Oh, I am slow at keeping up with the comments on old posts and have only just seen this link. It's very good fun.
And what a reading list. Useless in some ways, fantastic in others.
That would also apply to Kim Herzinger, of course, who is yet to get in touch with me.
comments on Donald Barthelme's soups, then asks me to get in touch through his website. Which isn't working. The wonderful news he brings is that more Barthelme is coming. Flying to America: 45 More Stories is to be published by Shoemaker & Hoard soon. And Kim, if your news includes the fact that you're in Greenwich Village now, as Google suggests you may be, I shall be furious. I was there last week, and could have popped in to see you.
The only tolerable meal possible there. Except for the coffee, which isn't. Well of course that is overstatement, but though a good hamburger and chips is a fine thing, you don't want to eat it very often. But there is nothing else that isn't ruined in some way. Jumbo shrimp. Yes please. With a blue cheese and honey mustard remoulade dipping sauce? No thank you. You want cheese with that? Certainly not. You don't seriously call that cheese, do you?
But I love America and Americans. They are very polite and kind and open people, as I agreed this evening with my friend Harry Mount, the well-known Latin lover.
I have had passed on to me by Richard Hyfler, an American friend, some of the reading list which Donald Barthelme gave him when he was a student of his. The students all read it expecting to be asked about it at some point. They never were. Here they are.
Little Disturbances of Man, Grace Paley
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Marquez
Watt, Beckett
The Marquise of O, von Kleist
The Vintage Rabelais
At Swim Two Birds, Flann O'Brien
Not a surprising list, really. That'll make up for the recommendations having been few and far between recently. I'll try to be more diligent.
Science fiction news: Telegraph roundup coming. I will post a link when it comes out. Saw Jon Courtney Grimwood this evening. He has been to Mexico, because he is writing about the poem that Paradise Lost was going to be. Am about to start The Dreaming Void, by Peter F Hamilton, because it's out in August, and it will probably take that long, because I can't read more than about 950 pages a day. He can write that in an hour.
This is pointless except in my continuing bid to look more like Philip K Dick and show off the silly things you can do with my new computer. It will have to do until I can get Richard Linklater to Rotoscope me.
Lunch was Chinese noodles and tea.
Dinner was a beef and watercress sandwich.
I'm listening to: thunder.
This is all very well, you are thinking, but we've heard far too much about books on this blog recently, and not enough about food. Well, I have come back from Paris now, and I can report that the aligot, the tapenade, the goat's cheese, the boudins and sausages, the puy lentils, the brioche, the chocolate mousse, the celeriac remoulade, the terrines, the cuisse de lapin, &c, etc (or ktl, for the Greek fans) continue to give uniform satisfaction. Ditto the Chinese food. Duck and noodles.
But we can have literature AND lunch. We are in the business of feeding both the mind and the body. I have a longstanding interest and expertise in soup. Here is one of the blog's great heroes on the subject:
My fine homemade soups are interesting, economical and tasty. To make them, one proceeds in the following way:
FINE HOMEMADE LEEK SOUP
Take one package Knorr Leek Soupmix. Prepare as directed. Take two live leeks. Chop leeks into quarter-inch rounds. Throw into Soupmix. Throw in 1/2 cup Tribuno Dry Vermouth. Throw in chopped parsley. Throw in some amount of salt and a heavy bit of freshly ground pepper. Eat with good-quality French bread, dipped repeatedly in soup.
FINE HOMEMADE MUSHROOM SOUP
Take one package knorr Mushroom Soupmix. Prepare as directed. Take four large mushrooms. Slice. Throw into Soupmix. Throw in 1/2 cup Tribuno Dry Vermouth, parsley, salt, pepper. Stick bread as above into soup at intervals. Buttering bread enhances taste of the whole.
FINE HOMEMADE CHICKEN SOUP
Take Knorr Chicken Soupmix, prepare as directed, throw in leftover chicken, duck or goose as available. Add enhancements as above.
You can read the other recipe (Oxtail Soup, singled out by Thomas Pynchon, who concedes that Barthelme's burgoo is "a notable moment in chef psychopathology") and the Don's instructions for breakfast, lunch and "Superb dinner for 60" (with input from the Arkansas Department of Corrections, Food Services Division) in The Teachings of Don B, edited by Kim Herzinger (Turtle Bay Books, 1992).
If you clear your plates, I will let you have Anthony Powell's recipe for curry.
