Letters to the Editor
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Come on folks, it's funny!
As the saying goes: to a man with a hammer every problem looks like a nail, so too our anguished, precious, moderns: in every article they read they hear an echo of their own issues and grievances. The article was well written, insightful, acutely observed, and funny! Thank you.
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Ho Cuisine
What a couple of perfectly beastly years dear Ann has endured as a food critic. A talented writer, rising above her station, to turn a buck as a high kitchen Klute. In her workplace, all the poor lass wanted was a warm, fuzzy zaftig. She wound a hostage to a posse of poseurs, her jaded palate and silken prose ultimately yielding to the economic imperatives of her magazine.
I did, however, enjoy Ann Bauer's essay, registering many smiles and the odd chuckle. A one-time Parisian plongeur, George Orwell, provided contrasting insights into the world of the dining experience. And he managed it all without wearing a wrist watch to work.
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Death of a wine...
Gawd, I was so sad to learn that Pinot Noir is now passe`. It's been my favorite California wine for almost fifteen years. (Long before Sideways came along obviously.) And now I have to give up my Russian River Pinots because it's no longer fashionable to drink them?
I can't read food & wine reviews anymore, or for that matter articles like this one because it's taking all the fun out of being a food lover. It's hard enough keeping up with the kind of jeans I should be wearing and now I have to worry about my wine too?
Could someone please tell me what this season's fashionable wine is so I don't look foolish ordering Pinot Noir tonight.
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The repressed sensuality of a bad food writer
I don't like this woman. A natural cynic, she is over her head, so she resents the subject she writes about. She admits to knowing nothing about cooking (it's unsurprising that her reviews are bubbly nonsense), but suddenly she is ascribing to restaurants, their customers, and their reviewers all the repressed angst of her own unfulfilled life.
Certainly there is a wealthy sub-culture that fetishifies food, but good food writers (like Tony Bourdain, John Thorne, James Villas, and Michael Ruhlman) know enough about their topic to expand it to include a vast array of human experience. Food is a universal experience, so it is a natural entree to life.
Finally, I'm getting tired of the ubiquitous porn-bashing. Erotic writing is as ancient as civilization, and Salon's obsession with it (and clear disapproval) is a mark of our repressed puritanical society. Come on, editors! Get a life. Read Susie Bright (indeed, why not publish Susie Bright?), and learn to embrace sensuality. But stop this furtive smirking. It puts you in bed with the same people who want to repress all progressive thought.
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Food slut
Yick. So that's how the upper 15 or 20 percent live and eat. And the admiration shown a person because he owns a sports team, or because she owns a bookstore (as a hobby, presumably, certainly not for the money), is pathetic. But thanks for the article, now I know not to bother looking into Bauer's novels.
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Something to keep in mind
The ferocity of attacks on Ann Bauer surprises me. She's a writer who took a job to pay the bills, got burnt out on it, and is telling us about the experience in a funny, nicely paced article that provides an outsider's perspective on what is, in many respects, a silly little world. That's all that's going on here, yet some letter writers are responding as though she has betrayed the craft.
Remember the publication she was writing for. Every major city has one or two. They indeed feature food on every other cover: Best Cheap Eats! Top Ten! Best New Restaurants! Fast-Rising Chefs! What's inside aren't even articles. Instead, it's all photos, lists, bullets, and sidebars ("Where Local Anchors Like to Eat!"). Half the time the content is heavily influenced by the writers' and editors' personal connections to various restaurateurs and other advertisers. Ever wonder why your favorite restaurant doesn't make your city magazine's Top 50 list? Probably because it doesn't advertise in the publication.
All you have to do is leaf through this kind of magazine to know that they provide a less than hospitable environment even for dedicated, passionate, professional food writers. Food porn is exactly what these publications are peddling. Bauer couldn't sustain her jones for it. Does that turn her into a ranting bitch?
By the way, it would be nice if her detractors at least acknowledged the article's readability. Whether or not they like Bauer, they certainly seem to have devoured her writing.
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Bravo, Harri Covert
I think you said it brilliantly. Your words weren't so much harsh as a wake up call to all reviewers (and wanna-be reviewers like Ann Bauer) to put a little passion into their work.
Being a reviewer does not allow you to switch off as and when you get a little jaded. It requires a depth of thinking and feeling that would make anyone feel tired. Without getting too personal, I'd say I know what a good reviewer is from 3 lines of writing - they need to put a lot of careful thought into their summaries.
Ann Bauer wants to be a good food WRITER; she's obviously not a very good REVIEWER. So let's give her the space to go write stories about hundred-dollar organic pumpkins and cultivated crops. And leave the proper reviews to writers who love their food and their jobs.
And let readers like me admire the craft of those who care more about their meals than the size of their dinner companions.
(Editors are usually wise enough to know their writers' capabilities - the one who fired Ann knew what he/she was doing.)
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kudos from another food writer
Bauer is right on. I was a food writer for five years and finally had to quit because I was, frankly, more than a little ashamed of what I was writing.
It's not that food isn't interesting or delicious or soulful or a beautiful means of connecting with loved ones and culture. It is all of those things. And I admire talented chefs. But the pretension and elitism that fuel the highest levels of foodie culture become tiresome in the way that overexposed celebrities grow tiresome. It's also hard to justify the idolatry when millions make do with very little food at all.
Furthermore, the act of feeding our bodies, even though we do it publicly all the time, is a very intimate thing. Mouths are sensual organs, and I doubt there's a food writer alive who's resisted the lure of easy innuendo. Some of us purposely employ syntactical rhythms that mimic lovemaking. We might use words that sound like more colorful words and are meant to evoke the naughty version in the reader's mind. Eventually the "ick" factor creeps in. For a food writer, detailing, say, the flick of a tongue against a fork or the earthy scent of a truffle feels creepily akin to exhibitionism.
At the end of the day, much of it is blatant pandering, and not in a benign form: I firmly believe that our elevating food to such absurd levels of specialness has fueled eating disorders and obesity in this country. Food, for many of us, is no longer just pleasant bodily fuel -- it's struggle, reward, entertainment, esoterica, spiritual quest, status symbol, invention, art, foreplay, orgasm, and even love -- with all of their attendent neuroses engaged. Many of us are unconsciously feeding voids that have nothing to do with calories.
Bauer wasn't complaining about being spoiled, she was confronting a vortex of emotional conflict. Like her, I enjoyed food more when it was incidental to the task of everyday living, not the star of a media peep show.