Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Now, I want to emphasize here that I haven't signed anything yet, so I
don't really want to name the publisher yet (the jinxing superstition
runs deep.)  My agent is Sarah Chalfant at the Wylie Agency, and she's
brilliant -- also British, a nice perk.

Of course, for all the obscene money they're throwing my way, it looks
like after taxes and credit card debt, I'll have enough to purchase a
lovely cozy studio in Sheepshead Bay.  I'm thinking of becoming a
Republican.  

Not really.

Oh, and I just got what I think must be my first nasty backlash
comment on my blog.  Oh well.
  

    
Hey, you're officially a sell out. Now the fun really begins.

I'm glad someone outed you on the Publisher's Lunch tip so that we can
talk about it. Was this something of a whirlwind, or longer in
development? When can we, your legion of fans, hope to buy the book?
What next?
  

    
It was pretty fucking fast.  We went out with the proposal on Monday,
made a decision on Friday.  Lots of meetings with editors -- wonderful
folks all, it made me feel a little weird I have to say, making
decisions like this.  

Don't expect the book out in the next three months.  We're going to
take some time with this.  I've never written a book before, you see,
at least not one that has ventured off my desktop.  
  

    

did you meet Sarah after the Times article was published.
  

    
Actually, no, Sarah was recommended to me by a friend/mentor of mine,
Liz Gilbert, who's a brilliant hilarious writer who was extraordinarily
kind to me when I wrote her a fan letter a few years ago.  

When I started getting contacted by agents and publishers and folks,
back in the spring, I guess, I was freaking out, and in my terror I
sent an email to Liz.  I hadn't communicated with her at all in YEARS.
She answered my email in twenty minutes flat.  From Lebanon.  And told
me to call her agent.  Which I did.  Just about the easiest
agent-meet-up story you'll ever hear.
  

    

that's priceles.
  

    

That's excellent...I'm glad there was a buzz on before the Times piece.
  

    
Me too.  I'm mostly glad that when the Times piece came, I had Sarah
already.  I would have fucking flipped, otherwise.
  

    
Besides "Living in New Yark" and eating all of Julia Childs
recipes...we on the edges can just read...
;-) 
  

    
Julie, if/when your book deal is solid, would you expect that your blog
would be the book? Or would you write up the experience all over again?
  

    
I'll definitely not be just dumping blog entries between two covers. 
God, that would be awful.  There's a lot that needs to be done with the
structure and the narrative to make it interesting enough to read in
book form.  That said, of course I'll be poaching heavily.
  

    

But will you be braising?
  

    
Barbara C writes:


Due to "all the obscene money they're throwing" at you
-- have you given notice at the LMDC?  I also read the
Publisher's Lunch piece so I know you have a little
time before publication, but, as someone who has
droned my early life away at similar crappy
administrative/slave jobs, that would be my first
order of business.

Also, what are you eating these days?
  

    
Dan Levy: ba dump bump.

Barbara: I'll probably stick around the old LMDC just a bit longer --
I sort of owe it to some folks around here to stay until the current
project here is done with.  Not that they can't find another chimpanzee
to do my work, but they don't need to be looking for their new
chimpanzee in the midst of this.

I actually just officially started my diet the day before yesterday. 
You know, I'm doing one of those high protein low carb deals.  Very
boring.  Last night I totally went off, drinking vodka and such, which
was less boring.

I'm trying to use a lot of garlic and spicy stuff, to ease the malaise
a bit.
  

    
vodka is low carb! you're doing just fine. 
  

    
Well, compared to Grand Marnier it is.
  

    
Gimlets have all that Rose's Lime Juice in them, so I guess they've
gotta go now.
  

    
Yeah.  I bought myself some very nice Belvedere vodka so I could sip
it straight.  But I did allow myself a smidge of Rose's a little later
in the evening.
  

    
Y'know -- two weeks has just *flown* by here! I want to thank Dana and
Michele and everybody else who chimed in here -- both within and
without the Well -- for their contributions to great conversation.
Julie, special thanks to you for taking time to join us in the Inkwell.
I've been totally enjoying this.

Although we're now featuring another conversation (with Richie
Unterberger, on folk-rock music in the late-1960s and his book, *Eight
Miles High*), this one doesn't have to end. Stay as long as you like.
But we're saying thanks in case some of you have places to go and stuff
to do, y'know? Maybe something to cook.

Which reminds me: What kind of cook was Eric before and after? Did he
become a better cook through following along at your side (and spicy
Thursdays) than when the Project started out?
  

    
over? noo! Julie, stay here! and g lowcarb.ind in the inner Well! Also 
chow.ind and cooking and restaurants and ny and and and and!
  

    
Congrats on the book deal, Julie. This is the best Cinderella story
I've read in ages.
  

    
Shocking, it was, Julie, to not see your face there on the inkwell
page.  oh well.  impermanence.  I was interested in the California
topic a few days back...    I'm the sort of person that when things get
dicey-  I cook.  Big yard sale - I make everyone huevos rancheros.  
My good friend and right hand man had his sister in town so- of course
I cook dinner for them- great evening.    But I'm prepping these eight
lovely loin lamb chops, and instead of the usual dried herbs I go to
the back yard and then I'm chopping up fresh thyme and oregano and
rosemary and lavender and suddenly I'm wondering: is there a PROBLEM
with this?  Is there something wrong here, like I'm being too
California or whatever?  Should I feel BAD that I get local grass fed
lamb, that we have traditional tomato varieties at our green market,
that there's a guy that sells peaches that are only in season for a few
weeks?  I don't want to offend anyone, really I don't.  But do people
really buy those round red things called "tomatoes" in February?  I'm
just now getting a little blasé about wonderful tomatoes with basil and
olive oil and balsamic-  so for me it's soon time to forget about them
for eight or nine months...  Maybe those folks that seem preachey
about this are just trying to get up-tight American shoppers to be
willing to spend a little more on real food.  Real produce, or meat,
will always cost more than factory-farm stuff.  That's why Monsanto and
those big guys are in business: to produce cheaper food.
Is it some kind of purtitan hang-up that some people have that they
can't let go of a chunk of change for superior stuff?  A sort of
Babette's complex?
 
