The Ethics of Mentioning Friends

[russ parsons]

just to be clear: i think some people are attaching much too much weight to a cookbook blurb. it's more like a polite introduction, not like someone has signed on to become a celebrity spokesperson for the book (whether this is as it should be or not is a matter for another debate). i would be willing to bet that if you walked up to any cookbook author and asked them who had blurbed their books, they would be hard-pressed to come up with more than 2 or 3 names--no matter how many books they had written. conversely, my guess is that if you had asked jean-george (before the whole review brouhahah) whether he had blurbed hesser's book, he would have had to check the back cover to find out for sure.

Edited June 2, 2005 by russ parsons (log)

[JohnL]

just to be clear: i think some people are attaching much too much weight to a cookbook blurg. it's more like a polite introduction, not like someone has signed on to become a celebrity spokesperson for the book (whether this is as it should be or not is a matter for another debate). i would be willing to bet that if you walked up to any cookbook author and asked them who had blurbed their books, they would be hard-pressed to come up with more than 2 or 3 names--no matter how many books they had written. conversely, my guess is that if you had asked jean-george (before the whole review brouhahah) whether he had blurbed hesser's book, he would have had to check the back cover to find out for sure.

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You are right--too much attention to blurbs!

These things are often arranged by publishers and are not initiated by the author (or blurbee!) or the blurber (or is it blurbist).

The real issue is-is the reference appropriate to the review--does it enhance what the author of the review is trying to say.

[Lesley C]

I don't know. A blurb is an endorsement, he's saying, "Hey, that Amanda is my kind of girl, she's on my team, and if you like me, you'll probably like her?"

I have bought cookbooks after reading blurbs. The paperback version of Cooking for Mr. Latte has a blurb by Nigella Lawson right on the front cover. That's there for a reason.

But back on topic, Russ is bang on. That Robuchon line was name dropping. But it dates her as well. I mean, really, Robuchon? Atelier aside, he's sooo eighties.

[malcolmjolley]

LOL Live by the blurb, die by the blurb!

[russ parsons]

I don't know. A blurb is an endorsement, he's saying, "Hey, that Amanda is my kind of girl, she's on my team, and if you like me, you'll probably like her?"

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sorry lesley, as someone who blurbs and has been blurbed, that is not my understanding at all of what the transaction is. my interpretation is much more like this: "so-and-so sent me the book; i looked at it; it's pretty good; i'll write two sentences." of course, an alternate interpretation could be: "so-and-so sent me the book; it totally blows; but he/she is too important for me to piss off; so i'll write two sentences."

regardless, there is not a hint of "my team" or certainly of a financial link. maybe things are different in canada, though, where the people are nicer, eh?

[Lesley C]

Just because we don't carry guns doesn't mean we're nicer. AS for Canada, no, no one here is really important enough to merit a blurb. We would reach out to some bigwig American. Or bribe him -- or her -- with some really topnotch maple syrup.

AS for the politics of the blurb, I'm not talking about the understanding of the transaction, but the interpretation of the general public.

If Bourdain blurbs a book, someone like my mother doesn't know he may share the same agent or editor as the author. Someone like my mother is thinking, "Well, now if that nice Bourdain boy likes this book, I just might as well."

[russ parsons]

so that's how she ended up with "hustler's honeys"? thought it was a cookbook?

maple syrup... mmmmm. got a book coming out?

[touaregsand]

Just because we don't carry guns doesn't mean we're nicer.  AS for Canada, no, no one here is really important enough to merit a blurb. We would reach out to some bigwig American. Or bribe him -- or her -- with some really topnotch maple syrup.

AS for the politics of the blurb, I'm not talking about the understanding of the transaction, but the interpretation of the general public.

If Bourdain blurbs a book, someone like my mother doesn't know he may share the same agent or editor as the author. Someone like my mother is thinking, "Well, now if that nice Bourdain boy likes this book, I just might as well."

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Is there a well known Canadian with the last name Bourdain? I know everybody is nicer up there.

[Daniel]

The premise that Hesser had some kind of substantial financial entanglement with Vongerichten because he blurbed her book is absurd.

So a book is the only product in the entire history of commerce that doesnt benefit by a celebrity endorcement? Interesting....

[russ parsons]

c'mon daniel. let's get real. a good blurb might sell [MIGHT sell] 200 books. at the standard royalty rate, if the book had already earned back the advance, that means $600 (and for most books, that money is strictly theoretical since they never earn back their advance). does that sound like enough money for someone to compromise their integrity?

