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Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
Thank you for illustrating so adeptly for us all exactly the type of "young writer" that our author was replaced by. You are truly the stuff of limericks!
P.S. While no doubt you are fine fresh young scrivenerly stock, you might want to brush up a tad on your reading comprehension skills. Ah, but of course... that is, no doubt, passe also? So sorry to have bothered you.
Well, I guess we know what your favorite whine is.
Ann's article is overwrought.
I don't agree with Harri's specific criticisms of Ann's writing, but I do agree with her general criticism of Ann's premise.
She was given a 3 bedroom house due to a publisher's advance, she's allowed to eat at fancy restaurants for free, yet she continues to denigrate everything about the food writing industry... the same industry that paid her bills for 2 good years.
Now that she's burned her bridges here, which industry will she suck the life from next?
Incidentally, I'm tired of the "porn" moniker being attached to everything. It's so 2002.
"What happened to the belief of food as being something sacred, as being a sacrifice that the earth makes for our sustenance?"
Come on, Sami. There's hardly a culture in the world that doesn't value good food, whether they are impoverished or not. Some of the greatest cuisine in the world is born from economic hardship married with invention (for example, French peasant cooking). Many foodies are well aware of the sacredness of food; maybe more so than many non-foodies that just cram $.99 hamburgers into their mouths.
Plus if you had paid attention to the article, you would see the author is critical of her friends' wasteful eating habits. So I'm not sure how this article conflicts with your aesthetics.
As a professional food writer for nearly 12 years, I can indeed relate to some of the things Ms. Bauer talks about. Yet, since graduating from journalism school, I have been writing about food (in San Francisco) for a living and I still love writing about food each and every day. I am now the editor of two newspapers, but what it really comes down to is that I still love to write, and I also love to eat. I grew up with a Sicilian grandfather who loved food for all the right reasons. None of my grandfather's life lessons sound even remotely like Ms. Bauer's experiences with food, so perhaps she was not fortunate enough to learn to appreciate food through the eyes of someone like my grandfather who loved to eat but also understood that he ate to live. There was nothing fancy about his cooking -- a basket of fried smelts or a bowl of aglio e olio -- but I've rarely eaten anything as satisfying. I would like to think that when I write my restaurant reviews, food features and chef profiles, I write with a sense of whimsy, curiosity, and a large dose of passion --- all the things my grandfather taught me about food and all the things my favorite cooks (not just "chefs") have in common. Without passion, all the fancy linens, farmers' market heirloom tomatoes, top culinary school training and $20 glasses of Pinot can't make a meal memorable.
As for Ms. Harri Covert, you try far too hard to be engaging and simply come across as immature, inexperienced, catty and jealous. Pinot has been "passe for ages"? Really? Did you mean to say Merlot? As someone who eats out for a living six nights a week, I can tell you it still dominates the wine lists of SF's top restaurants and is still the number one selling glass of red wine. (And a little film you may have heard of last year called "Sideways" has made it more popular than ever). I assume when you say you are a "food writer" that you are not a published one. Ms. Bauer, on the other hand, has some chops, even if she is bored with writing about food. So Ann, if you want to write those thought-provoking pieces that your former publication turned down, give me a call.
There seems to be an endless number of Salon readers who have gargantuan chips on their shoulders (Harri whoever being a prime example). The new year is hardly one day old, and some of you have already begun 2006 just as you finished 2005--by finding fault in others just to make yourselves seem smart(er). Why not make a resolution to lighten up and get over yourselves. Self-absorbed, indeed!
Thank you for the informative and entertaining article. It is stories like this that keep me checking in to Salon everyday. Happy New Year!
However, I would rather have read the author's take on organic pork frams, the resurgence of beets, and upscale restaurants feeding the homeless.
It would be nice if Salon bought these kinds of stories rather than so many referential articles by journalists about journalism.
...the ones you said you used to write, the ones you said you'd rather write, the comfortable, in-depth interviews over supper where genuinely interesting people tell you about their genuinely interesting lives. I hope you will write more like that, and that Salon will publish them. Of course, I'm just a warm, sensual, zaftig creature who works in a food store -- and eats the food. However, no matter how much money the fashionable are plunking down on food porn, I suspect there are more people like me than your former editor would ever suspect -- or be interested in reaching. See, I also suspect that what you went through at that publication had more to do with the self-image of various individuals under whom you worked than real pressure in the real marketplace.
I heard on NPR over the weekend that the most successful food magazine in the country is Taste of Home, with a readership on a scale with People or Time. Unless they also listen to NPR and heard the same story, people who buy cooking and food magazines but don't eat probably have never heard of this magazine. Most of its sales are home subscriptions, not newsstand sales, and it doesn't accept advertising. The kind of food it talks about is the kind your mom made, if your mom cooked, probably not much in the way of port wine reductions. I doubt very much this magazine's editors have ever felt the need to feature an interview with a celebrity chef.
You are the journalist. You can draw your own conclusion(s). I just wanted to point this out, and to encourage you to write more about what's real and true, whether it's ultimately about food or people, or (preferably) both. There is a market for it. I'm in that market, and I'd like to read it.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The Maine fight was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for repealing California's Prop. 8 -- but gay marriage lost
Once one obtains Seriousness credentials in the Washington media, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct.
Salon headlines in your mailbox