  

    
I'm not arguing AT ALL that that organic, lovely stuff isn't great. 
It is.  It is a good thing.  But I think this whole conversation just
cuts a huge portion of the U.S. population -- as it happens, the poor
and obese portion -- out of the loop.

Yes.  I can buy my organic produce and meats and fish at the
greenmarket at Unions Square or wherever.  I do, in fact, often.  It's
great.  But then the weekend comes and the N, W, and R trains into and
out of Queens all shut down simultaneously, and all of a sudden taking
a leisurely trip to the greenmarket becomes a much more fraught
exercise.  I mean, jesus -- god forbid I live in Midland or something. 
As my husband says, "Alice Waters would probably not talk so much
about perfect peaches if she lived in Woodside."

It irritates me to read foodies waxing rhapsodic, not because those
things aren't wonderful, but because they categorically ignore a whole
group of people.  Say, for instance, the folks that work at the
sweatshop across the street from our apartment.  It's so bogus to
self-righteously say "It's a judgement on YOU if you don't want to
shell out the money for good produce."  Because some people really
can't.  Even I can't much of the time, and I'm not a Latin American
immigrant worker with six overweight children to feed.

So I guess all I'm saying is this: Yes.  By all means.  Spending your
money on good food is a hell of a lot better than spending it on, I
don't know, the dog fights.  But there's a deeper problem, that has to
do with making the preparation of food an important aspect of your
life.  That can be done, even with crappy tomatoes (or canned ones.)

I firmly believe that the organic food movement will only make a
lasting difference to the problem of food in America if it's paired
with a commitment to educating EVERYBODY, no matter what their access
to fine ingredients, about how to feed themselves.  

re: Eric.  He is in kitchen denial at the moment.   It doesn't help
that I'm in the midst of pathetic sad low carb hell.  I hope that soon
he will return -- pick up on his fried chicken quest, perhaps?
  

    
So how do you, does one, activate that commitment?  Maybe that's what
both Julia and Alice and Julie and so many food writers are trying to
do-  find a way to share knowledge and to educate.  How do you reach
someone who doesn't seem to even acknowledge that there's a problem? 
Like the Latino immigrant, or the satisfied Costco shopper with cases
of  junk food and sodas?  Trying to educate someone who isn't asking to
learn seems problematic at best.  
I would LOVE for everyone to reclaim the knowledge that foods have
seasons, and to be in touch with local providers.  But we are in an
economy managed by the rich for the rich, and they want "global", which
means huge production facilities in the cheapest places with
transportation to markets conveniently concentrated in urban areas--
because the power elite makes the most profit that way.
(I am in fact really revolted by the NYT's agriculture stance (cf.
"Harvest of Poverty"), as if all these "free trade zones" will in any
way really help the individual-- they will increase "trade" and the
"economy" by billions, but the beneficiaries will be the rich who
control the trade, while the farmer growing corn in Latin American will
have to emigrate to work at the sweatshop across your street.) 
(Yikes! there I go again!...)
It's so hard to talk to someone when you think you know better- I deal
with that with Renée in the kitchen, and to educate people, gee, I
just can't really get my mind around it.  I try to do the best I can,
and seek out people, like you, Julie, and other writers we have been
talking about, because I'm looking for understanding.  
People in poverty, their problem is economic, and a really
compassionate government could maybe help.  But even slightly well-off
people who sneer at quality ingredients because they get a better deal
at Snakeway, I have little sympathy for.
  

    
I don't know what to say.  It's a tough problem.  But I do think that
there are two different things going on here.  There's the sinister
industrial-agricultural complex, which I frankly see little hope of
changing.  And then there's a culture that (even, and perhaps
especially, among the well-off) places contempt on the place that food
and eating have in society's social fabric.

I insist that if you learn to place real eating and cooking in your
life, you will be happier.  This even without the excellent ingredients
that you're talking about.  I live in New York, and when I have the
time and the money and the access, which I often do, I love using fine
ingredients with respect.  It heightens my pleasure.  

However.  Someday I may move to, I don't know, Midland-Odessa. Even
northeastern New Mexico.  I will still want to eat well, but to do so,
I may have to go ahead and pay Da Man to do it.  So be it.  I will be
happy, even eating my gene-modified corn and anti-bioticized chicken.

I hate the stupid Americans as much as the next person.  But when you
spend all your time congratulating yourself and pitying/berating the
next person, you have precious little time left to enjoy your organic
greens.  As a species, we seem to love to find ways to feel better
about ourselves at the expense of other people.  It's sad when such a
universal pleasure as eating gets sucked into that neurosis.

Plus -- and here's where I get both in hot water and totally out of my
depth, because I in no way claim to be an expert in this arena --
there are other perspectives.  Julia, for instance, has on multiple
occasions pointed out that there isn't enough livestock on the planet
to produce the manure needed to feed everyone on the planet organic
food.

Sorry so long.  I will stop lecturing now.  It isn't attractive.