E D I TO R S NOT E

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In the late 1980s, the British music critic Simon Reynolds coined the term miserabilism to describe Morrissey and the numerous Manchester bands spreading their very personal gloom across the globe. The word could also be applied to the Merritt Parkway Novel, Gerald Howards term for the miserabilist fiction produced within a stones throw of the road cutting through affluent, suburban Connecticut, from Sloan Wilsons The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit to Richard Yatess Revolutionary Road to Rick Moodys The Ice Storm. Howard reevaluates the cultural impact of these novels and examines their continuing influence. Fittingly, Tin House 52 features work pushing the realistic envelope, including Amy Hempels powerful, closely observed story A Full Service Shelter, Alice Munros older couple coming to grips with mortality in Dolly, Sherman Alexies poem of loss and legacies in Crazy Horse Boulevard, and Anne Carsons poetic essay on the idea of threat in We Point the Bone. This issue looks both forward and backward, with Lost and Found appreciations of Patricia Highsmiths The Tremor of Forgery, by Aaron Hamburger, and Annie Ernauxs A Mans Place, by Francine Prose. Consider this summer reading as providing a few grains of sand in your suntan lotion, a little bit of grit to remind you of the depth and breadth of the human condition. Sadly, as we were going to press, we learned that the great Adrienne Rich has passed away. Here we feature one of her last poems, From Strata. Fierce to the end, Rich once said, Poetry is not a healing lotion, an emotional massage, a kind of linguistic aromatherapy. Neither is it a blueprint, nor an instruction manual, nor a billboard. If you are looking for relentless cheer, go to www.cuteoverload.com (yes, we have it bookmarked in the office), but if you are looking to be challenged and possibly maddened, please pull up your beach chair, turn the page, and engage. Happy complicated reading, everyone.

C ONTENTS
I S S U E # 5 2 / S U M M E R R E ADI NG

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Holly Goddard Jones

The Right Way to End a Story 5 Julia had been tending a fantasy about the famous photographer who would be lodging with her at the colleges guesthouse. . 12
Amy Hempel

A Full-Service Shelter 5 They knew me as one who shot reeking crap out of cages with a hoseand liked it. . 42
Alice Munro

Dolly 5 There had been some discussion of death. Our deaths. 65

Kristen Iskandrian

The Inheritors 5 After my mother died, a lot of things went into boxes that then disappeared. 81
Jess Row

Summer Song 5 Much of what they did that summer involved watching. 140

Alexander Maksik

Snake River Gorge 5 Brother, are you happy here? I mean, is this the way you imagined it going? Your life, I mean? 156
Nina Buckless

Deer 5 His mother had left him on Thompsons front walkway when he was only four days old. 174
Lee K. Abbott

From Here to Kingdom Come 5 Hed stopped pushing the bike to take a leak and there he was, his privates hanging out, when he noticed somethinga body part. 189
N E W V O I C E F I C T I O N

Bennett Sims

House-sitting 5 Within moments of arriving at the cabin, you begin to suspect that the owner is a madman. 102

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Adrienne Rich

From Strata 37
Cate Marvin

Thoughts on Wisteria . 61 On the Ineptitude of Certain Hurricanes . 63

Sherman Alexie

Crazy Horse Boulevard 95

Angelo Nikolopoulos

Lypsinka Has a Fit 154

Barbara Ras

Relics 187
Sandra Beasley

The Sword Swallowers Valentine 206 Valentine for the Grave Digger 208

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Gerald Howard

Notes on the Merritt Parkway Novel 5 Lasciviousness and lassitude suffuse a subgenre of American belles lettres. 51
Anne Carson

We Point the Bone: An Essay on Threat 5 I was flailing at trauma. I worked without realistic expectation of follow-through, not much good at actual harm. 148

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Francine Prose

On Annie Ernauxs A Mans Place 5 Wrestling with her fathers existence leads the author to consider lifes deepest questions. . 126
Paul Charles Griffin

On Raymond Chandlers The Lady in the Lake 5 Marlowes willingness to get up every day and do the right thing in a corrupt society can be an antidote for cynicism. . 129
Luis Jaramillo

On E.M. Delafields Diary of a Provincial Lady 5 Its amazing how persistent the feeling of not-enoughness can be. . 132

Robin Romm

On Alison Luries The War Between the Tates 5 Subtle judgments and withering observations abound in this book by a baleful comic artist at her most corrosive. . 134
Aaron Hamburger

On Patricia Highsmiths The Tremor of Forgery 5 The American master of suspense manufactures a literary masterpiece . 137

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Katie Arnold-Ratliff Cooking with Friends 5 Guess whos coming to dinner? Monica, Chandler, Joey, Rachel, Phoebe, and Ross! 210

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A Tin House Crossword Puzzle 215

ficTion

B b

A Full-Service Shelter
They knew me as one who shot reeking crap out of cages with a hose.
L eOna r D m IC Ha eL s, In THe FIFTIes

They knew me as one who shot reeking crap out of cages with a hoseand liked it. and would rather do that than go to a movie or have dinner with a friend. They knew me as one who came two nights a week, who came at four and stayed till after ten, and knew it was not enough, because there was no such thing as enough at the animal shelter in spanish Harlem that was run by the city, which kept cutting the funds.

Amy Hempel

They knew us as the ones who checked the days euth list for the names of the dogs scheduled to be killed the next morning, who came to take the death-row dogs, who were mostly pit bulls, for a last long walk, brought them good dinners, cleaned out their kennels, and made their beds with beach towels and bath mats and torn sheets and scooby-Doo fleece blankets still warm from industrial dryers. They knew me as one who made their beds less neatly over the course of a difficult evening, who thought of the artist whose young daughter came to visit his studio, pointed to the painting she liked, and asked, Why didnt you make them all good? They knew us as the ones who put pigs ears on their pillows, like a chocolate in a good hotel. They knew us as vocal vegetarians who brought them cooked meatroast turkey, rare roast beef, and honey-glazed ham to top off the canned food we supplied that was still better than what they were fed there. They knew us as the ones who fed them when they were awake, instead of waking them at 2:00 AM for feeding, the way the overnight staff had been ordered by a director who felt they did not have enough to do. They knew me as one who spoke no spanish, who could say only si, si when someone said about a dog I was walking, Que lindo! and when a thuggish guy approached too fast, then said, Thats a handsome dude, look how we exploded another stereotype in a neighborhood recovering from itself. They knew us as the ones who had no time for the argument that caring about animals means you dont also care about people; one of us did! evelyne, a pediatrician who treated abused children. They knew us as the ones who got tetanus shots and rabies shotsthe latter still a series but no longer in the stomachand who closed the bites and gashes on our arms with Krazy gluenot the medical grade, but the kind you find at hardware storesinstead of going to the er for stitches, where we would have had to report the dog, who would then be put to death. They knew us as the ones who argued the names assigned at Intake, saying, Who will adopt a dog named nixon? and when nixons name was changedchanged to Dahmerwe ragged on them again, then just let it go when the final name assigned was O.G., Original Gangster. There was always a Baby on one of the wards so that staff could write on the kennel card, no one puts Baby in the corner, and they finally stopped using Precious after a senior kennel worker said of a noble, aged rottie,
amy HemPeL

