→ August 3, 2008
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Bel Canto.

All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how.

Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto, winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and a PEN/Faulkner Award, is a beautifully written, intelligent novel with one of the best-developed character ensembles I have ever found in a work of literature.

Bel Canto is based on the 1997 hostage crisis in Lima, where fourteen members of a fringe guerrilla group invaded the Japanese embassy and held 72 people hostage for four months, at the end of which the Peruvian army stormed the embassy and killed all of the terrorists, with one hostage dying of a heart problem in the assault. Patchett’s version is in an unnamed, poor, Spanish-speaking country, in the Vice-President’s residence, where a party is being held in honor of a Japanese executive, Mr. Hosokawa, who may be about to bring a large capital investment to the country. However, he only agreed to attend the party when the organizers agreed to fly in Roxane Coss, a world-famous opera singer and Hosokawa’s favorite artist.

Patchett tips us off up front that the eventual murder victims will be the terrorists, not the hostages, although of course the characters don’t know that as we follow them through the ordeal. Patchett has created an amazing number of fleshed-out characters, showing skill both at delving into human emotions and at painting characters with the flourishes that give them definition. Once the initial period after the raid has ended, each character, terrorist and hostage alike, finds his or her niche within the makeshift commune, like the Vice President who becomes the housekeeper, or the poor priest with a secret love of opera. (In a flashback scene, Father Arguedas confesses his love of opera to his priest, who responds, “Art is not sin. It’s not always good. But it’s not a sin.” The priest asks Arguedas if he prefers Verdi or Wagner, and when Arguedas responds, “Verdi,” the priest answers, “You are young. Come back and tell me again in twenty years.”) But more impressive is the way Patchett takes the relationships between some of the hostages and some of the terrorists beyond simple Stockholm Syndrome territory, showing how factors such as age, size, gender, and skill define interpersonal relationships and building a web of interactions on that basis.

If there’s a flaw at all in Bel Canto, it’s that Patchett made her terrorists too sympathetic. Most of the rank and file members are just teenagers without ideology, and each of the leaders has some distinct humanizing trait. It’s good writing, but also the book’s biggest departure from reality.

Bel Canto lacks a linear plot, instead telling the stories around the shift from the captor/hostage dynamic to a commune that is so tranquil that some of the hostages find they lose their desire to leave. Whether this is because they’re truly happy or because they’re happy to be escaping from the tedium or stresses of their daily lives is left to the reader to decide.

Next up: I owe you reviews of Embers and the nonfiction book Manhunt, but the next book for me to read is a behemoth, Thackeray’s Vanity Fair.

Filed Under: Literature Tagged With: , , , , , ,
→ August 1, 2008
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Chat today.

I’ve got a chat today at 2 pm EDT over at the Four-Letter.

Filed Under: Chat
→ July 31, 2008
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The Road.

In The Road, the winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Cormac McCarthy tells a story about goodness surviving in the most awful of circumstances, but does it in such a brutal, hopeless way that it’s hard to walk away from the novel feeling good about much of anything.

The Road takes place in a world devastated by a nuclear holocaust. Most of the world’s population appears to be dead, and all animal life is presumed extinct. Nuclear winter is gradually setting in; the sun is barely visible through the permanent cloud of ash and dush, and the temperatures are dropping. The story itself involves a man and his son moving south on The Road to try to get to a warmer climate, struggling to survive along the way, needing food and water while also avoiding the derelicts, bandits, and cannibals – yes, cannibals – who also travel The Road.

If you focus almost entirely on the interactions between the man and his son – identified, in true McCarthy fashion, as the Man and the Boy – you find a powerful and tender portrait of filial love. The Man is motivated to press on in hopeless circumstances because of his love for his son, who was born on the night of the first bombing. The other people remaining in the world are separated in the eyes of the Boy into “the good guys” and “the bad guys,” and while the latter appear to far outnumber the former, there are hints of goodness here and there in their limited encounters with the good guys, and of course, in the sacrifices the Man makes to give the Boy a chance at some kind of life.

