the third of july was once a special time for chicago. a time when a massive amount of fireworks would be launched at the twilight sky, and the whole herd of the city would deposit themselves down on the lake front to watch the spectacle play itself out. but due to budgetary cuts this year the annual event was canceled.
thus, i found myself hanging out with my friend, meg, over at cafe fresco, a couple doors down from my apartment. we huddled on the back patio listening to the sound of the neighborhood firing off their fireworks all around us, confessing a mutual fear to one another of an errant firework blasting us in the head or the more unrealistic scenario of some punk kid with a gun taking the opportunity to disguise the noise of his gun to shoot us.
after that night, i had no real wish to drink, and whats more no real plans for the actual fourth. i locked myself in my white and black tiled sepulchre, only exiting to my fire escape for a much needed accoutrement when the fireworks began to pick up in rhythm. it was then that the curious artist living in the garden level of my building asked me to bomb down. not wanting to be blasted in the head by firework or bullet, i agreed.
over the course of cocktails, i told him of my interest in wine, especially french wine. he produced the wonderful book burgundy stars by william echikson which covers a year in the life of the french chef bernard loiseau and his quest for three michelin stars.
in the hands of a lesser writer, the personality of bernard loiseau would have taken over. but echilkson deftly takes this on, not pulling any punches towards loiseau's considerable ego. he takes time within the narrative to weave in the rich evolution of french haute cuisine, and brings further depth to the book by fleshing out the different surrounding staff of the restaurant, la cote d'or, and how much it means to the entire restaurant--the considerable expense each staff member undergoes to achieve the three star level.
living in america, home of such gastronomical entities as champp's, tgi fridays and applebees, where more care is taken to piling up a plate with enough to feed a family of three, it is easy to take food as art for granted. loiseau's love and care of food, the craftsmanship that went into both the design and application is handled by echikson with descriptions allowing each dish to fall off the page. the considerable insight he uses to describe the world of food reviewers is no less daunting to somebody that enjoys cooking and flavors.
i prize used books (well, read books) most of all. reading a book annotated by the previous reader makes reading seem more of a communal activity than carefully holding the spine of a freshly cracked work. and this tomb did not disappoint. included in it was the bookmark from a store in amsterdam where it was originally purchased, and also a follow-up story written by echikson for the new yorker on what became of loiseau.
there has been talk of whales here lately and perhaps the final coda that came as the last word on loiseau adds poignancy to it. the book concludes in 1991, by 2003 loiseau was dead. at the age of 52, after having maintained his three stars for twelve years there were rumors michelin was going to lower his ranking back down to two. they didn't, but by that point the fire was gone. loiseau had achieved what he had always wanted, but he discontinued to push himself for new excellence. he fell into depression, and in that depression he took his own life.
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Mental Ruminations on the ‘Sota
MY COLLEGE ROOMATE tried to kill himself. He wasn’t an accomplished chef and his suicide attempt was unsuccessful.
Furthermore I was recently in the ‘Sota for a gay wedding … a truly lovely affair. Anyway, this particular visit, my wife, H, was interested in viewing baby pictures of yours truly. The reason for this, I can only imagine, was to infer some vestige of appearance of our soon-to-be kid. In so doing it was revealed, rather astonishingly, that I had enormous cheeks as a baby. I mean balloon-size globes underneath each eyeball. My face resembled a nose (cute as a button) triangulated by three enormous foreheads. If I hadn’t a neck poking out one end of it all the necessary facial asymmetry would have been lost and the result an odd site indeed. Proportions seemed to ameliorate during the toddler years but as a baby I was a grotesque. No doubt these pictures were not reassuring to the expectant mother.
In the process I was privy to some very old graduation pictures. Mule was there, mischievously eyeing the camera. Also attending were the aforementioned J, along with K, G, another J, etc, etc. As is often the case with visual aids of this particular type much reminiscing ensued; however, an oddly disproportionate number of pictures of the graduation cake were present in the stack. At first I paid little mind as my mom was prone to idiosyncrasies as yet illuminated. But on the thirteenth or so cake picture I was curious. A closer look revealed the cake’s inscription: ‘Congratulations Cahab ’96.’ My mother, requiring multiple perspective shots with various illuminations, obviously found the mistake hilarious, a subject for posterity. I was unawares at the time. In retrospect the misspelling conjures some apprehension to be sure …
Ahab’s johnson (Part III)
‘I am that I am.’ Okay … but this seems trivially true unless, of course, nothing else has been said of the subject. ‘I think therefore I am.’ This one sounds better, but who the hell knows … really? I cannot deny however that I am what I am because I am not what I am not. That makes so much more sense anyway. And so it goes … without limit.