44

pr e viou s pag e: pe n ny Ko u Kou L a s / a L a My

I fucking hate this name, but this is a good dog. (Though often they got it right: they named the cowboy-colored pocket pit who thought he was a big stud, man man). They knew me as one who did not bother wearing latex gloves or gauzy scrubs to handle the dogs in sick ward, who wore gloves only when a dog had swallowed his rabies tag, and I had to feel for it in feces. They knew me as one who gave a pit bull a rawhide chew stick swirled in peanut butter, then, after he spit it up and wanted it back, cleaned it off and gave it to him so he could have . . . closure. They knew me as one who They knew us as the ones who put our did not bother wearing latex fingers in mouths to retrieve a watch, a cell gloves or gauzy scrubs to phone, a red bicycle reflector that a dog handle the dogs in sick ward. sucked on like a lozenge. They knew me as one who shot reeking crap out of cages with a hose, who scoured metal walls and perforated metal floors with Trifectant, the syrupy, yellow chemical wash that foamed into the mess, and then towel-dried the kennel and liked the tangible improvementlike mowing a lawn or ironing a shirtthat reduced their anxiety by even that much. They knew me as one who, early on, went to tell a vet tech the good news that three dogs had been rescued from that mornings list of twelve, to which the tech said, That blowsI already filled twelve syringes. They knew us as the ones who repeatedly thanked the other vet tech, the one who was reprimanded for refusing to kill Charlie, the pit bull who licked his hand when the tech went to inject him. and Charlie was adopted less than twenty-four hours later by a family who sent us photos of their five-year-old daughter asleep atop Charlie, the whole story like a childrens book, or maybe a German childrens book. and we kept thanking the vet tech, until he was fired for killing two of the wrong dogs, their six-digit ID numbers one digit off. He didnt catch the mistake, but neither had the kennel worker who brought him the wrong dogs, and who still has his job. They knew us as those who found them magnificent with their widespaced eyes and powerfully muscled bodies, their sense of humor and spirit, the way they were first to the dance and last to leave, even in a House of Horrors, the way stillness would take them over as they pushed their heads into our stomachs while sitting in our laps. They knew us as those whose
A Full-Service Shelter
45

enthusiasm for them was palpable, rebecca falling in love with them at first sight, second sight, third sight, and yolanda tending to them with broken fingers still in a cast, and Joy and the rest with their surpassing competence and compassion. They knew us as those who would sometimes need to take out a Chihuahualike walking an ant, Laurie saidfor a break. They knew us as those who didnt mind when they backwashed our coffee, when they licked the How do you think a starving paper cup the moment we looked away. dog will score on resources They knew us as the ones who worked guarding when you try to for free, who felt that an hour stroking a take away a bowl of food! blanket-wrapped dog whose head never left your lap and who was killed the next morning was time well spent. They knew me as the least knowledgeable one there, whose mistakes were witnessed by those who knew better. They knew me as one who liked to apply the phrase, the ideal version of as in Cure Chanels mange and youll see the ideal version of herself but did not like the term comfort zone, and thought one should try to move beyond it. They knew me as one who was unsure of small dogs, having grown up with large breeds and knowing how to read them, but still afraid of the Presa Canarios, the molossers bred in the Canary Islands, with their dark bulk and bloodshot bedroom eyes, since I had lived in san Francisco when a pair of them loose in a tony apartment house had killed a friend of mine who had stopped to get her mail and could not get her door unlocked before the attack began. They knew me as one who called one of their number a dick when he knocked me over and I slammed into a steel bolt that left me bleeding from just above an eye. They knew me as one who guided them to step over the thick coiled hose in the packed garage that was being used weekly by a member of the board of directors to wash his car the city paid for. He never went inside the building. They knew us as the ones who attached a life-size plastic horses head to a tree in the fenced-in junkyard backyard, where the dogs could be taken to run off leash one at a time, and to sniff the horses head before lifting a leg against it. They knew us as those who circulated photos of two pit littermates dive-bombing each other under the blankets of a bed to get closer to the large-hearted woman who had adopted them both.
46 amy HemPeL

They knew us as the ones who took them out, those rated no concern and mild, also moderate, and even severe, though never the red-stamped caution dogs. although some of the sweetest dogs were the ones rated moderate, which was puzzling until we realized that behavior testing was done when a stray was brought in by police or a dog surrendered by his owner, when they were most scared. Fearful is the new moderate. and how do you think a starving dog will score on resources guarding when you try to take away a bowl of food! They knew me as one who never handled the questionable dogs, because that meant they could turn on you in an instant, you wouldnt know what was coming, and some of us got enough of that outside the shelter. They knew me as one whom enrique had it in for, the kennel worker who had asked me to take out a one-hundred-fifty-pound Cane Corso, and when I said, Isnt he severe? said, naw, hes a good boy, and when I looked up his card he was not only severe, he was also DOH-HB holdDepartment of Health hold for Human Bite. He had bitten his owner. They knew me as one who forgave enrique when he slipped on the newly installed floor while subduing a frightened mastiff, fell, and punctured a lung. after voting to spend nearly fifty thousand dollars to replace the facilitys floor, the board then had to allocate funds to bring in a crew with sanders to rough up the pricey new floor. The allocated funds were diverted from supplies, so kennel staff had to ask us, the volunteers, for food when they ran out because feeding the dogs had not factored into the boards decision. They knew me as one who held the scarred muzzle of a long-nosed mutt in sick ward and sang, There is a nose in spanish Harlem until he slept. They knew me as one who refused to lock the padlocks on their kennels, the locks a new requirement after someone stole a puppy from small Dog adoptions, and which guarantee the dogs will die in the event the place catches fire. They knew me as one who asked them stupid questionsHow did you get so cute?and answered the questions stupidly, saying on behalf of the giddy dog, I was born cute and kept getting cuter. They knew me as one who talked baby talk to the babies, and spoke in a normal voice about current events to those who enjoyed this sort of discourse during their oneon-ones. I told an elderly pittie about the World War II hero who died in
A Full-Service Shelter
47

