You’re probably not familiar with the name Edna Ferber – I wasn’t until I saw it on the list of winners of the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel – but you’ve probably heard of her work by way of the movies. She wrote the novels behind the films Showboat, Cimarron, Saratoga Trunk, and Giant, the last perhaps more notorious for being James Dean’s last work than for anything else. So Big
So Big is the story of a mother and a son, starting from the mother’s sudden thrusting into the world after her father’s sudden (and somewhat comical) death and running into the son’s late twenties and early thirties. The mother, Selina Peake, is admonished by her father that life is an adventure if you get after it, but lets life lead her along until she’s forced to take the reins, after which she shows herself as a woman of spirit and initiative:
Youth was gone, but she had health, courage; a boy of nine; twenty-five acres of wornout farm land; dwelling and out-houses in a bad state of repair; and a gay adventuresome spirit that was never to die, though it led her into curious places and she often found, at the end, only a trackless waste from which she had to retrace her steps painfully. But always, to her, red and green cabbages were to be jade and burgundy, chrysoprase and porphyry. Life has no weapons against a woman like that.*
*I’m about 90% certain I read a passage similar to this one that used almost identical wording at the end in Lonesome Dove, used to describe Clara, but of course, I didn’t write down the page number and I’m not likely to find it by skimming through a 900-page book. If any of you choose to tackle that tome in the future, keep an eye out a phrase like “Life has no weapons against a woman like that.”
Selina, widowed with her young son Dirk (nicknamed “Sobig” after the “How big is baby?” game played with him as an infant), takes over the family farm and, with the help of the novel’s one substantial coincidence, carves out a living and eventually a life for the two of them, making Dirk’s well-being her driving force, ensuring that he receives an education and can start life with the advantages she lacked. It is, along those lines, a bit of a love story in the way that Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is – a parent, alone, who will do anything for his/her son.
Somewhere past the novel’s midpoint, the focus shifts from Selina to the adult Dirk, first in college, then in his aimless early adulthood both in work and in his personal life. He starts out in a career he likes but finds no success, then in a career in which he finds success but no pleasure. He is good-looking and inadvertently charming, but almost apathetic towards women, with no interest in the type of woman he “should” be seeing:
The Farnham girl was a nice girl. She was the kind of girl one should fall in love with and doesn’t. The Farnham girl was one of the many well-bred Chicago girls of her day and class. Fine, honest, clear-headed, frank, capable, good-looking in an indefinite and unarresting sort of way. Hair-coloured hair, good teeth, good enough eyes, clear skin; sensible medium hands and feet … Her hand met yours firmly – and it was just a hand. At the contact no current darted through you, sending its shaft with a little zing to your heart.
It’s a pleasant read with dry wit like that of the passage about (I found “hair-coloured hair” rather clever) and an incredibly compelling and well-drawn character in Selina, for whom one must root as she faces adversity, although her one big low moment ends prematurely with the aforementioned coincidence (you could even call it a deus ex machina). Dirk is less compelling, by design, although it slows the book’s final third considerably until he meets someone who, more than anything, is spirited like his mother. The book also slowed a bit for me for the unclear theme – what are we looking at here: Selina’s trials? The rise of an independent woman? Her dedication to her son? Her son’s lack of lust for life? The rural/urban divide of Chicago in the early years of the 20th century? I couldn’t tell you; all of the above are present, none is dominant. I like my novels to be about something; this was about many things, but perhaps it was about too many things for a novel so short.
Next up: From the seventh winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel to the second-most recent winner of its successor award, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Could you download the book and then use the find feature to find the similar passages?
Off topic, but I was hoping somebody here might have some advice for me…. I’m trying to get a good thick crust on some homemade French bread. I’ve been working at this for quite a while and have yet to be able to do it. I can get a good crunchy crust, but it remains thin.
I have tried to add more sugar to the dough, I have attempted to spray the dough with water before baking, I have put a shallow tray in the oven and boiled water in it while pre-heating the oven. I have tried a combination of all these things.
I’m pre-heating the oven to 475-500, and I’ve been using King Arthur flour. Is there some sort of technique or trick I’m missing?
Mike: Straight dough method? Sponge? Sourdough? I associate thicker crusts with the latter two methods, where you start the process the night before and do a slow ferment in the fridge.
Peter: Download it where?
Keith, if you get the chance can you change the statisticianmagician link on the side to this: http://www.statisticianmagician.com/. Thanks. And I used the same creator (BOB) that you used. Not the same theme of course.
Keith, I am using what I assume to be the straight dough method. Growing and maintaining a sourdough starter is a little too daunting to me, and I am not totally sure what the sponge method is.
I’m generally letting the dough rise two or three times over the course of probably 3-5 hours, depending on what I have time for, etc.
What I would really like to achieve is the kind of crust that you would typically find on a baguette.
