What Did My Great Grandmother Eat?

Among Michael Pollan's 24 suggestions for getting back to eating real food (In Defense of Food), the first intrigues me most:

1. Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.

This, like all his recommendations, makes good sense when kept in the context of his book.  Basically, he means that we need to go back to a cultural rather than a 'nutritional' definition of food.  Taken on its own, however, eating what your great grandmother ate is odd advice.  What did my great grandmother eat?  I have no idea.  I only met two of my great grandmothers, and I don't remember eating with either.  There must have been family gatherings that involved food, but I only know that from photographs and home movies.

Here's another example of how Pollan's book betrays a peculiar sense of history.  Does anyone remember what their great grandparents ate?  Great grandmas usually aren't cooking anymore.  I would have to ask my parents, or my grandma, what they remember.  It would certainly make for an interesting conversation.  But what would the scattered details amount to?  Could they even describe a complete meal?  And would I still want to eat that food?  Something tells me "no."

Since I can't remember what my great grandma ate, I looked up a few idyllic farm meals described in books published between the 1930s and 1950s, which would overlap with the era in which my great grandmothers were cooking.  Here are my favourite selections:

Mr. Bean - by Kurt Wiese

From Freddy the Detective (1932) - Mr. Bean's bedtime snack:

"Late that evening, when Mr. Bean had finished the chores and had gone round to the barns and the hen-house and the pig-pen and turned out the lights and said good night to the animals in his gruff, kindly way and had then gone into the kitchen to eat a couple of apple dumplings and a piece of pie and a few doughnuts before going to bed, Freddy and Jinx when up into the loft." (p. 109)

From Charlotte's Web (1952) - Wilbur's slops (from Mrs. Zuckerman's kitchen):

Wilbur - by Garth Williams

"Breakfast at six-thirty. Skim milk, crusts, [wheat] middlings, bits of doughnuts, wheat cakes with drops of maple syrup sticking to them, potato skins, leftover custard pudding with raisins, and bits of Shredded Wheat.  ...Twelve o'clock - lunchtime. Middlings, warm water, apple parings, meat gravy, carrot scrapings, meat scraps, stale hominy, and the wrapper off a package of cheese. ...At four would come supper. Skim milk, provender, leftover sandwich from Lurvy's lunchbox, prune skins, a morsel of this, a bit of that, fried potatoes, marmalade drippings, a little more of this, a little more of that, a piece of baked apple, a scrap of upsidedown cake." (p. 25-26)

Almanzo - by Garth Williams

From Farmer Boy (1933) - Almanzo's winter evening supper:

"Almanzo ate the sweet mellow baked beans. He ate the bit of salt pork that melted like cream in his mouth. He ate mealy boiled potatoes, with brown ham-gravy. He ate the ham. He bit deep into velvety bread spread with sleek butter, and he ate the crisp golden crust. He demolished a tall heap of pale mashed turnips, and a hill of stewed yellow pumpkin. Then he sighed, and tucked his napkin deeper into the neckband of his red waist. And he ate plum preserves, and strawberry jam, and grape jelly, and spiced watermelon-rind pickles. He felt very comfortable inside. Slowly he ate a large piece of pumpkin pie." (p. 28-29)

It all sounds wonderful, provided I could dine at the Zuckermans' before it went in the slop bucket.  But who would be healthy eating like this nowadays?  Not a head of lettuce to be seen, I notice (that strange cover image for Pollan's book).  Nothing else green, either.  Wilbur's apple & carrot parings are the only 'fresh' items on the menu.  No, reverting to this diet wouldn't save me from any "Western diseases."  I'm afraid my great grandmother's diet will have to remain history!

Food Reading with an Ethical Bite

Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (New York: Penguin, 2008)

The hamburger book rekindled my old doubts about whether the history of food could qualify as capital "H" History.  Most of the book would class as 'burger-biography'; there was little if any argument (historical or otherwise) relating to Smith's opening assertion that burgers - or rather the selling thereof - "revolutionized the way Americans ate." (Hamburger, p. 9)  So I began looking for other, more vigorous discussions of this 'food revolution,' and landed on Michael Pollan's best-selling In Defense of Food.

