Looney

My mom taught the family dog how to swim by throwing her into the local drainage lake. On walks through the still developing development subdivision suburb or whatever you want to call it (like an even more morbid and humid version of Edward Scissorhands), our German Shepherd/Bassett mix would pull taut the leash and keep herself in a state of constant almost-asphyxiation.
"Mommy, why does Looney do that?"
"She's being the alpha dog, sweetie."
"Oh..."
"She's trying to be the pack leader, so she wants to lead us, to be in front all the time."
"Oh..."
"We're her pack, we-no, Looney, no!"
"WEEEEE!!!!"
Then she'd be rocketing down the street toward maybe a duck or squirrel, or simply because she felt the need to run. Me, small and brown, with a little toddler pot belly and a haircut that looked like a Lego figurine helmet, running to keep up with my running mother, undoubtedly a vision of youthful maternal perfection, long and blonde, outwardly happy with three little girls all under the age of 5 when she herself was barely an adult, running in vain after the world's only hound mix named Looney. Looney after the Canadian coin dollar. Not the cartoons. Just like I'm Eden. After a soup opera character. Not the Garden.
Looney would run right to the drainage lake behind the brush and undergrowth that I'd wander freely through while my sisters were at school, without worrying about spiders or snakes or neighboring sexual offenders. Simpler times, simpler pleasures. Looney would do a lap or two around the lake, probably a mile total, before we'd stop her. Then my mother would climb onto the top of a large cement pipe, scoop Looney up (Looney was an angsty undersized pre-teen, 15 pounds tops, probably why she'd run like hell away from us all the time), swing her back and forth for momentum, then toss her right into the lake, alligators, water moccasins, parasites, all probably present and accounted for. We'd laugh as Looney paddled back, huffing and puffing and spurting drool and lake water. She always came back. Always wanted more. And always, my mother abided. Again and again Looney would be airborne for a fleeting moment, legs and paws straight out and rigid, her tail curved like a question mark, unmoving as she sailed. I think that's why Looney wanted it so bad, to be thrown into the lake. To fly. She was that kind of dog. Transcendent.
It was all in good fun. We didn't abuse Looney. My mom and I treated Looney like a queen, up until I became too wrapped up in my own self-inflicted teenage hell to care. Then my mom took on the role of primary Looney-worshipper.
Looney was there when we moved for the first time from our standard American-Dream-issued-yet-really-a-sign-of-failed-affluence subdivision home in Victoria Woods, in Green Acres, to a 1960s farm-style house on two acres of South Florida acreage, all Australian pines and the normal Florida grass thats weeds in places north where golf grass is normal grass. She chased ducks so often at the lakes and ponds in our little town that the sisters went in pairs, maybe even once or twice the three of us went, to walk Looney, to help in holding the leash as Looney surged forth with Cerberean strength, eyes on the ducks crossing the street, waddling through the ever-present South Florida puddles, picking at invisible morsels.
Looney always got away. We always chased after, screaming her name, flailing our arms in desperation as we watched her swim in circles after a singular duck that we'd imagine was laughing at her, baiting her, leading her on until she exhausted herself and drowned. Which she didn't. Looney never drowned chasing the ducks. It was my worst fear, but it never happened. She was too good at chasing them. She knew what her limit was, she simply ignored it.
Once, she brought home duck wings. I didn't question her.
I credit Looney for bringing my father, my mother, and myself together one last time before their divorce and the liquidation of the house Looney and my sisters and I grew up in. Looney died on a normal morning, very early, right outside my parents window, under the corn plants my mother prized, and next to the entrance to the crawl space that always held a sense of mystery for me, even as I got older and spent less and less time smelling the wet and mossy air coming from it. My sisters were both gone, living lives I couldn't imagine until I was going through it myself. My mother roused me gently instead of ripping the covers off and turning on every light in my room.
"Eden, Eden. It's Looney." I was groggy, so this is where things get iffy. I followed her out of the house to where Looney was. She was laying just in front of her usual dirt bed. I can't remember if she was already dead by the time I got there, or was going. My father was there, petting her. My father had always harrassed Looney, called her a stupid mutt all the time, but I knew he'd always loved her. I remember touching her fur in the gray early morning quiet, all color leached from the bushes and trees, my mothers eyes. We squatted around Looney for a long time. I just stared. Words were exchanged, but I don't remember what they were. It doesn't matter now. I didn't cry. I'm crying now, but I didn't cry then. I didn't cry until three days later in English class, doodling. I had to excuse myself.
Looney was the best dog in the world for a family like mine. She brought a family of individuals together as one by chasing ducks and causing neighborhood drama. She scraped all the paint off the front door by jumping up to look at as through the window every time anyone came home. Seriously, anyone ever. They didn't have to be family. Looney spent a good deal of her time near that door, ready to see who was coming. She'd chase our cars down our long gravel driveway until finally my dad hit her, and she and her paw were never the same. She barked uncontrollably at fireworks and tried to eat them. She buried my uncle's shoe which we unearthed 7 years later after a hurricane wrent all of our trees limb from limb. She attacked our cats on command, with little more provocation beyond "Git er, Looney, git er!" Then the closest cat got a facefull of Looney-mouth, all in good fun of course.
That dog. Oh, that dog.