Cm – We do a lot of home made pizza in our house and while this may not be helpful, we’ve found that the actual medium that the dough is baked on can make a huge difference. We found pizza stones versus pizza sheets can make a difference. We also found that the consistency of the dough (thicker vs thinner) can really change the crust (more or less depending on the type of dough you have made). We kept having similar issues with mediocre bread until we found the right medium to cook it on. Now we have dense, chewy yet crunchy pizza dough we regularly make (we’ve even perfected it with whole wheat flour!)
Yes, a stone makes a huge difference, particularly for pizza.
Mike, I associate thick crusty bread with overnight fermentation. I could be wrong on that, but I don’t think you’ll get the kind of crust you want from the straight-dough method. (A sponge bread uses a sponge starter – a sponge, a biga, a poolish – that ferments overnight or longer in the fridge.) From what cookbook did you get your recipe?
Follow-up bread question. Just making the basic white sandwich break from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice (buttermilk/butter version) and while the taste is fine, I’d like it less dense and higher rise. Simply add more yeast? Let stand for longer than 90 minutes before baking.
Weeks rumored to be done for the season. Just terrible luck for him on an annual basis.
brian-
Can you share the whole wheat pizza dough recipe (including cooking instructions once prepped, if possible)?
@Thanks Brian, I’ll have to get a pizza stone and give that a try. I have an electric oven, I’m not sure if that matters. Anyone know if I could just use some unglazed ceramic tiles? I actually have them sitting around.
@Keith – I don’t really have a recipe, I’ve kind of been screwing around with different combinations of rising time and kneading and whatnot until I find something that works well. I guess it is part of the fun to me. The basic ingredient measurements I got out of a book called Beard on Bread.
I have unglazed ceramic tiles on my oven floor. They help retain heat even if you don’t cook on them.
I’m not sure where to point you from here other than to suggest a slow-fermentation recipe like the sponge breads in Joy of Cookingor any biga-based recipe in The Bread Baker’s Apprentice.
There’s Kindle and the iPhone app plus I know many local libraries are not offering eBook loans. Then again 900 page books probably aren’t at the top of the priority list to get onto those services.
are now offering*
BSK
cup of flat beer
2.5 cups of all purpose flour (can half with wheat flour)
2 tablespoons sugar
teaspoon of salt
tablespoon of butter
tea spoon of yeast
(We’ve been using a bread machine as the time it takes to make it without can be a long 5+ hour process).
Once you have the dough we cook it for 20 minutes at 400. We do not use a pizza stone but a pizza baking sheet with holes in it as we found it makes better pizza and it has the added value of not needing the corn meal.
It’s really a modified pretzel dough recipe we turned into a really great pizza dough. You can sub blue corn flour or add chili’s or sun dried tomatos to your crust. Whatever your fancy. We love ATK and model our kitchen after theirs. Take a recipe and play with it until the best results come. It also works best if you understand how things work together to understand why things happen. Alton Brown is a great starting place.
Pos COMPLETELY tears about Phillips for his criticism of Beltran: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/joe_posnanski/05/19/carlos.beltran/index.html
brian-
Thanks. Two questions:
1.) Does the type of beer matter? I would imagine an oatmeal stout would work very differently than a pilsner. Is there one you found is best?
2.) Without a bread machine, what would that step of the process look like?
1. good question. we always use bud light or something similar that happens to be on sale. 2. you can make your entire dough in the machine. from dry ingredients to ready-to-use material. you’d have to check your machine for settings and the like but it’s easy to use. people say it is cheating but that’s not fair because making really good dough is a huge process. really though my wife is the baker. great people to ask are bakers however they don’t always give up secrets or mormons. they apparently bake for religious purposes and are really good at troubleshooting. crazy as it sounds but they have all your baking answers.
2. oops sorry I misread your question. without the machine then you’d be best off reading a cook book. just look for a pretzel recipe and modify you cooking in order to not make a pretzel crust pizza! we live in a desert and I think you live in the north east. our recipe/cooking will be different. we let things rise outside it is so hot. keith or someone might have a better answer for the actual long process but again a mormon could help.
I don’t cook with a bread machine – I do almost everything by hand. I’ve never used beer or anything but water in pizza dough because I don’t want the added flavor – the crust of a pizza should taste like, well, pizza crust. Plus adding anything with sugar will affect browning time.
I don’t know what small-b brian’s end product is like, but I have made pizza on all manner of surfaces, and nothing comes close to stone for browning and crispness. I don’t think you’ll ever find a pizzeria worth its sauce that bakes on a metal pan.
our crust is awesome! the thing about baking is there is no right answer. only what you like. we like the beer, others might not. it is about experimenting to see what works best for you and your tastes. that’s why no two blueberry muffins are the same- everyone has a different take on what a blueberry muffin should be. good luck bsk. (but really – how could a pizza crust with beer be wrong?)
Keith, am I wrong, or shouldn’t the Pads be getting a little more in a possible Peavy trade? Poreda (who quite possibly will end up in the bullpen) as the centerpiece? If the Pads really like him so much why didn’t they just take him in 07′ instead of pitchability darling Nick Schmidt?
You know, Joba never would have gotten hit in the leg with that line drive had he been in the bullpen…