AmericanStomach.com

Report From the Border

The American Stomach appreciated this note from far-flung correspondent Linnea Covington. Enchiladas with Shredded Pork . . .

Gastronomica Review

My favorite quarterly, Gastronomica (to which I have proudly contributed), has weighed in with a favorable review of A Short History of the American Stomach, which begins with a description of New York City's "fat parade" of 1821, in which a businessman named Gibbons carted almost five tons of raw meat through the avenues of Manhattan, while bands played and flags waved.

Reviewer Britt Peterson subsequently touches upon Cotton Mather, the advent of gastroporn, raw-milk madness, and concludes with the future, which bears an uncanny resemblance to our past . . .

Favorite Books of 2008

News just came down the pike (as usual, I'm the last to know), that A Short History of the American Stomach has been selected by the Chicago Tribune as one of their "Favorites from 2008." I'm in excellent company . . .

Juice Fast Ends the Recession

NY.Com's Mark Adams explores how Depression-era health regimes have returned, via the fasts and purges of Gwyneth and Diddy. The Puritans—masters of the emenagogue and puke—would have been proud.

Mixology and Mourning

Drowned my sorrows last night at Macao, where my friend, the genius mixologist Billy Gilroy, shows his amazing prowress in the fermented arts. Had a number of his Hong Kong Cocktails, and the world seemed a better place . . .

In Memoriam

My father, Millard Kaufman, died last Friday. To honor his memory, I'm reprinting my first article for a major publication, an "About Men" column that appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine many years ago.

The New York Times
September 15, 1985, Sunday, Late City Final Edition
ABOUT MEN;
A FATHER'S ANGER

By FREDERICK KAUFMAN



IN ''BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK,'' a film my father wrote, Robert Ryan tells Spencer Tracy: ''Nobody around here has been big enough to make you mad. I believe a man is as big as the things that make him mad.'' I've never forgotten those lines. They are linked to one of my earliest memories of my father: Dad is pacing the living room, holding the phone under an arm like a football and screaming into the receiver, ''Don't tell me how to write the goddamn thing!''

I can't remember exactly what was going on, but I do know that he was yelling at an agent, a director, a producer - one of the multitude in Hollywood who can torment a writer. I also know that I hated his rage, that I wished for a less angry father. ''Writing,'' my father often told me, ''rhymes with fighting.''

One afternoon, I could have been no more than 9 years old, my father and I were in the pantry. He was up on a ladder, trying to get his pliers into an obscure corner. It was my job to hand him the tools he needed. My attention wandered, and soon he was yelling at me. About an hour after his screaming subsided, Dad came to my room and apologized. ''You are not the target,'' he told me. But I remember thinking that if I wasn't the target, who was?

Years later, my college writing instructor asked me to her office to discuss one of my short stories. As she critiqued my writing, I became full of rage. To calm myself, I repeated under my breath, ''A man is as big as the things that make him mad. . . .'' Finally I shouted, ''Don't tell me how to write the goddamn thing!''

I was kicked out of my first writing course, and six years elapsed before it occurred to me that what had happened had something to do with my father.

By then, I was living in New York in a windowless garret, working at a small publishing house by day. At night, I typed on my Smith-Corona portable.

It was a year of pounding out furiously whatever came to mind -damn the editors, damn the publishing industry.

I had inherited my father's stubborn rage.

When the year was over, I needed a new typewriter. When I looked at my vast, useless pile of paper, I had the feeling something was not right.

On my next visit to Los Angeles, I made a point of joining my father for a lunch of chicken hot dogs. He overcooks them in the broiler every day, and they emerge black and swollen with raised bubbles - the way he loves them. He covers them with mustard or ketchup or Tabasco sauce and eats them between slices of not-quite-yet-stale French bread. No matter who joins him -a producer, the gardener - the grub is always the same. ''Want some?'' he asks. ''No, thanks.''

But when they're on his plate, I ask for a bite. He gives me an annoyed smile, forks over half his meal and tosses a few more dogs on the broiler.

''Dad,'' I ask, ''why did you decide to become a writer?''

He told me that after he had returned from the Marine Corps in World War II, he had thought that the most sensible way to make a living, with the least expenditure of effort, would be to write theatrical motion pictures, about which he knew absolutely nothing. His first job was with United Productions of America, where he had been teamed with the director John Hubley and asked to create an original cartoon.

My father came up with a character based on his Uncle Leonard, who was also known as Bub. I had met Uncle Bub when he was an old man, deaf and barrel-chested. The cartoon character needed a name; my father turned to California geography, which, he said, is full of inherently funny names. He loved the pretentiousness of Azusa (''Everything from A to Z in the U.S.A.''), and Point Mugu, up the coast from Malibu. He decided to change the spelling and call Uncle Bub Mr. Magoo.

The cartoon was an immediate hit. But after my father had written the first half-dozen Magoos, he left United Productions. In Dad's opinion, writing cartoons was no job for a mature man, so even though he had hit the jackpot early, he told his agent to get him different work. The agent discovered that M-G-M was planning a picture about boot camp. At that time, there were surprisingly few writers in Hollywood who, like my father, had been in combat. The agent went to Dore Schary, vice president in charge of production. ''I don't know whether this kid can write,'' he told Schary, ''but if he gives you nothing more than a few little things that are for real, at the end of the month you can him and you get a professional writer.'' Dad got the job.

A few weeks later, as Dad was leaving the studio, a voice hollered ''Millard!'' It was Schary. The head of the studio was charming, and apologized for not having seen Dad earlier; he was terribly busy.

''I tell you what let's do,'' he said. ''It's so difficult talking around the office, there are always phones and one thing or another. Why don't you come over to the house tomorrow morning, and we'll talk while I'm taking a shower?''

''All the vicious and demeaning things I had heard about the treatment of writers in Hollywood kind of ganged up on me,'' my father told me. In a rage, he screamed at Schary, ''And what the hell shall we do then? Play unnatural games?'' My father walked away. I pictured Mom and Dad in the living room later that evening. Of course, Dad would have to find another job. He had had the chance to do what he had dreamed of and rage had spoiled it. But Mom said to hell with Schary, you're right.

So in the kitchen, over the remains of chicken hot dogs, I realized that no matter what the reward, my father wouldn't lick another man's boots. His rage had a lot of good in it: I, too, will never have to read my work to the vice presidents of this world while they soap their armpits.

And years ago, as my parents sat brooding, the phone rang. It was Mrs. Schary's social secretary, inviting them to dinner. My father stayed at M-G-M for 11 years, during which time he earned two Academy Award nominations, one for the second film of his career, that western starring Spencer Tracy and Robert Ryan with the lines I won't forget.

Alumni Corner

Here's the latest from veteran AmericanStomach reporter, Linnea Covington: Czech food in Fort Greene . . .

"What the heck's the matter with Christian salt?"

So asked kielbasa maker Joe Godlewski, who plans to offer an alternative to kosher salt. Godlewski's salt will be blessed by an Episcopal priest. Of course, all salt is inherently kosher. And kosher has nothing to do with blessings said by rabbis or priests. Don't confuse Godlewski with the facts. He's got a marketing plan!

And you thought it was for dogs

One of my daily rss food-feeds has decided to revisit hippophagy, not to mention meals made of the flesh of mule, zebra, and donkey. A must read.

Broccoli, Pornography, and Kant

Here's the lastest installment on gastroporn from this current issue of Policy Review, written by the venerable Mary Eberstadt. I will be revisiting "Debbie Does Salad" and other facets of food and sex at a March luncheon at NYU. Details to follow . . . .