This was another enjoyable 2-night read, which I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to anyone else interested in the argument that a lot of what we eat today isn't "food."  Pollan, a journalist and professor, is an excellent writer and a powerful communicator.  The book is easy to read, but I find it difficult to summarize.  I suspect Pollan's prose is a big part of the book's appeal, especially since, when I was bored, the book felt like a very long magazine article.

The book starts with Pollan's mantra ("Eat food, not too much, mostly plants") and unpacks it by explaining a) why a lot of what we eat isn't food, b) why it's bad for us, and c) some suggestions for how to remedy the situation.  I was surprised not to be more taken aback by the book's arguments.  We're used to hearing that "the Western diet" of "lots of processed foods and meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of everything except fruits, vegetables, and whole grains" (p. 89) is causing serious health problems like diabetes and obesity.  If we pay attention to food packaging and advertising, it's not news that the food industry has a tight grip on public health messages, with their pocketbook rather than our health in view.  Even Pollan's deconstruction of "nutritionism" - the scientific dissection of food into various nutrients such as fat, protein and carbohydrates, so that we obsess about 'nutrients' and lose sight of 'food' - came across as confirmation of my own suspicions rather than a novel argument.  (This was the most interesting part of the book, however.)

Because this book identifies and excoriates a problem, and actively searches for a solution, it has the 'ethical bite' that I missed in the hamburger book and the medieval cooking articles.  But to offset that advantage, In Defense of Food has a rather peculiar sense of history.  Most of its stories come from the 1950s or later, the era in which scientific "nutritionism" took over from "mom" (a.k.a. local culture) as the authority on food.  Pollan dipped into the 19th and early 20th C on occasion, but immediately beyond that there was nothing but a utopic evolutionary past - where humans ate real food and weren't diabetic or obese.  My mental history book tells me that past simply doesn't exist.  To the extent that the book's argument relies on this pre-historic chimera, it has pulled the rug out from under its own feet.  In the quest for real food, it has ignored the real history of food, which is full of shortages, inequalities, disease, starvation...and, um, non-processed but nutritionally inadequate, semi-rotten food.  [For a taste of that history, I recommend David Gentilcore's stunning article in History Today (September 2014) on "Peasants & Pellagra in 19th-century Italy," describing the terrible effects and long duration of a niacin-deficient maize diet in rural southern Italy.]

At the end of the day, In Defense of Food is about a present food problem, and it doesn't need to invent an ideal past for its argument to stand.  I'll close with Pollan's suggestions for how to carry out his mantra:  "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."  With 24 options to choose from (!), you're sure to find a few you like.

1. Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
2. Avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than five in number, or that include d) high-fructose corn syrup
3. Avoid food products that make health claims.
4. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle.
5. Get out of the supermarket whenever possible.
6. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.
7. You are what what you eat eats too.
8. If you have the space, buy a freezer.
9. Eat like an omnivore.
10. Eat well-grown food from healthy soils.
11. Eat wild foods when you can.
12. Be the kind of person who takes supplements.
13. Eat more like the French, or the Italians, or the Japanese, or the Indians, or the Greeks.
14. Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism.
15. Don't look for the magic bullet in the traditional diet.
16. Have a glass of wine with dinner.
17. Pay more, eat less.
18. Eat meals.
19. Do all your eating at a table.
20. Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does.
21. Try not to eat alone.
22. Consult your gut.
23. Eat slowly.
24. Cook and, if you can, plant a garden.

Hamburger...History?

Andrew F. Smith, Hamburger: A Global History (London: Reaktion Books, 2008)

After reading David Gentilcore's book on tomatoes, I went searching online for book reviews or related work.  Various titles by Andrew Smith surfaced, and as this one was readily available at our public library, I read it next.  Hamburger is a nice, short book with lots of pictures - including an idyllic frontispiece of a juicy burger on a red-checked tablecloth, the kind of picture that makes your tummy growl at 9 p.m.!  I read the book in two sittings while not feeling well, which does credit to Smith's work.

