AD review in the New York Observer??

[davemarc]

List and Chris--

Ah--got it! Heh. It's Adam Begley, and it's not much of a review (of ATD,
anyway). It's possible that it has already been shared with the list. See
below.

d.


http://www.observer.com/20061204/20061204_Adam_Begley_culture_books2.asp

Kafka's Soup: A Complete History of World Literature in 14 Recipes, by Mark
Crick. Harcourt, 92 pages, $14.95.

I ought to be writing about Thomas Pynchon. His gargantuan new novel. But I'
ve lost confidence in Mr. Pynchon, who hasn't written a good book since
Gravity's Rainbow, 33 years ago, and so I found I couldn't force myself to
read the whole of Against the Day: I couldn't kid myself into believing that
the 1,085th page would give me greater satisfaction than 238th. The novel
seemed to me, as it did to other critics who slogged heroically through to
the end, like a Pynchon parody. I quit, and picked up Kafka's Soup instead;
it's brief and witty and also useful: pastiche with a purpose.

An ideal stocking-stuffer, Kafka's Soup is a cookbook dressed up as a
literary romp (or vice versa): 14 recipes presented in the voice of 14
different writers, from Homer to Irvine Welsh. If you ever wanted to taste
Jane Austen's Tarragon Eggs (a "delightful union"), or wondered how Proust
would feel about tiramisu (a whiff of Amaretto di Saronno does the work of a
madeleine), or how Graham Greene would prepare Vietnamese chicken ("Ritually
I sliced the breasts into thin strips. The white flesh lay on the plate like
a shredded contract . "), Mark Crick's pretty little book is just the
ticket.

A photographer who lives in London, Mr. Crick is evidently a man of many
talents: His recipes are both plausible and appetizing; his literary
impersonations are all cleverly executed and, in patches, brilliant; and the
illustrations (also by Mr. Crick) are playful pastiche, too. Mushroom
Risotto à la John Steinbeck, for example, is illustrated by a sepia-tinted
photograph of a farm worker's hands cupping a small pile of dried porcini:
Walker Evans meets Dean and DeLuca. Quick Miso Soup à la Franz Kafka gives
Mr. Crick the opportunity to tip his hat to Andy Warhol's iconic Campbell's
Soup Cans. And for Rich Chocolate Cake à la Irvine Welsh, Mr. Crick supplies
an etching-"After Hogarth"-of Glaswegian junkies lounging in the "shithole"
they call home.

How does Mr. Crick imagine that a Scottish junkie checks to see if a cake is
ready to come out of the oven? Syringe and needle, of course: "Nae problem,
the needle is clean." And how would Homer begin a recipe for rabbit stew?
"Sing now, goddess, of the hunger of Peleus' son, Achilles." Can you picture
Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe in the kitchen? Mr. Crick can: "I put the
squeeze on a lemon and it soon juiced. It was easy. It was much too
easy .. "

I wonder what he would have had Thomas Pynchon cook up. Millefeuille? With a
pointillist illustration?

Adam Begley is the books editor of The Observer.