his nineties this year in a Florida hospital after having been subdued while in emotional distress by the use of a metal cage that was fixed in place over his bed. The Posey Cage had been outlawed in eastern europe, yet was still somehow available in Florida. Caged in the space of his bed, he died like a dog, people said. They knew us as the ones who wrote Congress in support of laws made necessary by human cruelty and named for canine victims: Oreos Law, nitros Law, the law for the hero dog from afghanistan, and thats just this year. They knew me as one who loved in them what I recoiled from in people: the patent need, the clinging, the appetite. They knew me as one who saw their souls in their faces, who had never seen eyes more expressive than theirs in colors of clover honey, root beer, riverbed, and the tricolor cracked-glass eyes of a Catahoula, rare to find up north. They knew us as the ones who wrote their biographies to post to rescue groups, campaigning for the rescue of dogs that we likened to Cleopatra, the Lone ranger, or Charlie Chaplins little tramp, to John Wayne, Johnny Depp, and, of course, Brad Pitt, asking each other if wed gone overboard or gone soft, like Lennie in Of Mice and Men. They knew us as the ones who tried to gauge what they had been through, as when Laurie said of a dog with shunts draining wounds on his head, He looks exhausted even when hes asleep. They knew us as the ones who wrote letters to the mayor pointing out that the Department of Health had vastly underestimated the number of dogs in the city to clear itself of misconduct for failing to license more. The political term for this is inflating their compliance record. They knew Joy as the stellar investigator who told the rest of us that the governor helped boost the state budget by helping himself to funds that had been set aside to subsidize spay/neuter services throughout the state. They knew that? They seemed to know that, just as they seemed to appreciate Joys attempt to make a new worker understand that staff had not forgotten to write down the times they had walked certain dogs, that the blank space under dates on the log sheets three days in a row meant that those dogs had not been walked in three days. When the budget was cut by a million and a half, Joy began. But the new worker did not believe her. They knew us as the ones who decoded reasons for surrender and knew that dont have time for an elderly, ill dog meant the owner had been hit
48 amy HemPeL

hard by the ruined economy and could not afford veterinary bills. They knew us as the ones who doted on throwaway moms, lactating dogs left tied to posts in the Bronx after the owners sold their puppies, and the terrified young bait dogswe would do anything for themtheir heads and bodies crossed with scars like unlucky lifelines in a human hand, yet whose tails still wagged when we reached to pet them. They knew me as one who They knew me as one changed her mind about Presa Canarios when I found one wearing an e-collar that who walked them past the kept him from reaching his food. I had to homeless man on East 110th hold his bowl up to his mouth inside the who said, You want to plastic cone for him to eat; I lost my fear rescue somebody, rescue me. of Presas. They knew me as one who had Bully Project on speed dial, who knew that owning more than five dogs in Connecticut was, legally, hoarding, who regularly fake-pulled a much-loved dog when I found that dog on the list, pretending to be a rescue group, so that in the twenty-four hours it took for the shelter manager to learn it was fake, the dog would have that time to be pulled for real. They knew me as one who got jacked-up on rage and didnt know what to do with it, until a dog dug a ball from a corner of his kennel and brought it to my side, as though to ask, Have you thought of this? They knew me as one who learned a phrase in spanish: Lo siento mucho, I am so sorry, and used it often in the lobby when handed over a dog by owners who faced eviction by the new york City Housing authority if they didnt surrender their pit. They knew me as one who wrote a plea for a dog named storm, due to be killed the next morning, and posted the plea and then went home, to learn the next day that there had been two dogs named storm in the shelter that night, and the one who needed the plea had been killed that morningI had failed to check the ID number of the dog. so this is not about heroics; its about an impossible job. I joined them in filth and fear, and then I left them there. They knew me as one who walked them past the homeless man on east 110th who said, you want to rescue somebody, rescue me. They knew me as one who saw through the windowed panel in a closed ward door a dog lift first one front paw and then the other, offering a paw
A Full-Service Shelter
49

to shake though there was no one there, doing a trick he had once been taught and praised for, a dog not yet damaged but desperate. They knew me as one who decoded the civic boast of a full-service shelter, that it means the place kills animals, that the full-service offered is death. They knew me as one who learned that the funds allocated for the dangerous new floor had also been taken from medical, that the board had determined as nonessential: the first injection, the sedative before the injection of pentobarbital that kills them, and since it will take up to fifteen seconds for the pentobarb to work, the dogs are then made to walk across the room to join the stack of bodies, only some of which are bagged. This will be the dogs last image of life on earth. my fantasy has them waking to find themselves paddling with full stomachs in the warm Caribbean, treading the clearest water over rippled white sand until they find themselves refreshed farther out in cooler water, in the deep blue reef-scarred sea. They knew me as one who asked another volunteer if she would mind holding Creamsicle, a young vanilla and orange pup, while I cleaned his soiled kennel and made his bed at the end of a night. I knew that Katerina would leave the shelter in minutes for the hospital nearby where her father was about to die. she rocked the sleepy pup in her arms. she said, you are working too fast. she kissed the pup. she handed him to me. she said to me, you should take your time. We were both tired, and took turns holding the pup against our hearts. They saw this; they knew this. The ward went quiet. We took our time.

50

amy HemPeL

Ss NOTES ON ThE

e s s ay

MERRiTT PARkWAy NOvEl

Gerald Howard
An echo chamber of ennui

There must be something hanging over us, something that makes it hard to be happy.
sLOa n WIL s On, THE MAN IN TH E

G RAY FL ANNE L Su IT

Bourgeois existence is the regime of private affairs . . . Political conviction, financial situation, religionall these seek hideouts and the family is the rotten, dismal edifice in whose closets and crannies the most ignominious instincts are deposited.
Wa LTer B enJam I n, One -Way s T r e e T

When the weather and the traffic permit, and there is no overtestosteroned bond traderdriven Porsche or audi ten feet from your rear bumper, a drive through Connecticut on the leafy merritt Parkway offers some of the pleasantest highway motoring on the east Coast. Built from 1934 through 1940 in the depths of the Depression, this handsomely landscaped thirty-seven-mile road features a succession of battlement-like overpasses that whiz by like the slide show for a survey course in architectural styles from classical, Gothic, and romanesque to Beaux arts,
51

three decades. But as I try to imagine the art Deco and moderne, and machine lives of the people dwelling in those handage designs. The merritt winds its treesome houses behind the stone walls and lined way through Fairfield County and hedgerows, it is not happiness and prosseveral of the most prosperous, desirperity that come to mind, but rather wellable, and envied suburban towns in the appointed misery and a peculiarly american country: Greenwich, a haven for billionform of spiritual squalor. aires where the leaves sordid adulteries. social and field stones dont It is not happiness and climbing and status anxiseem so much cared ety. Decaying marriages. prosperity that come to for as curated; Darien, Bitter divorces. municwhose name is synonymind, but rather wellipal strife. Parents bafmous with upper-class, appointed misery and a fled by their children and lacrosse-playing privchildren contemptuous peculiarly American form ilege; the rather too of their parents. The corallegorically named of spiritual squalor. rosive despair of alcobut equally flush new holism. Class and ethnic Canaan; and Westport, prejudice. The thousand the spiritual home of the worries of real estate. and many other leadsix oclock martini and Mad Menera ad ing indicators of domestic toxicity. Where execs. even stamford, a sizable city of would I get such ideas? From the fiction of office parks and buildings, is tony enough Fairfield County, of course, a distinct and to have served as the home of conservative fascinating subset of the literature of subicon William F. Buckley and his legendurbia that I have come to call the merritt arily social wife, Pat. If there is a stretch of Parkway novel. territory that can be said to deliver definiI am hardly the first person to have tively, in Herbert Crolys resonant phrase, noticed that the fiction of postwar subthe Promise of american Life, it is the urban Connecticut constitutes almost a gilded towns of this Gold Coast. Here, genre unto itself. Jonathan Franzen, our the children really are all above average designated literary scourge of the upper(or had better be) and can regard as their middle class, states in his introduction birthright early admission to stanford, to the current edition of the urFairfield Duke, or Princeton, followed by fantastiCounty novel, sloan Wilsons The Man in cally well-compensated employment at the the Gray Flannel Suit: One of the classic setcountrys most prestigious financial institings in fiction, a little world as reassurtutions. Or so the mythology goes. ing as imperial st. Petersburg or VictoI have spent hundreds of hours on the rian London, is suburban Connecticut in merritt, driving to and from Cape Cod from the 1950s. He points out that Wilsons and to our home in new york for almost
Notes on the Merritt Parkway Novel
53