It was hard for me to glean those glimpses of goodness or faith in the human spirit among the sheer desolation of the setting and the stark brutality of McCarthy’s view of humanity, which borders on misanthropy, muted only slightly by the glimpses of empathy he slips into the text at the bleakest moments. Yet the most powerful moments in the book are the most depraved and the most disturbing, not the few moments of tenderness of the Man towards the Boy or the one meeting with “the good guys” on the Road. The prose, as it was in Blood Meridian, was amazing, and McCarthy knows how to weave little mysteries into his writing with talk about “the fire,” but again, beautiful writing that looks into the abyss is still, at the end of the day, about the abyss. It’s a brilliant work, and I can see why it won the Pulitzer, but it was an arduous read and one I can’t say I enjoyed.

Next up: I’ve already finished Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto and am most of the way through Sandor Marai’s Embers.

Filed Under: Literature Tagged With: , , , ,
→ July 30, 2008
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Deadline TV and radio.

I’ll keep updating this post as more hits come in.

I’ll be on the Herd this morning at 10:25 EDT (“Spanning the Globe”) and on ESPN 1050 in New York at 11:10 am EDT.

I’m scheduled to be on our deadline special on ESPNEWS on Thursday from 1-3 pm EDT, and then on ESPNEWS’ The Hot List at 4:10 pm EDT. I’ll also be on Pregame (6-8 pm EDT) that evening, but we haven’t fixed a time for the hit yet.

Filed Under: Appearances
→ July 29, 2008
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The Next Food Network Star, final episode.

Well, that was totally predictable. I don’t particularly mind seeing Aaron win, since he was one of three contestants whose shows I might have watched (Adam and Shane were the other two), and I think that what he does poorly (relate to the camera) can be taught, especially if his problem is nerves. The only thing that I dislike about Aaron is his butchering of the language – things like subject-verb agreement are not really optional in my book – but he’s likeable and I’m interested in his food.

If Lisa said “za-ba-YONE” one more time, I was going to punch the television. She referred to it as an Italian sauce, but the Italian word is zabaglione, four syllables with a defined “L” sound in the middle. In Italy, it’s also more likely to be a dessert – it’s egg yolks, sugar, and dry Marsala, whisked to the ribbon stage over simmering water – rather than a savory sauce. The savory version is the French sabayon, without a “z” in sight. If you can’t pronounce it properly, fine, just don’t over-enunciate it every damn time you say it. My wife was watching with me, and when I finally said, “Why the hell is she pronouncing it like that?” my wife’s response was dead-on: “Because she’s a snob.”

Adam was great on camera, as usual, but beer-can chicken isn’t all that special a dish, and it’s a little bit white-trashy. I didn’t walk away from his pilot feeling like there was a real show there. And by the way, McCall was a ringer, right? She talked like she was reading lines off a script.

I wish they’d shown a little more of the behind-the-scenes stuff with Gordon Elliott, either more of the “pitch” meetings or more of the directions he was giving the talent during the tapings. And it’s a pretty bad job by FN to say that Aaron’s show (“Big Daddy’s Kitchen”) will air in one week, when we all know that that final episode was taped ages ago, and when his show is nowhere to be found on any FN schedule. I’d like to at least give one episode a shot, but odds are by the time it comes around I’ll have forgotten all about it.

Unrelated note … my wife also likes the analogous HGTV series Design Star, and I watched their last episode with her on Sunday. (The winner is chosen by audience vote, rather than by judges, so there’s one more episode coming where they announce the winner.) One of the two contestants, Jen, painted horizontal stripes on the wall in two close but not identical shades of beige, and kept calling it an “architectural feature.” I liked the way the walls looked, but what the heck is an architectural feature? Why is that a good thing? You can’t drop jargon into a show aimed at a lay audience. I wouldn’t go on ESPNEWS and start talking about a back-side collapse or a hook or stab without either explaining it further or substituting a more accessible term. I’m not saying Jen shouldn’t win, but I was surprised that none of the judges criticized her for her use of the industry vernacular.