[Daniel]

c'mon daniel. let's get real. a good blurb might sell [MIGHT sell] 200 books. at the standard royalty rate, if the book had already earned back the advance, that means $600 (and for most books, that money is strictly theoretical since they never earn back their advance). does that sound like enough money for someone to compromise their integrity?

Where are you getting these figures from?

[russ parsons]

c'mon daniel. let's get real. a good blurb might sell [MIGHT sell] 200 books. at the standard royalty rate, if the book had already earned back the advance, that means $600 (and for most books, that money is strictly theoretical since they never earn back their advance). does that sound like enough money for someone to compromise their integrity?

Where are you getting these figures from?

sadly, personal experience.

[Lesley C]

so that's how she ended up with "hustler's honeys"? thought it was a cookbook?

maple syrup... mmmmm. got a book coming out?

Hustler's Honeys is a cookbook. The sub head is:

"One hundred and one uses for honey by Hustler's hottest babes"

I swear those girls have the best recipe for Nid D'Abeille cakes and nougat glace au miel. Miles better than those nerds at Cook's Illustrated.

As for a book, the maple syrup I have access to up here in frosty Quebec could get me a book blurb from Joel Robuchon and Patricia Wells!

"I laughed .. I cried .. I made pancakes"

[Bux]

Gee, I always thought blurbs were a way for chefs and authors to keep their names in the public eye. There's another side to every coin, even the one glued to pavement by some prankster. What I find amusing about this, and every other public message board, is the willingness for lay people to make assumptions and explain them in great detail even when they fly in the face of more professional opinion coming from experience in the subject.

More relevvant to the original subject matter. Lesley notes that Patricia Wells dates herself by putting Robuchon up as a paragon. I'd debate that. Having a dish cited as the best preparation in twenty years is greater praise than having it cited as better than anything I ate last year. On the other hand, the best of it's kind since Careme, or even Escoffier is bound to sound hollow as the reviewer is likely to have a large chunk of what went by in that period of time. That Robuchon was so revered in his prime and that Wells is so tied to him, makes him a good yardstick for her to use. I can't imagine the mention sold many cookbooks.

[Lesley C]

Robuchon was so revered in his prime

You hit the nail right on the head. Revered in his prime -- and in his time. Today how many young chefs are looking at old Robuchon plates for inspiration? I would think few, if none.

Anyway, can you really compare something great you ate twenty years ago with something you ate yesterday? Are you as sophisticated a diner? Haven't tastes changed? Or evolved? Hard to know. Which makes it look like an unecessary name drop all the more.

[Lesley C]

Then again, to be fair to Ms. Wells, she might be saying, let's no forget the greats like Joel Robuchon too quickly.

[TAPrice]

I wonder if I could move this discussion away from the specific example that started this. Taking Bux's comment to heart that people shouldn't discuss what they don't know, let me address this only to those reading with experience at newspapers.

1) Would a hard news reporter who had co-authored a book with Mr. X ever be allowed to report on Mr. X? [My guess would be no, but I've never been a hard news reporter]

If the answer to this question 1 is no, why would a food writer be able to promote someone with whom they wrote a book?

And when I say "why," I really do want to know the reasoning. It's not an indirect way of making a statement. Do food writers have different ethical standards than news journalists? Or, does it all come down to the specific situation (and here we come back to Wells and Robuchon—i.e. Robuchon is an accepted touchstone, Wells is always already [as those Parisian intellectuals say] linked with Robuchon, the benefit is miniscule, etc., etc.).

As someone who is new to food writing, I can already tell that it's a world full of potential conflicts of interest. I'm genuinely interested in hearing how other people draw the line.

(Again, apologies if this sounds like a hypothetical from a philosophy class. Years of graduate school will melt your brain. I've tried to recover, but sometimes I just can't help myself. )

Edited June 3, 2005 by TAPrice (log)

[touaregsand]

And when I say "why," I really do want to know the reasoning. It's not an indirect way of making a statement. Do food writers have different ethical standards than news journalists? Or, does it all come down to the specific situation (and here we come back to Wells and Robuchon—i.e. Robuchon is an accepted touchstone, Wells is always already [as those Parisian intellectuals say] linked with Robuchon, the benefit is miniscule, etc., etc.).

Food writing comes in so many modes that across the board standards are nearly impossible to make.

Food scholar/historian

Cultural Anthropologist (Traveler or foreigner living in another country)

Restaurant Reviewer

Professional Chef

Food personality

Home cooking (cuisine of choice, usually refers to a mother, preferably a grandmother, immigration and assimilation)

A journalist who might be called a generalist but also writes about food occassionally

I have to go pick up my daughter now, sorry to cut the list off...