i LLu sT raT ion by scoT T M e nch i n

what he does, but I want to eat, and so, like demiclassic has become, along with the a half million other guys in gray flannel nonfiction works of social criticism The suits, Ill always pretend to agree, until I Lonely Crowd and The Organization Man, a get big enough to be honest without being watchword of fifties conformity, offerhurt. Thats not being crooked, its being ing the contemporary reader a pure fifties smart. fix, as indeed it does. What is truly fasciBut what seems today nating, though, is to trace to be a clich fit for a how the themes and conhigh school social studflicts that Wilson so preBy the midfifties, the ies textbook must, in sciently grappled with American intelligentsia 1955, have struck many broadly stated, the probhad decided that the thousands of readers lem of living a meanwith the shock of recingful and authentic life mass exodus of families ognition. What truly in the midst of postwar from cities to suburbs elevates the book above american prosperity was a disaster. the status of a suburand rapidly shifting valban problem novel with ueshave morphed and an anodyne and evasive shape-shifted over five conclusion is the way that raths wartime decades of american fiction. The eviexperiences as a combat paratrooper haunt, dence, at least as presented by todays novas idyll, adventure, and nightmare alike, elists, is that happiness on the crabgrass his placid if anxious peacetime life. In this frontier remains elusive and that our regard, it reads something like a sequel to ever-increasing freedoms have not availed the landmark film of postwar readjustment us in that quest. The Best Years of Our Lives, with rath in the Dana andrews rolesecurely employed Before undertaking this essay, I had never but still unable to escape the ghosts of war, read The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, content a man marked and set apart by this passage, in the received notion that the novel is an as so many americans were. The flashbacks indictment of commuter corporate conto scenes of brutal combat, including raths formityof a timid man selling out his accidental shooting of a buddy, have a vissoul for security and certain modest prosceral immediacy that make you understand perity. There is plenty of material in the his inability to quite give himself over to novel to support such a view. Here is Tom what was once quaintly called the rat race. rath, the books protagonist, mulling over It prompts the thought that the american the consequences of disagreeing with the experience of World War II was not so high-powered executive for whom he must much assimilated as willfully set aside and write a speech on that echt fifties subject, imperfectly buried. mental health: I should quit if I dont like
54 GeraLD HOWarD

Wilson concludes the novel with his hero setting forth on a mildly independent if unclear path, his money troubles solved through the saleabetted by his wifes energetic lobbying of the zoning boardof a tract of inherited land on the Westport shore to a housing developer. and here we come to one of the core subjects of the merritt Parkway novelreal estate, which often functions in american domestic fiction in much the same way that adultery does in French novels. For a clear-eyed view of the social and economic forces at work in fifties suburban Connecticut, you could do a lot worse than max shulmans expert 1957 satire, Rally Round the Flag, Boys! The half new england village/half commuter bedroom community of Putnams Landing (transparently based on Westport, where shulman lived) is stratified among the old Connecticut yankees, who view newcomers and change with disdain, but are not averse to making a buck off them; the Italian tradesmen and their families, who provide the community services and much of the social glue; and the new york commuters, also called the lambs, or the pigeons, or the patsies. The latter class is represented by Harry Bannerman, a magazine editor with three kids, two mortgages, an unsatisfactory house, a sexually stalled marriage, a gray flannel suit, a bald spot and a vague feeling of discontent. The yankees wax fat by christening tracts of land Flintlock ridge and Powderhorn Hill and a former gravel pit Upper meadow. The Italians prosper by selling goods and services

to the cash-strapped commuter families on revolving credit. and the commuters wives wage futile battles against the entrenched yankees for better schools, sewers, and garbage-disposal plants. Then one day this fractured community finally finds itself united against a massive threat to its real estate values: a guided-missile base to be installed by the U.s. army shulmans genial farce skewers a whole host of fifties sacred cows and anxieties, from progressive education to juvenile delinquency to junk-television programming to the military mind. But the internecine battles of real estate and the gnawing discontent besetting the towns marriages give the book a sharper edge than I had remembered. By the midfifties, the american intelligentsia had decided that the mass exodus of families from cities to suburbs was a disaster on every level, from the fiscal to the existential. a prime example of this withering critique is John Keatss 1956 screed, The Crack in the Picture Window. Part exercise in David Brooksian pop sociology, part angry polemic, Keatss book portrays the lives of his hapless specimen couple John and mary Drone (subtle, he is not) in a new suburban subdivision as little more than a domestic hell on earth developments conceived in error, nurtured by greed, corroding everything they touch. In Keatss jaundiced view, the development of postwar suburbia is the result of an unholy alliance among the realtors; the national association of Home Builders, who saw a killing to be made; and the U.s. government, which provided low-cost
Notes on the Merritt Parkway Novel
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no-money-down mortgages to the returning GIs and their growing broods. everybody has made out except the families, trapped in a bleak monoculture, overstretched in their budgets, beset by the sort of marital boredom that leadsshudderto casual adultery, and, maybe worst of all, raising their kids in a matriarchal society, with children who know men only as nighttime residents and weekend guests. Who knows what sort of twisted little monsters these postwar Levittowns were breeding? Keats scores some valid points as he unpacks the predatory economics of nascent suburban sprawl, though his cultural argument is too perfervid and marred by snide contempt to carry much weight. But as an example of just how sharply educated opinion had turned against suburbia, The Crack in the Picture Window helps us understand the background against which the one unequivocal masterpiece of the merritt Parkway novel, richard yatess Revolutionary Road (1961) was received. By the time yates decided to replay as tragedy many of the same elements that Wilson had rendered as melodrama and shulman as satirical farce, the cultural ground had been well prepared for such a grim approach. For years I resisted reading Revolutionary Road, a book that gives off the distinct aroma of being oversold as the Great statement on the sorrow of suburbia. yatess other books had all struck me as willfully morosehe really is the Debbie Downer of american lettersand the
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2008 film adaptation is marred by excessive tastefulness and the usual callowness of Leonardo DiCaprio in the male lead. Its protagonists, stuck in their bickerfest of a marriage in a wan suburban setting, must be the least attractive, most ignoble couple ever to inhabit an important american novelevery problem they face is of their own devising. and yet yates, with his fierce conviction and astonishingly precise writing, triumphs over this unpromising material to deliver exactly the catharsis of pity and terror that aristotle prescribed. Frank and april Wheeler are two disastrously matched narcissists who, based on no empirical evidence whatsoever, feel themselves vastly superior to their midfifties Connecticut surroundings. Frank, a World War II veteran and Columbia grad goldbricking his way through a sales-promotion job in a proto-IBm corporation, is a living argument against a liberal arts education, a tiresome font of stale ideas about the sterility of suburban life. (One imagines he bought and read Keatss book. I dont suppose one picture window is necessarily going to destroy our personalities, he declares when he first sees their house. ) Faced with the reality of deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs, he smugly tells himself that [e]conomic circumstances might force you to live in this environment, but . . . [t]he important thing, always, was to remember who you were. april, a failed actress, experiences her domestic life as a wife and mother as a bleak exile from culture and deeper purposean enormous, obscene delusion, she solemnly declaims.

