“Historically, to be a ghostwriter was to be seen as sort of a literary hack,” she said earlier this month during a video interview from her Manhattan apartment. A better way to imagine Burford is as a therapist, a cajoler, a confidante, and then a sort of medium once the hat comes on and the writing starts. (She can’t explain it, it just works.)
But she’s never in the shadows.
A trip to the Galápagos Islands would be a very fine thing in these times, wouldn’t it? And I am there, at least in spirit, visiting virtually on a four-day journey – on Zoom – with a group of artists led by Mary-Anne Bartlett, the founder of Art Safari, who has been to the archipelago several times. During the pandemic she has switched to offering virtual tours and workshops. But can such a visit give any satisfaction, anything like the pleasure of actually going? It is certainly a heck of lot cheaper, but would the relatively small fee be better saved up for an actual trip?
But I was still left with several pressing questions. Namely, how did we as a society go from maybe indulging in birthday cake several times a year — at your party and others — to tossing its essence into and on everyday items like coffee creamer and popcorn? Was this a new phenomenon, born out of the dearth of social interaction (i.e. birthday parties) during these unprecedented times? And, perhaps most importantly, what exactly is artificial birthday cake flavor?
Nnedi Okorafor’s new novella, Remote Control, opens with the itinerant 14-year-old Sankofa walking up to a strange house and announcing herself as an unwanted Christmas guest. She is known and feared, but fed and clothed as she walks around rural Ghana. Sankofa’s tale unfolds in the same future world as Okorafor’s Who Fears Death and The Book of Phoenix, and it is the latest in her series of Africanfuturist books to imbue the world of tomorrow with the languages, customs, and flavors of Africa.
The dust jacket is long gone and the title-embossed spine flaps free. Naturally, many of the pages are sauce-stained: honourable marks of our stove-side adventures together. New British Classics by Gary Rhodes may be more than 20 years old, but the marks of battle are clear. It remains one of my most consulted cookbooks. When I need cooking times for a rib of beef it’s where I go. When I want the perfect recipe for Yorkshire puddings or a steak and kidney pie, I know where to look. Rhodes died suddenly in 2019, but here he is still holding my clumsy hand. This is just one of the glories of cookbooks. They enable a nerdy conversation, whether the author happens to be alive or dead.
As warm darkness dropped each night,
a gentle breaker cresting the broad coastline,
roses sang long arias into my room.