Inherit the Earth

Again, Martinez' prose is exquisite and light in words, but heavy in thought and meaning. She says, simply, "those who perish as they make their brutal pilgrimage", leaving it to the reader to decipher the horror these people go through. She doesn't abandon the reader to his own musings, though. She mentions brutality, yes, but also illustrates, or, makes suggestions, to the reader, guiding his thought in the right direction... "Fourteen men who died in triple-digit heat... abandoned..." Like the other piece we read, she takes you only so far, but makes sure you get the picture. It's a little round-about, a little naive in her hesitancy to say what it is she's thinking, what it is that really happened. It can be annoying, also. Then again, her pieces are not about the physical suffering of a people, but the hope and drive behind their risking their lives, and the forces that drive them to do it in the first place, and the Spartan resoluteness to acheive a better life.

The Things They Carried

I first thought this was an excerpt from Tim O'Brien's book of the same title, and was quite confused. I'm not sure if the person that chose this story knew that it wasn't in fact from Tim O'Brien's book. I almost chose this piece because that's what I originally thought. I didn't really consider that O'Brien's work is fiction.

The piece by Demetria Martinez is quite different from O'Brien's. Where you think you can feel sympathy for the soldiers trudging through Vietnamese jungles in the heat of summer in O'Brien's piece, you are horrified and stunned to silence with the knowledge that, though O'Brien's is based on real events, the things in Martinez' piece are documented. They really really happened. As in, that note that says "I need you... I hope that very soon we can be together forever" was really written, really lost in the desert by someone risking their lives on the chance that they might be more free, might get the chance to spend the rest of their lives with their lover. Martinez doesn't have to say that in her piece. All she does is mention the note, the baby boots, the toothpaste. Her prose, though straightforward and brief, is very delicate, operates on inference and suggestion. It's almost coy. She lets the reader come to conclusions about what these people went through, yet she makes sure that whatever conclusion it is, it isn't a pretty one. She guides you only so far, but makes sure you get to an assumption appropriate for the subject, without risking a "choose your own ending" kitsch that a lot of elusive prose can do.

Essay-Johnson is exploring the environment that helped create the Eric Rudolph, the Olympic Bomber.
Literary Journalism-He recreates his encounters with his interviewees in great detail, along with the setting and scenery, and the activities these people engage in.

His writing is very descriptive and informative, a cross between literary journalism and a short story. In scenes describing the daily life and locations of the people Johnson encountered read like fiction, yet interspersed throughout are short, yet incredibly important and factual paragraphs delineating histories, biographical information, geographical information, statistics, etc.

It is obvious that Johnson went to fairly intense and thorough investigative lengths for this piece in his attempt to investigate and better understand Eric Rudolph, and also to shed light. However, some parts are surely fabricated. Though this is based on true events, he had to improvise. Do you think this piece blurs the lines of fiction and nonfiction, or did Johnson do a good job of writing as real a profile/memoir of Eric Rudolph as possible?

Johnson opens and closes his piece with scientific writing concerning humankind's relationships to caves since prehistoric times. Do you think these pieces take away from the overall story being told, or does this technique tie it all together/does it make the piece more cohesive?

Johnson's portrayal of the people he encountered for this piece is a little skewed; more specifically, they come off as insane right-wing pro-life radicals who, if not in open support of Rudolph's bombings, are not in disagreement with his actions aimed against abortion clinics. Is this piece really a masked critique of the community Johnson spent time in? Do you think his portrayal of these people is fair? Or does he do a good job of writing as objectively as possible?

On my birthday in 1882...

Jesse James was killed by Robert Ford.
Brad Pitt played Jesse James in the movie The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
I am connected to Brad Pitt.
Rejoice!

