Wanderlust

From Mike Albo’s novella “The Junket:”

I have forgone something lasting to continue my long-term relationship with the most exciting but unreliable boyfriend of all—New York City. Maybe it’s time to break up with it, to emancipate myself from the teasing, taunting, sexy metropolis that has kept me within its grip my entire adult life. But how do I break up with a city? How long am I supposed to believe I can “make it” here?

The word “epicurean” has come to describe those who are fond of luxury, sensual pleasure, and gourmet food. At some point, its definition evolved away from that of capital-E “Epicurean,” which refers to a follower of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus. Members of both groups advocate the pursuit of pleasure, but today’s hedonists define that very differently than the old philosopher did. To him, pleasure was attained by living simply and keeping one’s desires in check. One of his aphorisms was that “nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.”

He preferred plain boiled lentils to slow-roasted resin-infused pheasant, an ancient Greek delicacy prepared for noblemen by slaves. Today, countless foodies evoke Epicurus in the names of their blogs, magazines, and imported-cheese stores, but their tastes tend toward slaved-over pheasant.

The difference in these two understandings of how to maximize pleasure is at the heart of Travels with Epicurus, a charming meditation on aging. To live well in old age—or at any age—should we chase newer and better sensations, or learn to savor what we have? Daniel Klein takes us on a thought-provoking journey to find out.

My review continues here. Get Daniel Klein’s “Travels with Epicurus: A Journey to a Greek Island in Search of a Fulfilled Life” here.

From A in Colorado:

Hello! Do you offer any internships in travel writing? Let me know!

For the record, I do not. But A for effort.

The New York Times reported that Jill Kelley, instigator of the Petraeus-Broadwell-Allen-etc. probe, called 911 several times to complain about snooping reporters:

In at least one call, she asked for “diplomatic protection,” saying she is an “honorary consul general,” a designation she reportedly received from South Korean diplomats.

Wondering what an honorary consul does? Take it from Charley Fortnum, aging alcoholic father-to-be and the title character in Graham Greene’s “The Honorary Consul,” complaining here about his boss, the British ambassador in Buenos Aires:

He wants a report on the maté industry in this province. Why? Nobody drinks maté in the old country. Never heard of it probably, but I’ll have to work for a week, driving around on bad roads, and then those fellows at the Embassy wonder why I have to import a new car every two years. It’s my right to have one. My diplomatic right. I pay for it myself and if I choose to sell it again it’s my concern not the Ambassador’s. Fortnum’s Pride is more reliable on these roads. I charge nothing for her, and yet I’m wearing her out in their service. What a lot of mean bastards they are, Plarr, at the Embassy. They even question the rent I pay for this office.

I get many letters about “Wanderlust” from twenty-somethings, and they always mean a lot to me. But this is the first from someone in her seventies, so I find it very interesting. And I like the fact that she stumbled upon the book near one of my old haunts. From K in Paris:

Last week I found “Wanderlust” on a bookshelf in a former embassy apartment on the Rue de l’Universite in Paris. It gave an unexpected edge to my trip and now my travel companion is captivated with your adventures. Her text this morning: “I was up with Wanderlust late into the night. Her experience in Yemen! RUN!”

Seventy-something women identify with the idea of seeking thirst, not water. And we struggle to find what you have: a true voice and the capacity to make decisions beyond the influence of lovers/husbands and parents, alive or dead.

In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused.

—Ernest Hemingway, 1938, in the preface to “The First Forty-nine.”

The signs did not speak to me. These were local matters, but I was leaving this morning. And when you are leaving, the promises in advertisements are ineffectual. Money, school, house, radio: I was putting them behind me, and in the duration of this short trip from Wellington Circle to State Street, the words of the ads had become merely an imploring jabber, like the nonsense of an unknown language. I could shrug; I was being pulled away from home. Apart from the cold and the blinding light on the fallen snow, there was nothing of great significance in my going, nothing momentous except that as we drew into South Station I was a mile nearer to Patagonia.

I’m leaving on a trip tomorrow morning, flying from Vancouver to Seoul. I found a copy of Paul Theroux’s “The Old Patagonian Express” (1979) in my parents’ house, and this, from the first chapter, captures one of the pleasurable realities of departure, when everything around you already seems far away.

Book agent Betsy Lerner watched the excellent movie Once and was awed and mystified that such a simple story—a musical, no less—ever got greenlighted by the green-light-wielders. But it did!

What’s the lesson? Do your work. Just do your fucking work. You want to write about a mushroom cap, write a about a mushroom cap. The other day I saw a photo of some sculpture that’s at the bottom of the ocean and you have to scuba dive to see it. Right on! I mean this is a gigantic world. Make your sandscape. Make your horse out of tape. I knew a girl who sculpted with butter.  Write your epic, toe your name in the sand.

Full post is here.

I’ve been shooting off in some unusual writing directions lately. Ocean exploration is featured. So, separately, is fiction. To the casual observer, these things might seem totally discontinuous with previous endeavors. This little post gave me the juice I needed to stick to my guns for another day and ignore the internalized voice that forever screams, there are more sure fire ways to make money. That little voice, by the way, doesn’t know what it’s talking about, because there are no sure-fire ways to make money in creative work. Point being: Make the thing you need to make.

This WSJ review in which Stephen Budiansky is mostly scathing about four new food books got me thinking about the art of reviewing. I’ve occasionally written book reviews and enjoy doing it, but if I feel anything less than wholehearted enthusiasm for the book, the pitfalls are legion. However cathartic it would feel to lay into a work that has ticked me off or wasted my time, I can’t help remembering that this thing in my hands took up years, most likely, of the author’s life. Maybe authors shouldn’t review books. An ounce of empathy and you’re on an emotional roller coaster.

I also subscribe to the view that there’s no point in publishing a terrible review of an obscure book by a little-known author. If, say, Martin Amis or Margaret Atwood write something crummy, the world deserves to know. But who, exactly, is being served when a reviewer tells readers that this thing they probably wouldn’t have heard of anyway is best avoided?

Budiansky’s review, though—of the titles “Change Comes to Dinner,” “Culinary Intelligence,” “The Locavore’s Dilemma,” and “The Taste of Tomorrow”—feels more justified. He uses sentences no author ever wants to read about their book:  “We are not in such capable hands…these topics tend to be more fascinating to oneself than to others…one of those high-concept ideas that sound great in a book proposal but prove to be little more than a phrase…a complete mess of a book.”

With the exception of “The Locavore’s Dilemma,” whose co-author has been cheerfully challenging local-food extremists on the radio waves, I may never have come across these books anyway. But Budiansky’s calling out the badness of several new books on one theme has alerted me to a broader issue. This is what happens when budget- and staff-starved publishing houses jump on a hot subject trend, in this case the future of food. They acquire these projects and process them like factory sausages, slapping on shiny wrappers and shipping them to store shelves before the supposedly fickle public attention span moves on. That, I think, is worth pointing out.