For those of us for whom books and reading have been an integral part of existence, perhaps even thinking ourselves superior because of it, it is well to be reminded that literacy and authorship are not in themselves unequivocally good. Kalder points out that if Stalin had remained illiterate, as he might easily have done, the world would have been saved a lot of trouble; nor would the world have been much the poorer without Mein Kampf or Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung. The country churchyard may contain many a mute inglorious Milton, but it might likewise contain many a mute would-have-been Hitler.
The prestige of the book as a cultural artifact has declined steeply of late, as is daily observable almost everywhere, but in the totalitarian century it was undiminished. Every tyrant wanted to publish a book; to have written one (or at least have his name affixed to it as the author) was proof of intellectual gravitas. In the Romania of the Ceausescus, for example, Elena’s great work, a dissertation called Stereospecific Polymerization of Isoprene, was widely available, even when most other commodities were in short supply. As with Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, this was a book more to be seen with than read; it was the proof of loyal belief in the Ceausescus’ superior intellect (Elena’s husband, Nicolae, was known as the “Danube of Thought”).
My father once showed me an 8 ½” x 11” photo of a McDonald’s drive-through sign, set against a landscape of red dust. There was nothing around for miles; yellow arches were the only humanizing marker in an endless plain. He asked me where I thought the picture was taken. I had no idea. He later showed the picture to our neighborhood friends at a party and explained that it was land he was considering purchasing south of our home in Chandler, AZ. They nodded, asking about prices and contracts with polite interest. Once this had gone on long enough, he revealed he had actually edited those golden arches onto a stock image of Mars. I cringed, all the adults laughed. It was a summer day. The sun burned with its typical intensity, insistent on my skin. The cracked concrete around the pool tessellated outward like the Martian ground. I let my feet dangle in the water, watched them become silhouettes, ghostly in the unnatural blue. All seemed well.
Years later, on July 20, 2017, temperatures in the City of Phoenix reached 119 degrees, the fourth hottest day the city had ever experienced. The city’s national weather service branch represented the highest temperatures in a shade of brilliant magenta. These areas were designated as “rare, dangerous, and possibly life threatening.” All of Phoenix and its surrounding suburbs glowed pink.
By the end of the day, I would learn that the downside of being on a tour was not, in our case, our fellow tour-goers (who, though mostly older than we were by an average of 12 years, were an energetic, friendly bunch). Rather, it was exactly what the upside of the tour was supposed to be: the schedule, which included meal times and number of sites visited per day. You went where and when the tour took you, even if you would have preferred a good long après-lunch nap.
If there is a philosophy behind this food, it is more about eating than about cooking. “I think many people today haven’t really eaten for years,” said Amanda Bechara, who with her husband, Daniel Goldstein, owns Carthage Must Be Destroyed, a color-filled and lofty cafe hidden in an unmarked alley in Bushwick, Brooklyn. “Especially people who eat in New York restaurants all the time.”
Ms. Bechara is emphatically uninterested in inventing the next fish-skin chicharrón or rye-bread gelato, the kind of culinary innovations and challenges that usually drive New York chefs forward. Instead, her formidable creative energy is diverted into finding the products she wants: flavorful tomatoes, a steady supply of organic avocados and really ripe mangoes — not an easy task, even in this food-loving city.
“Early Work” is a tidy and perfectly ornamented novel with no unsanded corners or unglossed surfaces. It rewards as much attention as you want to give it. Read it on a beach for the refreshment of a classic boy-meets-girl plot, or turn the pages more slowly to soak in some truly salty koans and morally insolvent characters. If I were a millionaire I’d start a foundation to subsidize novels like it, because I worry about them. It’s not a book that will inspire hot takes or incendiary tweets; the author is unfashionably male and the concerns unfashionably universal. It’s an accomplished and delightful book, but there’s no hashtag for that.