A Sea Worry

I appreciate the brevity of Maxine Hong Kingston's piece. So much must be conveyed in such a small space, each word must be carefully chosen and positioned, like building a tiny ship in an even tinier glass bottle. Kingston's piece is unpretentious. She describes her son's love and her fear of surfing, the dangers involved, the passion the boys feel for it. It flows nicely, does not snag your eyes on too-long sentences or sudden and misplaced semi-colons. Matter of factly, she has a technique anyone trying to get into nonfiction writing should heed and pay attention to, at the very least, yet not necessarily emulate or imitate.

Total Eclipse

This piece pissed me off at first. It seemed so contrived, too lyrical, almost mythic. I kept thinking its just an eclipse its just an eclipse its just an eclipse for chrissake! over and over, mental eye-rolls. I respect Annie Dillard very much, but this piece was written from a viewpoint higher than the eclipse she waxes rhapsodic upon. She switches from the reality of the eclipse to overstuffed and wordy philosophical discources and insights and musings about life, history, the eclipse itself and its meaning to humanity. As seriously as she took the eclipse, and how transformative it for her, inversely, this essay did nothing for me. No lasting effect, I did not think about it after I read it. It was just words on the page, it was there while I was reading it. Now Ive finished, and life goes on.

Gabrielle Bell

Gabrielle Bell is everyone in this piece. I know this post is late, I should have posted last night, but my computer is 5 years old and is finally starting to die, so I didn't post. Lame excuse, I know. But the reactions people gave this piece in class today proves that she's the everyman (or woman, duh). She takes the boring moments and makes them fascinating, approachable, totally not-boring and hilarious to witness. Illustrated memoirs have the difficult task of holding up a two way mirror (if that exists, this is just something thats in my head.) Not only are they illustrating their lives, they have to make it so that they're illustrating their entire demographics' lives, also. How do you make something so personal into something commonplace and universal? Realizing that hey, we're all the same after all and experience many of the same things, just in different variations, over different timeperiods, etc? Sure, yeah, you could say that, that'd be the easy thing to say. Or just make it super funny and silly, into something that people actually want to experience, and they'll find ways of applying it to their lives. Im not saying that's happening in this piece. Im just trying to look at different angles. Or maybe Im trying to be edgy and different and counterintuitive for the sake of counter-intuitiveness. Which is pretty lame, I know.

Karen Tei Yamashita

It's so strange to me that Americans lost touch with food, got fat, found food again, are now fat foodies fascinated by every little soybean or slice of pate that crosses their way. How did we lose touch with food in the first place? Yeah I'm including myself, because I remember the exact sandwich I ate which made me stop to consider the time and effort I put into it, the flavors that it was composed of, how I had accomplished so much by making my own sandwich, how great it felt to have made something that to me at the time was so goddamn gourmet for a 14 year old, and so healthy. It was tuna salad on a toasted pumpernickel bagel with tomatoes, onions, lettuce, probably some kind of pre-sliced cheese. And loads of spicy mustard. I had just discovered it. It was awesome. I ate it warm. I showed it to my mom whose luke-warm response was infuriating at the time: why didn't she understand the effort I'd put into the sandwich? Why didn't she paw at it, unable to reach the mighty tuna bagel in my upheld hands even though she's a good 5 or 6 inches taller than me, and my mother, to boot, who can do anything she wants in any universe because she's almighty. I remember sitting at the bar in my house, watching TV, thinking how easy it was to create something so delicious myself, that I didn't buy, in fact, it was like 203958032958 times better than anything bagel sandwich I'd ever had at the likes of Atlanta Bread or Panera Bread, or any other kind of pseudo-deli-bakery-cafe hybrid thing. What the fuck was I eating before that? How did I stomach it? Weird. That's another story entirely.
Yamashita's essay drove home the point that life revolves around food, literally (duh), metaphorically (no shit), spiritually (riiiiight). She writes from an interesting perspective. I am not that familiar with her family history or ancestry, but I gathered from the short bio that being a Japanese American living in Brazil, she was practically drawn and quartered (thirded, really) between the familiar, the bizarre and foreign, and the utterly boring and bland. Grappling with all these flavors and tastes and cultures surely was a strain, and overwhelming, but she saw the similarities between them, especially the Japanese and the Brazilian, and brought it forth as something really unique and interesting: two complimentary cultures, one of Japanese living in Brazil, one of Brazilians living in Japan, coming to the same conclusions to solve the old problem: whats for dinner?
They improvise, they settle, they sacrifice, they infuse, they baffle the natives. Ultimately, expats from any country make due with the lot they've chosen, were given, stumbled upon, whatever. Survival of the fittest, maybe? Flight versus fight? Adaptation and assimilation? Who knows. I really enjoyed the essay, the recipes, the stories behind them, the cultures.