encomiums from no less than alfred Kazin, so she devises a transparently daft plan to William styron, and Tennessee Williams. uproot the family to Paris, where she will Critical reaction to the book was generwork as a secretary to support them while ally enthusiastic, with some nay-saying, her husband, in some ill-defined fashion, such as Orville Prescotts complaint in the finds himself. New York Times that the Wheelers are simyou really feel like smacking these peoply too psychopathic ple upside the head and to be worthy of yatess telling them to get real, manifest gifts as a novwhich is precisely what You really feel like elist. Commentators on the novels designated smacking these people the book, then and now, truth teller, the mentally upside the head and oscillate between two troubled son of their real poles, seeing the book estate agent, in a sense telling them to get real. as either a powerful does. Twin adultercharacter study of two ies (I mean, you seem weak-willed romantic egoists or a broader to be doing a pretty good imitation of indictment, as yates himself put it, of a madame Bovary here, Frank, ever ready general lust for conformity in this counwith a survey-course reference, at one try, by no means only in the suburbsa point remarks) and a poorly timed pregkind of blind, desperate clinging to safety nancy lead to a tragic, heart-shredding and security at any price. The book sold conclusion. a modest 8,900 copies in its first incarnaas well-documented in Blake Baileys tion, and it has survived over the decades fine biography, Revolutionary Roads roots as something of a cult novel, a hard to are sunk deeply in yatess own experiresolve yet equally hard to shake portrayal ences. Like Frank Wheeler, yates worked of the cultural contradictions of suburbia. in a dreary job as a Pr writer for remington rand; like april Wheeler, his wife, and then the merritt Parkway novel goes sheila, devised a plan for them to escape into hibernation for three decades. amerito Paris for two years (which they actucan fiction moved on to groovier subjects ally did). and much like the Wheelers, the than mere domestic discontent, and the yates family upped sticks from a Greensuburbs became largely the wholly owned wich Village apartment to a ranch house subsidiary of the firm of Updike and in redding, Connecticut, where they lived Cheever, Ltd. The former brought the an outwardly tranquil life riven by private social acuity of a sometimes X-rated Wilmarital tension. enthusiastically accepted liam Dean Howells to the marital doings by atlantic monthly Press, yatess grim yet and undoings around Ipswich, massachugleaming manuscript was given an excepsetts, while the latter touched quotidian tional push for a first novel, receiving
Notes on the Merritt Parkway Novel
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joyless, thwarted, onanistic, or frankly perlife in Westchester County with the grace verse. We are plainly meant to see the of his sublime prose and something of the Hood familys misery as both a mirror and Hudson Valley fabulism of Washington an end result of the social fevers and disorIrving. But the merritt Parkway novel ders of the seventies. came back with, quite literally, a vengeance after such knowlin rick moodys exploedge, what forgiveness? sive 1994 The Ice Storma One thing is clear: Very little, clearly, from book that reads as if the the author; the obviously children in the novels of The Ice Storm set the tone autobiographical conyates and Wilson for the Merritt Parkway tent of The Ice Storm sugdecided to wrest the narnovels to come. gests that there were not rative from their parents many happy Thanksgivand channel something ings in the moody famof Walter Benjamins ily, nor was the author ever likely to have malign animus against the bourgeois fambeen invited to the new Canaan Library ily in the bargain. for a reading. (One of my former bosses, who lived in new Canaan in the seventies, eighteen years after its first publication, vehemently denies the existence of key The Ice Storm retains the power to dismay parties.) as unsparingly frank as moody with its sheer familial misery and psychois in this novel, it is hard to know what to sexual creepiness. (In a sense, Keats told us do with such brutal honesty beyond being this was coming.) Its plethora of seventies appalled by it. Unlike Frank and april cultural detritus (shag rugs, Pet rocks, Wheeler, who in yatess hands reach an rose mary Woods, key parties) and overly almost mythic stature, the members of the commentatious, distinctly un-Jamesian hapless Hood family seem preshrunk to narrative style are now more distracting the size of their respective miseries. than revelatory and have not aged well. One thing is clear: The Ice Storm set But its angry and intimate indictment of the tone for the merritt Parkway novfeckless, divorce-prone parents makes it a els to come. Prosperity, at least for some, signature Gen X novel and a proto-Franreturned to Connecticut and the nation, zen critique of the careless squandering of as finance became untethered from its our freedoms. Famously set during an epic former physical locations and hedge funds ice storm that blanketed the northeast the and investment firms set up shop in towns weekend after Thanksgiving Day 1973, it like Greenwich, making it one of the most portrays the complete meltdown of the hyperprosperous municipalities on the Hood family of new Canaan, Connectiplanet. I recently drove through Greencut, acting out their terminal unhappiness wich on the way to an author reading, and in a series of sexual acts that are variously
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the scent of BIG money wafting from the tastefully set-back estates and horse farms was overpowering. This development is perfectly captured by stephen amidons unjustly neglected 2004 novel, Human Capital, which offers something of the pleasures that John OHaras books used to provide: a clear and convincing CaT scan of the class structure and pecking order of an american town and a near-surgical dissection of the social, economic, and sexual forces underlying it. at the top of the heap in Greeenwichesque Totten Crossing in the spring of 2001 is Quint (as in Quant?) manning, a close-lipped and tightly wound hedgefund manager; his wife, Carrie, channels her cultural energies and marital discontent by transforming an abandoned movie theater into an art house cinema. (activities such as this are a fixture of these novels, usually the province of the women.) Their son, James, a Duke-bound golden boy with a drinking (and a father) problem, is dating shannon, the daughter of Drew Hagel, a local realtor facing financial difficulties. This romance (and a good tennis game) gives Hagel entre into the mannings charmed circle, but a looming financial crisis and a tragic car accident set in motion a quite suspenseful plot in which it becomes clear that money is a solvent of ethics and that self-interest definitely trumps correct behavior. This is something american novelists have been demonstrating to us since Theodore Dreiser, but amidon finds a way to make it new, with his uncanny understanding of

