Wrestling with Gravy, by Jonathan Reynolds

[Fat Guy]

If you miss Jonathan Reynolds's food column, which used to run every other week in the New York Times Magazine, you'll probably want to get hold of his newly released memoir: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400062748?ie=UTF8&tag=egulletsociety-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1400062748">Wrestling with Gravy: A Life, with Food</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=egulletsociety-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1400062748" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />. And if you've never read his column, you'll definitely want to get hold of a copy of this book.

Reynolds (who is a Society member) is a seriously good writer, and that's the reason to read the book: because it's a great read (not because you're likely to learn much about food). Those who are familiar with the column will recognize the approach and some of the themes: Reynolds get an idea in his head or tells a story, and it involves food in some way, and you just sort of follow along and enjoy.

There's an excerpt on the Random House website, but it's not a well-chosen one. It doesn't mention food at all. Then again, the book isn't about food so much as it is built around food. An excerpt from the excerpt, just to show some of his writing:

Once Mother decided on a divorce – an iconoclastic choice in those days, unless you were a Hollywood star – all Dad had to do to protect his rapidly increasing wealth was stay out of Texas so he wouldn’t be served with divorce papers.

Or so he thought. But Mother snuck us into Arkansas, where his headquarters was located. To establish residence, we hid out for six dusty months in Blytheville because she might have been recognized in Little Rock or Fort Smith. I remember surviving a tornado, watching Mother alone at an outdoor ironing board, and seeing a dog kill a rabbit. Nothing else.

With the help of a very determined lawyer named Fred Schlater, Mother found out Dad was driving into Arkansas late one night and hired a midnight paper-server to surprise Dad with divorce documents right there on the highway.

Angry? I was only three or four and didn’t see the ambush, but he must have stomped around the countryside kicking up dust and biting dogs for weeks. He was so furious about the trap she’d laid – cop cars! Middle of the night! Those lying postmarks – that he wouldn’t talk to her, except in a court room, for eleven years! Her treachery filled him with such righteous indignation that he felt he didn’t have to see us more than fifteen minutes a year on moral grounds.

More here.

Has anybody had a look at Reynolds's book? I'm about a third of the way through and really enjoying it.

Using this link to purchase a copy will help support the eGullet Society:

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400062748?ie=UTF8&tag=egulletsociety-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1400062748">Wrestling with Gravy: A Life, with Food</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=egulletsociety-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1400062748" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />

[gruyere]

I am likewise about one-third of the way through. My assessment would be that I am enjoying it, but it won't rank in my top ten. In the week previous to starting Wrestling with Gravy, I read How I Learned to Cook: Culinary Educations from the World's Greatest Chefs and Pierre Marco White's White Slave. Although Reynolds’ writing style, in the pure sense, is certainly superior to How I Learned to Cook and to a lesser degree White Slave, I have found the content not as much to my liking. However, I have not yet reached the point in Reynolds’ life where he begins his career with the New York Times magazine. Hopefully he will steer the subject matter more towards food, but FG's comments lead me to believe it may be in an indirect fashion; possibly similar in story line to his first trip to that former temple of Paris haute cuisine, Maxims:

The backdrop is Maxims, the food plays a significant role, but the lead is played by his estranged father who hits on Reynolds’ English girlfriend, inviting her to return with him to Las Vegas; all while Jonathon makes a trip to the restroom. In just a few paragraphs Reynolds has us laughing about his father's outrageous behaviour but at the same time illustrates in no uncertain terms the self-centred and superficial nature of his father; a matter that plays a highly meaningful role up to this point in the book.

[Fat Guy]

I'm nearly done and, no, the subject matter doesn't become much more food-oriented. There's certainly no way it rates as a top-ten food book because it's not a food book; I wouldn't really put it in the genre of food lit -- it's a memoir. It's particularly silly to categorize it, as the publisher does, as a "cookery" book. Is it a top-ten memoir? I haven't read ten memoirs this year, however it's the best memoir I've read. I'd say it's a memoir by an interesting person with an interesting story to tell (he worked on Apocalypse Now, he is cousin to the late actress Lee Remick, etc.), who happens to be more interested in food than most interesting people with interesting stories to tell, and is a standout writer.

So, much of the narrative is organized around food incidents and recipes. For the most part this is effective. Then again, in some places it seems forced. Probably the most forced example -- so forced I suspect it may be an intentional parody of the concept rather than a failure of creativity or a passive-aggressive response to an editor who wrote "needs transition" on the manuscript -- comes on page 190, when he's telling about his family's move from New York to North Carolina. He goes from . . .

Dad and his family were from the Southwest, and though Yankees don't differentiate between the South and Southwest, natives do. The South is older, it's greener, and it has a more literary history. There is no aristocracy in Oklahoma.

. . . to, next line . . .

And then there were all those bread puddings!

and he talks about bread pudding a bit. The chapter closes with a bread pudding recipe.

I hasten to add that I've enjoyed the book immensely.