Chapter 9: Interviewing

I don't like to interview people. I really hate it, actually. It isn't because I'm shy, I get over that really quickly. It's because I honestly, selflessly yet unapologetically do not care what most people have to say. Unless I am being taught something absolutely new to me, I would rather read something to find out about someone or something. Plus, I simply cannot be bothered to sit down and inquire into someones life. I hate stroking egos.

What Helen Keller Saw

I suppose this is a profile and defense of Helen Keller. It was incredibly embarrassing for me to realize that I never really considered Helen Keller until Ozick pointed out in the first part of her profile that no one really considers Helen Keller anymore. Lord, what are we coming to?
My mom bought me a library of stereotypically classic novels from a smattering of cultures and sources, with the intent to culture me and force me to educate myself, refusing to have an idiotic and un-self-reliable and codependent daughter. She bought me Twain and Anne Frank and Helen Keller in the first round of classics. I read the Twain and Anne Frank, but never even cracked the spine of Keller's. Like today, it wasn't even considered.
Ozick does what she sets out to do, which is turn the reader on to the story of Helen Keller, defend her and bring her remarkable story to the forefront again, where it should be. I didn't know Twain was such a supporter of her and Anne Sullivan. I didn't know Keller's name was trashed, that she was called fake at the age of 11. Ozick relates all of this in a matter of fact no bullshit you need to listen to this because it is important biographical way that catches you and keeps you. Im not a fan of biographical things; the writer always somehow writes themselves into a part of their subject's life, living vicariously through the subject, and sensationalizing themselves. Ozick does not do that. And I think that is awesome.

Candyfreak

Steve Almond's writing lies somewhere between memoir and journalism, as the introduction to the excerpt states. I'm repeating this because I admire how he hides his flaws with candy, acknowledges that it may come across as pretty pathetic, and has the balls to write about it anyway. He's chasing candy, a universal (and usually feminine) symbol of comfort and forced forgetting. He goes so far to want to see it in it's pre-natal, most vulnerable state. He seeks to bring down and humanize that which brings so many people comfort. Maybe because he has none, even in his own skin. Ultimately, though, I dont think he achieves that, or even comes close. Instead he finds himself in arguably the most depressing place in the United States: the Midwest. No offense to anyone from the Midwest, thats just how I've always imagined it, and how its portrayed in American culture, just like the South is populated with a bunch of blathering drooling bipeds resembling monkeys, but way dumber.
Almond finds America in the Midwest, though. He doesn't find consolation in exposing candy as anything other than what it is: sweet comforting deliciousness. 

Maya Lin

I groaned when I read the title of this piece, Art and Architecture. Art writing can be more brittle and lifeless than how-to manuals for vacuum cleaners, and my patience has worn thin with boring nonfiction. I find no excuse for any piece of nonfiction, of any genre, to be boring. Especially in the 21st century. Just because it is based on fact, or explaining the inner workings of a simple household device, or you discovered a new and easier way to boil pasta without leaving the comfort of your bed, does not give you leave to just state it and move on, be a wordy show-off, or an old wind-bag. Nonfiction is as close to reality as you can get without having to take responsibility for it. It should be fun and insightful, embarrassing and irresistible, charming and neighborly. Even better if its just like having a mirror held close enough to your face you can see the dirt pores around your nostrils and the crust built up around the corners of your mouth and in that little crease on your chin.
Lin's piece didn't do that for me, really. It didn't reveal anything about myself to myself that I didn't know was lurking in the shadows there, nor did it shed any true light on something politically stupefying. It is, however, so obviously written from the heart, and enthusiastically, I had no trouble at all relating to her. She and I are nothing alike. She is ethnically diverse, I am plain vanilla white Caucasian, she is probably a Mensa-caliber genius, I am most definitely not, she has overcome great diversity to get to where she is today, I have kind of coasted along with everyone else, kept the pace with traffic. But I wasn't bored when I read her piece. In fact, I reread it to make sure I got everything. It's written in what I can imagine how she talks and thinks, which is concise and clear, and very very smart. The pacing may be slow, yes, but she doesn't spend time wasted on needless words or sentences or anecdotes. My favorite thing about this piece is that every sentence is necessary for the entire picture, to achieve the effect that she's going for. There is a serenity and calm acceptance emanating from Lin; she is telling you, yes, but showing you, also, the non-surprise of her winning, the struggles the veterans gave her concerning the structure of the monument she designed. Underneath it all is the fact that she is Asian, she designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial while still a student at Yale, she is a she (yes, sadly, that is still an issue these days).