the protocols and delicacies of class in the plutocratic era of the one percent. The merritt Parkway novel seems to reach a terminus of sorts in alison espachs fairly horrifying 2011 novel, The Adults, set in Fairfield. espach sees moody and raises him plenty, producing a book that, to me, at least, becomes a species of suburban gothic. (What kind of lunatic hangs pictures of asian women holding dildos? a husband quite reasonably inquires of a marriage counselors dcor.) Told in the voice of a girl named emily Vidal, who learns entirely too many things entirely too early, the book gets off to a grim start when, leaving her fathers fiftieth birthday party, she discovers their next-door neighbor in the process of hanging himself, successfully, from a tree. Things somehow go south from there, as the behaviors of putative grown-ups make abundantly clear that the books title is grimly ironicno functioning, responsible adults, as we once understood them, are to be found, only overgrown children bent on satisfying their needs. I was particularly dismayed by espachs portrayal of the almost feral and hypersexualized mean-girl culture of the local high school, which had me yearning for the tender consolations of Lord of the Flies. In freshman year (!) a group calling itself the Other Girls passes judgment on their classmates as, no kidding, Unfuckables. and all through high school and college emily sleeps with a high school english teacher she calls mr. Basketball. What emerges in this deadpan litany of alcoholism, adultery, depression, suicide, divorce, promiscuity, lockdowns, bullying,
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and plenty more is a portrait of a society so overstuffed with privilege and so conversant and comfortable with dysfunction that all boundaries of decency have been erased. The promise of american life, indeed. The question that remains to be consideredalthough the answer will forever elude usis to what extent do these six novels actually reflect the facts and the feel of life in Fairfield County as it has been lived by its inhabitants over the past half century or more. We have to imagine (dont we?) that hundreds of thousands of people have lived satisfying, successful, productive, upright lives there, engaged in meaningful work, graced by love and familial affection, returning to their communities more than they have been given. If so, they have escaped the attention of our novelists. But literature and sociology are distinctly separate fields of inquiry, and given the choice between happiness and contentment or misery and conflict, writers will head for the latter every time. It is what they do. In 1955, Life magazine published an admonitory editorial about the american fiction of the period that became instantly notorious. Beginning with some condescending praise of sloan Wilson for precisely the weakest aspect of his novel its happy endingit goes on to register bemusement at the disparity between american power, prosperity, and social equality and its hostile literature, which sounds sometimes as if it were written by an unemployed homosexual living in a packing-box shanty. nice. Truman Capote,
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Henry miller, the war novelists, and even William Faulkner are weighed on the scales of affirmation and found wanting. Only Herman Wouks Marjorie Morningstar (!) makes the grade by Lifes literary standards. If you can manage to put aside the hamfisted cluelessness of the editorialist, the piece does put its finger on a persistent disconnect between american life and american literature. We areor at least were, until recentlyan optimistic, forwardlooking, practical people, not much given to introspection and self-doubt. yet our best writers gravitate toward precisely those aspects of our civilization that reflect least well upon us. Five of the six merritt Parkway novelists mentioned here lived in Fairfield County and their books draw upon close, on-the ground observation; stephen amidon grew up in northern new Jersey, but his father was a corporate executive and he knows the folkways of the upper middle class quite well. Their sense of the something hanging over us . . . that makes it hard to be happy is no fabrication or Commie plot to demoralize the citizenry. But the good people of Fairfield County must, if they pay any attention to american fiction (and most of them may not), feel ill used, even libeled by it. They might, with some justice, retort, If life here is so hellish, why does everybody want to live here? a chorus of assent might well be heard from Highland Park, Palo alto, Buckhead, short Hills, the north shore, the main Line, et cetera. The whole business is hard to square, frankly. Ill give it some more thought the next time Im on the merritt.

in creative writing classrooms, empathy can be modeled. It travels well, too. you can use it elsewhere. But I think this earnest trait gets overemphasized. What about the remarkable books whose strengths lie not in meanness (thats a crude word standing in for something finer), per se, but in their startlingly slanted, stinging judgments? Its a little ridiculous to feel possessive, to want to keep the writer Im about to discuss as my own private pleasure. I am tempted, though, to continue my preamble and make you wait for the heart of this particular artichoke. The author of the 1974 novel The War Between the Tates isnt exactly obscure. alison Lurie won the Pulitzer Prize for her 1984 novel, Foreign Affairs. shes authored eleven books of fiction, not to mention numerous nonfiction and childrens books. However, I hadnt read her until prompted to by a friend last winter, which is both a shame (all those wasted years!) and a thrill. What a ride its been to look at our often humorous, potentially hopeless human situation through Luries unsparing gaze. I suppose I feel a kinship with Lurie because of her subject matter and her willingness to skewer. every novel I have ever fantasized about writingthe novel about the hippie cult, the novel about the ridiculous energy at artists colonies, the novel roasting academics, a satire about the state of heterosexual loveLurie has already written. The day I went to look for her novels at Powells, they yipped at me from

On AlisOn luries

The War Between the Tates

robiN romm

a reviewer for the New York Times once suggested that meg Wolitzer, who writes realistic social novels with feminist concerns, is at her most comic when she is at her meanest. That line has stayed in my mind for years. How often do we consider the merits and joys of the wicked, the sharp, and the mean? Writers talk so much about empathy. When a writer feels empathy for her characters, she creates a bridge between the reader and the created other. I heard this as a student in workshops and have said it as a teacher. Its true, for the most part. no one wants to read a self-obsessed novel. Plus, unlike all the things you cant teach
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their shelf like a bunch of overjoyed dogs. I bought every single one. meaty with plot, Luries novels are also arch and witty. she has high expectations of her readers; she writes up to them, never down. But the most arresting thing about her is that shes so wildly observant. nothing gets past herno academic theory, no gesture, no political movement, no outfit or mustache or pigtail. and its not empathy with which she sifts through all this flotsam. she has another task in mind: to criticize smartly, to comment on the absurdity of our collective endeavorsempathy be damned. The blurb on The War Between the Tates calls Lurie a baleful comic artist . . . at her most corrosive. (at her most corrosive! That is a blurb to die for.) The War Between the Tates is the story of erica and Brian Tate, a long-married couple living in the small college town of Corinth. erica, who has just made breakfast for her two teenage children, sits in the kitchen, disliking them:
In her whole life, she cannot remember disliking anyone as much as she now sometimes dislikes her children . . . Jeffrey and matilda were beautiful, happy babies; charming toddlers; intelligent, lively, affectionate children . . . Then last year . . . they had begun to change; to grow rude, coarse, selfish, insolent, nasty, brutish, and tall. It is as if she is keeping a boarding house in a bad dream, and the children she had loved are turning into awful

lodgerslodgers who paid no rent, whose leases could not be terminated.