I have to mention The Ghostwriter

[Chris Amirault]

This discussion reminds me of an old feature in Spy Magazine called "Logrolling in Our Time." Basically, the editors would select two blurbs from mutually admiring authors and put them side-by-side: author X says that Y's new novel "transcends the genre to slap our zeitgeist squarely upside the head"; meanwhile, Y blurbs about the "astonishing maturity of X's voice as she takes on universal themes with surgeon-like precision." You get the idea.

Hmmmm.... Kinda makes me wonder what would happen if I flipped over the cookbooks on my shelf and did some comparisons.... New thread, anyone?

[BigboyDan]

What has always cracked me up is that Wells created her little part of the foodie world outta' thin air. Who IS she, really?

[Mimi Sheraton]

The real, basic question is whether any working food critic or journalist should write a book or be connected in any way with a chef, purveyor, producer or restaurateur, not the issue with Hesser, but certainly with Wells.

[JohnL]

The real, basic question is whether any working food critic or journalist should write a book or be connected in any way with a chef, purveyor, producer or restaurateur, not the issue with Hesser, but certainly with Wells.

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Yes!

I think that one needs to define "Journalist" and "Critic". (and writer and reporter).

--something probably best left to the Columbia Journalism review web site!

If we accept that a Critic is practicing Journalism then the same standards that apply to a publication's reporters should apply to their critics/reviewers.

Sounds simple enough.

However--today nothin is simple.

Reporters often cross over to columnist or writer then back to critic.

In today's culture of celebrity I wonder if there are any real standards.

For example (I really hate to use Amanda here) Ms Hesser was/is a writer who writes about food etc. under standards different from those applied to a reporter.

When the paper assigned her to review restaurants she became a critic (different standards?). I believe most of the controversy around her stint as reviewer is founded in the fact that she remained a "writer" and did not adapt to the critic's role.

(one certainly can understand the difficulty there).

Then there are publications like NY Magazine wherein Gael Greene "reviewed" restaurants as a writer while the magazine employed "Critics/Journalists" to do the same.

Most would not "read" Ms Greene's "reviews" in the same light as those by the other reviewers in the mag or in other publications.

In the end is it possible to maintain these standards?

Probably the most ethical reviewer/critic around is Robert Parker--he accepts no advertising or payments --uses his own money to travel and buy wines for review etc.--However it is known that he is a good friend of several wine makers/personalities--Roland etc.

I suppose we just have to "trust" him in his ability to 'divorce" any personal feelings from his professional duties.

Finally as some great writer (or was it a critic?) said wisely

"Trust the Tale not the teller!"

[Bux]

What has always cracked me up is that Wells created her little part of the foodie world outta' thin air. Who IS she, really?

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I've not found myself in agreement with her opinions as much lately as in years past. She changed, I changed, and perhaps the world changed. Be that as it may, I understand Ms. Wells, in addition to being the long running resident food critic for the International Herald Tribune, was once the food or restaurant critic for l'Express, the French news magazine. That's a remarkable achievement for an American in France. She's written two of the most authoritative books on French food sourcing in English. I was once told by an artisanal distiller of fine eaux-de-vie in Gascony, that he felt she established herself as above the bar in terms of local ethics in food reviewing when she purchased his products and then announced she was going to recommend his distillery in her book. According to the distiller, the accepted thing to do in France was to announce your intent to write the guide and expect to be lavished with free products in the hope of being included, should the book ever be published. Then again, thin air may not be such a derogatory term when you consider that Ferran Adrià went from "foams" to "air" as he progressed.

[Bux]

. . . .

1) Would a hard news reporter who had co-authored a book with Mr. X ever be allowed to report on Mr. X? [My guess would be no, but I've never been a hard news reporter]

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I have a low opinion of journalism these days, but it's not been my observation that expertise of any kind is necessarily a disqualifier for reporting.

[JohnL]

I guess when in doubt: full disclosure is the best policy.

Often times I feel the critic or writer (whatever) does not recognize potential problems etc.

That's where editors come in (or should) given the culture today I believe that the real failings are most often the lack of good editing.

Wells is certainly a well respected 'writer/reporter" and I believe that she is a reliable "critic" as well --this whole thread was a bit overwrought--much ado about very little.

Incidently--

There may be something to a discussion about this out here--just who do we trust anymore?

For eg--I believe that a lot of the controversy re: critics and reviewers--especially at the Times has more to do with the editorial direction (or lack thereof) than with the actual reviewers.