Something I don't remember clearly? Pretty much everything before yesterday...

I wish I could romanticize something here about contending points of view on something really crucial to my development as a thinking and reasoning person. I really can't though. I remember clearly when I first learned how to ride my bike. And I was alone, too, so I can't fight with anyone about it. I don't talk to my first boyfriend, so I can't compare our versions of first-time sex with each other, which I think would've been really funny, hysterical even. Too bad.
Anyway. My best friend is currently out of town, so I can't rehash my version of our first awkward "here's my number call me we can hang out and eat bbq chips and watch lord of the rings together" episode when we were 14 and wearing really stupidly oversized army jackets and not combing our hair.
So I'll default to what, I believe, is my first memory ever, albeit its hazy, but thats the point. Somewhere deep in my gut I know this to be true, that I, still a babe in diapers, sat under a shiny new car and watched my young father negotiate with the salesman over the price. It was hot, I think, blazing and sterile, like South Florida tends to be all year long, without a cloud in the sky, the sun bleaching everything an unattractive translucency. I cant even say colorless, that implies white. This is a gross viscous see-through that makes you think the humidity in the air isnt simply moisture, but all of the sweat from everything, indoors and out, in a 10-mile radius. Horses and dog saliva included. Anyway, I think I am in diapers. I think I am sitting under the bumper of probably a Honda, because my father bought and drove a brand new Honda Accord for the first few years of my life. I think I remember him gesticulating, too, probably in anger at what is probably an idiotic and obstinate and short, but I don't think overweight, car salesman. I want to say I began to crawl to him, happily at that, I'd be lying if I said I did. Thinking too much about it makes me create things that more than likely didn't happen. All this is only a split second, the maybe/maybe-not-memory of this moment a tiny blip amongst other things I don't really remember that well, like my 23rd birthday, my friends' 23rd birthdays, Thanksgiving four years ago when I got drunk on champagne and Chambord in front of my born-again uncle. It was funny, thats all I really remember about that.

Craig Thompson

I love comics. I started reading them as a child, and though they have fallen out of favor with me for more grown-up things like the clothes I wear or what color my hair is or how many different gauges of rings can I fit in my ears before they start sagging just to see you know because I'm curious about the elasticity of my ear-skin, I will always hold comics close to my heart as one of the truly exceptional and avant-garde literary genres. Totally underrated, too.
Craig Thompson does a fantastic job of dispelling any immaturity that critics may find or try to assign to comics or graphic novels. Each panel is a snapshot from his heart, from what he holds dear, the experiences that helped shape him into the man with the ability and audacity to not only write about his life, but to illustrate it, too. This so obviously goes infinitely beyond the good vs evil super hero mega powered balls to the wall kamehameha stereotypes people have for comics. Dont get me wrong, I still read and have massive amounts of respect for anything Marvel related, pre-Disney-buy-out-bullshit and before their heads got so inflated with Hollywood helium they're so far beyond even Uatu's knowledge, but Thompson's work doesn't fall into that category. No where close, really. This is visual literature. He is still a story that is so inundated with information he simply could not find the words to describe it all. Maybe the words he needed didn't exist yet, who knows. 

Dave Eggerz

I've read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I'll read it again, too. And again. And again. I love this book, I love how Eggers writes. I have a huge literary crush on the guy. I even have a crush on his little brother Toph. That may or may not be creepy. But you can try to tell me you've never developed a crush on a character, underage or not, in a sad and compromised situation or not, and I wouldn't believe you.
Eggers is at the forefront of conversational prose. He's talking to you. You're not reading him, and he isn't writing. You're sitting at a bar in San Francisco or Chicago or LA or Tulsa or even Altoona, FL, and he's telling you his story like its nothing new. Because it's not new. Not to him. Out of context of the passage we read, in the book Eggers goes on a little tirade about the absurdity of privacy and mysteriousness, how people have nothing to gain from trying to hide or mask their lives and intentions and what's the big deal about disclosing such a personal and heartrending and tragic story anyway doesn't everyone go through something as personally traumatic at least once in their lives and shouldn't we all just tell about it and be happy and free and open and get over it and move on and such? I certainly think its a good idea. This book is what made me seriously want to write memoirs. Not that I believe I could do or be what Eggers is, but I still want to write because of him.