The house, too, has turned against her. Once, the acoustic permeability of this old house meant erica could hear her children cry or murmur for her. But now it means that she cannot speak to her husband about the state of the childrenor about anything, for that matterwithout being overheard. We quickly come to understand that the life erica has cultivatedthat of a well-married mother holds her prisoner. shes a beautiful, educated martyr with a dangerous resentment and a budding feminist consciousness. Brian, on the other hand, harbors all the traits of a classic narcissist. He believes he was born for a greatness not yet manifest. (about his successful career as a political science professor, he wonders: Why does he still discuss other mens theories instead of his own?) When we meet Brian, erica has just caught him in an embarrassing affair with a dim-witted, unattractive hippie student. Brian feels aggravated that hes been caught, but equally aggravated by the conviction that he should have chosen a better mistress. We might guess that all wont go well for the Tates as they set about working through the mess of infidelity. Lurie, though, with her particular sensibility, revitalizes this classic situation. erica, under the guises of feminism and sisterhood, forces Brian to embrace his new responsibilities with his now pregnant mistress. In turn, Lurie forces us to look hard at
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feminism. at its worst, it can be a standin for power struggle, another ideology for flawed humankind to abuse. The ruthlessness with which erica and Brian treat each other, and the societal norms and academic theories they use to justify their behaviors, is part of what makes The War Between the Tates a brainy, shiver-inducing read. But the novel also owes its success to the roughness with which Lurie treats her characters. Heres Brians facial hair through ericas gaze:
The mustache had been a deliberate effort; the sideburns appeared deviously . . . they merely beganas if on their own momentumedging down the sides of his face a fraction of an inch at a time, like some geological formation. When they reached the level of his mouth they began to put out a sort of horizontal extension or spur on each cheek. They are an announcement to the whole world that Professor Tate wishes to appear younger, and less seriousto be seen as a swinger.

love has disadvantages. sometimes [he] feels like a man with a new, overaffectionate pet, whose constant and obvious devotion is half a source of satisfaction, half an embarrassment . . . he has to teach her to restrain herself in public: not to lick and paw him; to sit quietly. and Lurie ensures that we know what to think of this mistress, who tells Brian that the head cloth she wears around her head kind of, you know, keeps my brains together. The primary characters arent the only ones to misbehave. ericas independent friend Danielle falls for a veterinarian after he sexually assaults her. (she marries him.) True, these observations often come from the heads and hearts of Luries characters, rather than from Lurie directly. But the accumulation of all this judgment, combined with the outsized misdeeds of characters in the name of their beliefs, is in itself a judgment on our culturea verdict by Lurie that is as harsh, sharp, and damning as it is artful.

not only does he look like a fool, his folly runs deeper. The facial hair is an outgrowth of an internal flaw: his wish to be perpetually young, perpetually desired. Luries genius lies in the subtle judgment, the withering observation that uses comedy to flirt with tragedy, as comedians do. Brian feels a nagging disdain for his mistress. When thinking about her worship of him, he muses that unconditional
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Barbara Ras

REliCS
If it is nothing to find dreams flooded With tides going higher under a moon Fuller than grief Then what can we make Of rocks shattered on the shore Of hummingbirds disappearing into mist over the water Flying away from flowers Like souls of the just departed seagulls clamoring for their daily bread and I vow To keep the five bleached quahog shells From our day at the beach The sixth couldnt save you Though I tried to fill it with magic When I left it in your hand Before you left us hollowed out

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Hermit crabs scrabble the sand In search of larger homes some shape They can carry on their backs That fits Their particular hump and claws meanwhile nothing I can spell Can contain Death of the everlasting kind and those were the pearls that were his eyes repeats itself in my mind like the wrack line The ocean writes to keep its own time

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POeTry / Barbara ras

readabLe feasT

Ki

WiTh FRiENDS
Katie Arnold-Ratliff
A sitcom sets the table among the gifts awaiting me on Christmas morning 1995 was a cookbook entitled Cooking with FriendsFriends as in Friends, the former Thursday-night nBC tent pole now in weeknight syndication,
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COOkiNG

which the most honest of us will admit to watching when nothing else is on. (Or when emerging from a bad trip: a friend of mine once successfully reoriented herself to reality by watching an episode and

repeating the mantra monica is the clean one; Chandler is the mean one.) I liked the book in 1995 because I liked the show (I was thirteen), but I like it now because its recipes are low-impact and surprisingly good. Its full of meals that are doable on weeknights, or when you have a bad cold. This food is not splashy or innovative. Its solid. Its the toothsome coffee cake you eat in pajamas, or the sturdy lasagna you serve your brother-in-law. Its the leftovers you actually eat the next day, nothing being lost in the reheat. CWF arrived under the tree just as I was getting really serious about food, the way some girls get really serious about boys or ponies. I watched the entire Great Chefs franchise on PBs, nerded out hard-core on my Julia Child: Home Cooking with Master Chefs CD-rOm, and developed an enduring nonsexual crush on susan Feniger. right there with me for all of this was my aunt Karenthe woman who exposed me to both high-end kimchi and fried-baloney sandwiches, the woman who taught me to like sashimi at eight years old but who kept Frosted Flakes around for when I stayed over. she taught me to appreciate the highbrow stuff and the trashy crap in equal measure. so I knew enough to discern that CWFs recipes were exceedingly basic. What I didnt know yet was that, whether or not we food snobs want to admit it, its simple fare and not fancy-pants cuisine that lingers most indelibly on the tongue. For example, I had a spectacular meal at Daniel two years ago, but when I say

spectacular, Im just queuing up a mental reel of each dish. I remember the sweetbreads and duck terrine and oysters with seawater gele in my head, not my mouth. But I can instantly taste the eight-dollar plate of arterially apocalyptic food I had at Cracker Barrel a while backthe mouthfeel of the Dumplins, the juicy give of the fried okra, the shattering crust of the Chicken Fried Chicken. ask yourself what means more to you, what you can most easily conjureLe Bernardins buttery black bass or your aunts stuffed bell peppers (and my aunt makes a mean stuffed pepper)and youll get my point. The Friends cookbook lands squarely in the middle of these two extremes and draws inspiration from both sides, which is why its great. Ive moved from apartment to apartment, relocated across the country, sold off God knows how many tired old books for cashbut Ive hung on to CWF for nearly two decades. (Though I will admit to having thrown away the dust jacket, lest anyone see the title.) Ive made the pine nut cookies, and the Onion Tartlets la monica, and the dated but tasty Peaches Poached in red Wine with Lemon and Fennel. Ive baked marcels Banana Bread (named, of course, for rosss capuchin) at least a dozen times, andGod help methe Trendy Tiramisu. I doubt I told my husband this, but for our first Thanksgiving together, I re-created the books entire holiday menu, from the cranberry-orange relish to the apple crisp. and each time I used a recipe, I sifted through background blurbs about each star
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i LLu sTraT ion by scoT T M e nch i n