We’re finally getting somewhere (and we’re now fully aware that we don’t want to go)!
Ahab’s johnson (Part IV)
Oh shit! The unknowable Whale is, at first, a terrifying revelation. But unknowable things are not the worst things; rather, Ahab’s awareness of the Whale transforms it into something more awesome and more terrible. It crushes mind and spirit. It is seen or unseen. It is known or unknown. Ahab moves instantly from comfortable incomprehensibility into certainty or doubt and from that place there is no regress.
As is natural in his situation Ahab tries desperately to negate the circumstances that led to his present condition. He professes to ‘dismember the dismemberer …’ and, although I have further to read, I’m thus far convinced that Ahab’s task, as he perceives it, is impossible. But reversing himself is harder still. So, progressing inexorably as he must, Ahab commits to the unattainable. The hunt commences; he is ‘madness maddened’, and insanity is the only certainty left.
I CONVEYED THESE thoughts to my wife, H, with no small amount of pride. As an empiricist I’m not well acquainted with the abstract and metaphorical subtleties of grand literature. She convinced me that, though potentially interesting, my treatise was flawed, overanalyzed, and, on second thought, not that interesting. Some discussion ensued and she explained unceremoniously that (I’m paraphrasing): ‘Ahab’s leg is his johnson. Moby Dick cut off his johnson and he, Ahab, seeks revenge.’
Of course! A German nihilist couldn’t have put it better. Hence all the ‘dismemberer’ talk and the dream sequence with the weird merman and his marlin spikes (ie multiple dicks jutting from his piscine body).
i believe aforementioned college roommate did prove successful, eventually, in that quest? perhaps that helps grant some perspective towards the overlying theme of this train of thought with stick-to-it-iveness?
nostalgia, especially when offered in a visual context is especially damning. a friend of mine, somebody i haven't spoken with or really thought of in years was recently killed. she had been part of the 50 member troop i had studied abroad with, ten odd years ago. out of her subsequent funeral, there was an opportunity for a large group of us to gather together where the odd journal of our time was picked up and the myriad of pictures taken could be studied, re-hashed, laughed about.
the cruel aspect of those memories frozen is the reflection given to them now: how much of a dork i looked like then, how an entire year could be spent obsessing over a girl. then there is the crueler pontification realized, over how a person has truly changed over the past ten years, and whether we're to spend our lives making the same stories yet feeling we're improving by swapping the names of some main characters and key scenes.
it seems we grow out of the flaws we now superficially see in our childhood, teenage years and even young adulthood, only to look back on them and realize the same problems. perhaps the best way of reconciling this problem is to only look in a mirror and treat those past lives as a different person.
after finishing the scarlet letter, and with your take on moby dick, it yet again re-enforces the only true way of analyzing a book is by accepting idiom of being an ego centric. whether you're a deconstructionist, feminist, even psychoanalyst, realistically it's how a reader interprets the world around her dictating what she gets out of it.
that said, my way of describing ahab is by dr. samuel johnson: "he who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."
i disagree with both of you. it's an oversimplification, by H, to think of this as purely revenge, even if he was after somebody trying to cut of his johnson or put a proverbial marmot in his bathtub. i concur with you in that ahab realized the quest he was undertaking, and it's been years since i read it (next on my list), but i do think it was something he could conquer. be that the physical presence in the whale or himself.
perhaps this is put best into perspective by fox mulder--moby dick features pretty heavily into the early seasons of the x-files.
mulder: "i always wanted a peg leg or hooks for hands, then maybe it would be enough to simply carry on living--bravely facing life with your disability. without these things you're actually expected to make something of your life. so if i had the peg leg then i'd be more happy, more content and not have to chase after the unknown."
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