Li-Young Leeeeeee

Li-Young Lee-The Winged Seed
Lee's language evokes so much, using so little: "...with luck we'd be able to make six visits. My father would have liked to do more in one day, but we couldn't plan on it, since the visits sometimes dragged..." His father's devotion to his parishioners is clear, vivid; he loved visiting, and wishing he could do more, all while entertaining and humoring those he does manage to see.
The scenery of Lee's childhood is unbelievable. So beautiful in its bleak morbidity, all blacks and blues and grays, one visions Lee and his father on a mission to save the elderly man from Satan himself, riding high astride a great black horse, leaving, instead of fire, icy landscapes and colors, mirroring Lee's prose.
"A silver Christmas tree from two years ago... seeds were scattered... Mouse and rabbit droppings... a black pot sprouted some frozen yellow grass... me balancing in both hands the blood and fresh corpse of The Resurrected Man, [the] one whose body we'd been swallowing all afternoon."
This imagery, befitting to Pennsylvania I knew he was referencing it before he actually said it,helps color the bleakness Lee uses to illustrate his past, his embarrassment at speaking, the rotten hole of a mouth his Chinese accent left him with while he was a child.
I was deeply moved by this passage, a feat not easily attained, considering my fairly steep standards, and the brevity of the piece. I want to read more by Lee, whom I have never heard of before now.

breakfast of gluttons

everyone quick! go by your favorite flaky grain cereal and add chocolate covered raisins and huge chunks of just ripe enough bananas to it and go craaaaaaaaaazy

if you are not a breakfast eater, i feel immeasurably sorry for you

Eat, Pray, Love response

I hate the label 'foodie'. Food is a source of contention; those who embrace it and 'foodie' culture are rosy-cheeked harbingers of joy, willing to glut themselves on delicacies and peasant fare alike, wholly different animals from the size 0 food-skeptics who walk like their joints need a serious oiling before they're bones pulverize themselves for lack of cushioning and fatty lubricant, who are in turn completely different from the mildly overweight, over-processed, white, bromulated, enriched, ultra-pasteurized, just add water (or milk for a richer flavor!) middle America.

Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love has been a staple of foodie lit since it was first published, before Julia Roberts and her giant mouth (appropriate for the foodie part, I guess) came onto the scene. I have avoided it since it's arrival on the bookselves, and, disregarding my abhorrence for Julia Roberts (seriously, the giant mouth REALLY bothers the hell out of me), haven't seen the movie because, ultimately, what's the big deal about food? Seriously. The entire non-Western world must be laughing at us, we boorish and fatuous loafs oohing and aahing at such old-world and commonplace cuisine as sardine-wrapped green olives, cherry tomatoes, and pecorino cheese. What should be normal for us, the freshness, the spontaneity, the personality, charm, quaintness and kitsch, we have to invent and assign to food. What I don't appreciate about Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love is that she treats the homegrown and deeply nurtured food culture of Italy as something to be gawked at and marveled, like her own very old man with enormous wings.

Given all that, this excerpt mentioned food only once. Incidentally, that sentence was my favorite out of the whole damn thing. I reread it three times, and reread "mushroom pate that tastes like a forest" about a million more times because that is exactly how I've always wanted to describe that deep, earthy, magical appeal that mushrooms have, but never did because, well, I never thought to compare mushrooms to their typical habitat. SILLY ME. The relationship Gilbert has with her sister is quaint, yes, and very affectionate and exceptional, I'm sure, but once I read that part about the food, the sausage and arugula and white wine, it went to the wayside, and I found myself caught up in exactly what I just spent an entire paragraph bitching about. But I haven't gone to Italy, I haven't gawked at the authenticity and realness of their food right in front of them as if it were some opera-caberet hybrid, getting all up in their faces and stupidly giddy about how truly Italian it all is. I don't do that to the people that make my favorite burgers, or whole-hog barbecue, American foods just as unique and exceptional and potentially life-changing as Italian italian food.

Gilbert's a fantastic writer though. She reads easily, and her prose is clean and consice without being dry. I guess that was the point I should have been trying to make in the first place...