(Lisa Kudrow, who has a degree in biology comfort foods.) Wilson doesnt rememfrom Vassar . . .), ancient cast photos (one ber much about the project, other than nearly weeps to see the young, larger-nosed the process being a delight; to her, it Jennifer aniston and the poignantly freshwas just an assignment. But Curtis recalls faced matthew Perry), and, in the margins, that it was a bona fide best seller; that it quotes from the first season (Ugly naked inspired two moments of levity on lateGuys got gravity boots!). night talk shows (Leno monologued about after all, this cookbook isnt really a it on one, and David schwimmer dissed cookbookor at least, it it on another); and that is one only incidentally. he himself used it for Your mouth is a Its a marketing conceit, years (The pepper jack designed to provide an crackers and the cherry fundamentally stable easy holiday gift for a tomatoes marinated in environment: you will niece or neighbor (or pepper vodka are great always love to eat the daughter, evidently). for parties.). some of In fact, its whole raithe food was from the things you love to eat. son dtre seems to have show, Curtis told me. been the Christmas seaafter all, monica was son of 1995, for which the book was rushed a chef. and the rest Jack Bishop came up into print. so says Bryan Curtis, who with. Bishop, who developed the recipes, green-lit the project as the vice president has all but scrubbed his involvement with of marketing at rutledge Hill Press (and the book from his biowhich reveals that who was charmingly unfazed by my barhe helped launch Cooks Illustrated and set rage of questions about a tie-in to a show the tasting protocols for americas Test that ended eight years ago). Wed done a Kitchen, the venerable lab in which food number of TV-themed cookbooks, Curscientists work toward a more perfect pantis told me. Aunt Bees Mayberry Cookbook, cake and the like. In other words, Bishop Mary Anns Gilligans Island Cookbook, Alices is legit, and it would seem that he believes Brady Bunch Cookbook. We also did ones Cooking with Friends is not. based on The Young and the Restless and The Its a shame Bishop doesnt embrace Beverly Hillbillies. amy Lyles Wilson, now a CWF in his CV. He ought to claim it theologian and a columnist for a nashville proudly. Whatever lameness or cynimagazine, was the rutledge Hill editor cism may be inherent in its packaging, asked to write the textwhich involved its a worthy cookbook, as evidenced by reading the scripts sent over by Warner many incredulous amazon.com reviews Bros. to find story arcs that could translate (my wife and I still make the macainto menu items. (ross being dumped by roni and cheese . . . its just the perhis pregnant lesbian wife = a chapter on fect recipe for some reason; The recipes
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are more complex and refined than you would expect.). This cookbook should have sucked, because it didnt need to be good all it needed to do was exist, to be visible in various B. Dalton outlets in various malls that winter, to sell enough to cover its production costs. What its done instead is sit on an improbable number of bookshelves for sixteen years, doing its part to bring people sustenance and joy. maybe that sounds overblown. But how often does a cleverly timed piece of merchandising really last, and really mean something to someone? These things are born to die, created only to be discarded as tastes evolve. yet this artifact of the midnineties remains, and even, in the case of a half dozen recipes, transcends. (Despite the name, Im especially devoted to the monkey Lovin mocha mouthfuls, the recipe for which appears here.) If, in our throwaway culture, that doesnt move you, I dont know what would. Theres a parallel fickleness in the food worldwe eager eaters jump wholeheartedly onto the bandwagon du jour, and then claim to tire of our pastel-colored iced cupcakes and braised pork belly and authentic ramen once the new new thing arrives. But were not actually tired of cupcakes and bacon and noodles. (If you are, I suggest you undergo medical testing.) Were leaving behind the fad, not the food. your mouth is a fundamentally stable environment: you will always love to eat the things you love to eat. Its not 1991 anymore, but that doesnt mean I dont still like sundried-tomato pesto. and

Im no longer ten years oldIve eaten all kinds of crazy, wonderful things in the twenty years since I wasbut that doesnt mean I dont still love those simple, homey stuffed peppers. When it comes to food, what matters, what lasts, is the good, middle-of-the-road stuff like that found in Cooking with Friends. Thats the stuff people crave. Ive never thought to myself, I could go for some seawater gele, but Ive sure as hell wished I could come home to a platter of mrs. Tribbianis roast Chicken. Before that Christmas morning, my preoccupation with food and cooking had been a solitary one, explored while holed up in my bedroom, making lists of restaurants to visit and poring over martha stewarts collected recipes, but more than that, it had been wrongheaded in its estimation of what constitutes worthy cuisine. I thought good food had to be complex and intimidating, but the Friends cookbook widened my perspective: it showed me that eating well is mostly about simplicity, about approachability and inclusion. and with its focus on, well, friendship, the book makes it plain that cooking is not solitary at all. Food is about enjoying the company of those you care aboutthose wholl be there for you, because youre there for them, too. after I spoke to amy Lyles Wilson and Bryan Curtis, and after I learned that Jack Bishop is a respected food professional who evidently needed some extra pocket money in 1994, and after I took a quick glance at the book and was reminded that matt LeBlanc used to be a Levis model
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and that matthew Perrys father famously starred in a series of Old spice commercials, a question occurred to me. so I gave my aunt Karen a call.

Oh, yes, of course I watched Friends, she said. I loved it. I still do. I never cared for monica, thoughshe was just too fussy.

Monkey Lovin Mocha Mouthfuls

(adapted from Cooking with Friends) 4 tablespoons unsalted butter 2 ounces semisweet chocolate (I use scharffen Berger, and I double it to 4 ounces) 1/3 cup sugar (I always substitute brown sugarin this and in all desserts) 1 large egg 1 tablespoon coffee liqueur, such as Kahlua (though a tablespoon of brewed espresso does just fine in a pinch) 1 teaspoon instant espresso powder (though I like to use actual coffee grounds, for the texturewhich may be an acquired taste) 1/3 cup flour 1/3 cup chopped walnuts, plus 12 walnut halves

regular muffin tin, its finejust let the cupcakes bake a little longer, until a knife stuck into the center emerges clean.) melt the butter and chocolate together in a double boiler (or, like me, in the microwave), stirring until smooth. set mixture aside to cool slightly. stir in the sugar until smooth. Whisk in the egg, liqueur, and espresso powder. Fold in the flour and chopped walnuts. spoon the batter into the prepared tin, filling cups about three-quarters full. Place a walnut half in the center of each cup. Bake about twenty minutes. Let the cupcakes cool in the tin for five minutes, then turn them out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
Note: If cupcakes without frosting make no sense to you, (a) I understand, and (b) feel free to make use of those tubs of frosting at the grocery store. I always do.

(The recipe doesnt call for it, but I add a 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt and a teaspoon of vanilla extract.) Preheat the oven to 350. Generously grease a twelve-cup mini-muffin tin and set it aside. (If you only have a

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KaTIe arnOLD-raTLIFF