Filed Under: Cooking, Food Tagged With: , ,
→ July 28, 2008
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TV, radio.

I’ll be on ESPNEWS today at 3:40 pm EDT. Unfortunately, they changed my hit time to 3:20 pm but did not tell me about the change until it was too late for me to reach the studio, so no TV for me today.

I’ll also be St. Louis 1380 AM today sometime in the 4 o’clock hour CDT with Bernie and Randy (4:20 or 4:40, probably), and then on the ESPN St. Louis affiliate (1190) on Tuesday at 11:30 am CDT.

I’m also going to tape a segment for the evening show on ESPN 710 in Los Angeles, although I don’t know when it will air within the show.

Filed Under: Appearances
→ July 25, 2008
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Randy Pausch, 1960-2008.

Randy Pausch died today after a lengthy battle with the cruelest of all cancers, pancreatic cancer. My heart goes out to his wife and three children.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: ,
→ July 25, 2008
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Soft-serve ice cream.

Callum sent along this great New York Times article on the evolution of soft-serve ice cream:

Young chefs around the country, with fond memories of Dairy Queen stands and Mister Softee trucks, are remaking soft-serve ice cream, with epicurean takes on traditional ingredients as well as some things never before seen spiraling out of an icy nozzle, like saffron, bourbon and jalapeño flavors.

At Sketch Ice Cream, a shop in Berkeley, Calif., boysenberry, balsamic Bing cherry, white peach and strawberry are the soft serves of choice this month; vanilla is always available.

I grew up with and am still totally partial to Carvel ice cream, one of the original soft-serve ice cream vendors. Carvel’s product is technically a frozen custard because it contains egg yolks, although it turns out that it also contains mono- and diglycerides, which come from natural sources but aren’t strictly necessary for a good soft-serve product. That won’t stop me from eating Carvel, since it tastes great and still has the best texture I’ve ever had in soft-serve ice cream, but maybe it’s time for me to branch out a little.

Filed Under: Food Tagged With: ,
→ July 24, 2008
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Kale with Garlic and Chorizo.

I bought some kale today at Whole Foods on a whim. I’ve never had kale before, but I keep reading how healthful it is, and I feel like I make the same three or four vegetables all the time anyway. Knowing the affinity that dark green, leafy vegetables have for garlic, cured pork, and lemon, I went rooting around in my freezer for some bacon … and found, instead, some chorizo I’d frozen probably two months ago and forgotten. Thus, this dish.

1 bunch kale (no idea how you measure this stuff)
2 cloves garlic, slivered
1 link chorizo or andouille sausage (cured or dried, but not fresh), diced finely
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp water
pinch salt
lemon juice (optional)

1. Remove the kale leaves from their stems. (Best way: Fold the leaf in half at the stem, cut the stem away from the leaf.) Slice crosswise into ribbons. Rinse in a salad spinner or colander.
2. In a large lidded sauté pan, heat the olive oil until hot but not smoking. Add the garlic and sausage and sauté until the garlic is brown, the oil has turned slightly red or golden, and the sausage is fragrant.
3. Add as much kale as the pan will hold and toss gently in the oil. When this wilts, add more kale, continuing until all of the kale is added.
4. Add the 1 Tbsp water and reduce the heat to medium. Put the lid on the pan and cook for 15 to 18 minutes, until the kale has turned a deep green and is fully wilted. (The curly edges will still be curly and a little stiff.)
5. Season with salt and, if desired, a twist of lemon juice. Serve immediately.

Filed Under: Cooking, Food Tagged With: , ,
→ July 24, 2008
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The Mailbag of Malcontent, vol. 10.

From today’s chat:

(1421) Stephexander (Chicago)
U totally r bashing on the white sox u don’t even watch baseball u r just liek the rest of the espn writers because u are biased toward the east coast omg i h8 espn and i hate you kieth law. u must be related to vance law

I didn’t know you could participate in an ESPN chat via text message.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: ,