith cautioned. “If the hamburger’s any good, it’s greasy. I have too much respect for books to do that.” The unstated but plain implication: This is not a man who would eat Cheetos while reading Dostoevsky.
His snack of choice while reading? Peanuts.
Dry-roasted, no doubt.
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Snack match
Which treat from the left is prominently featured in which artistic product from the right?
%% French fries and gravy Madonna’s ‘Candy Shop’ song (2008)
Cookie USA Network’s ‘Burn Notice'(2007-2008)
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Lollipop Marcel Proust’s ‘Remembrance of Things Past’ (1922)
Blueberry yogurt Barry Levinson’s ‘Diner’ movie (1982) %%
Snack match answers:
Cookie: “Remembrance of Things Past”
Lollipop: “Candy Shop”
Blueberry yogurt: “Burn Notice”
French fries and gravy: “Diner”
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Why that food with that entertainment?
Popcorn and movies
When Thomas Edison showed off his fancy new gizmo–the movie camera– at the World’s Columbian Exposition along Chicago’s lakefront in 1893, another inventor was there too: Charles Cretors, who demonstrated his device for popping corn in lard and oil. Thus was born the legendary love affair between popcorn and cinema. Until the late 1920s, popcorn was sold on the street outside theaters. And then came the golden day when a savvy Chicago theater owner thought to himself, “Hey!” and set up a stand right in the lobby to pop and then peddle bags of buttery, salt-laden bliss.
Hot dogs and baseball games
Baseball diamonds are supposed to be perpetually bathed in sunshine, but it was an uncharacteristically blustery April afternoon in the early 1900s at the Polo Grounds when Harry Mosley Stevens, a British immigrant and canny merchant, had his brainstorm: Why not warm up the New York Giants fans by selling ’em sausages wrapped in rolls? Stevens, who is also credited with devising the score card, parlayed his idea into a sports concession empire.
Bonbons and trashy novels
“Bonbons,” the nickname for a small confection that derives from “bon,” the French word for “good,” has long been linked with the consumption of another guilty pleasure: romance novels. The title of Lorna Landvik’s 2003 novel about a book club created by five suburban homemakers–“Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons”–is testimony to the venerable link between gooey treats and steamy pages. The origin, though, may be lost in the historical mists. “You arrange yourself for pleasure when you read,” speculated Nicholas Basbanes, author of many books about the history of reading. “So it’s associated with casual foods. Why shouldn’t you enjoy an appealing taste?”
— Julia Keller
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