Reading Hamburger sandwiched between Gentilcore's historically erudite Pomodoro! and Michael Pollan's vigorous In Defense of Food put the book up against some stiff competition, however.  Although Hamburger begins with the history of hamburgers as a food item, the story was short and vague compared to Gentilcore's detailed exploration of nearly five centuries of tomatoes.  And the ethical dimension was discussed so dispassionately that I couldn't tell whether Smith actually had an opinion about it.

I did learn that hamburgers as we know them (ground meat patty served in a bun) didn't appear on the American scene till the 1890s, as cheap food for factory-workers.  Before that, there were sandwiches (~18th C), and hamburger steaks (~19th C), but they didn't go together.  The necessary intermediate invention was the meat grinder.  Thus, from its earliest days, hamburger was mystery meat.

This is a point to remember for the overall record, by the way:  in the 1890s, cheap American street food is already garbage.  Some folks who don't like McDonalds (founded fifty year later) and processed food seem to forget that, er, bit of history.  So the first hamburger chain, White Castle Burgers (founded 1916, or 1921, depending where you look!), actually rescued hamburgers from their "bad reputation" by incorporating transparent, up-to-snuff meat practices into its marketing strategy.  (Business savvy also included a biplane for efficient supervisory patrol of more than 100 locations.  Some retro-burger joint should resurrect that feature!)

Perhaps inevitably, Hamburger is more about how the food was sold than about the food itself.  A more accurate title for the book might have been Hamburger Vendors: A Global History.  I enjoyed the first chapter on "The Hamburger Chain," which carried the story up to McDonalds.  The first recognizable chain name was A&W, c. 1919.  After the surprising role of the burger chain as saviour of the hamburger, the most interesting part of the history was the difference WWII made, not just by altering what burger joints could sell during the war, but also by functioning as a transition marker between the pre-war urban burger market and the post-war suburban demo & geographics.  Most of the burger chains we recognize (eg. Burger King, Jack-in-the-Box, Wendy's) are post-WWII businesses, that began by catering to suburban families with cars.  It was quite interesting to read about how expectations of dining ambiance fluctuated over time.  I suppose I was too young to ever really grasp a drive-in (I learned about "carhops" from this book!).  And now I realize that walk-up burger and ice cream shacks have a historic as well as an economic rationale.

But chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 - largely focused on who sells what kind of burger where - were not so engrossing.  For one thing, I get lost when books repeat the same chronological sequence over and over.  For another, McDonald's raised so many issues by ch. 3 that the book lost its original coherence as a story about hamburgers.  I dozed through the clones and the sides and the global spread...zzzz...and woke up with a snort when Smith asserted:  "Considered exotic when they first appear [outside North America], American fast-food outlets soon come to symbolize safety, convenience, fun, familiarity, sanctuary, modernity and connectedness to the world." (p. 109)  Uh...to whom??

I think I was waiting for Smith to take a stand about the bad side of burgers, and because he never did, the book ended up being bland for my taste.  Now, I grant the neutral tone is probably appropriate to this general-audience history book.  If I want pyrotechnics, I think I need to read Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation (2001).  But Hamburger does present itself as a history book, and as such it is disappointingly low on 'food for thought.'

Tomato History!

Come October, if my tomato vines have survived the extremes of our growing season, this box appears on my to-do list and gradually transforms into jars of salsa on the shelf and tubs of puree in the freezer.  There's always a point in the process where I solemnly promise myself NOT to grow as many plants next year.  But of course, come next planting time, the garden seems so big and the plants so small...I plant more than I need again.

Tomatoes are usually only a distant memory in January, but this year I had the unique pleasure of reading a whole history book about them:  David Gentilcore's Pomodoro! A History of the Tomato In Italy (2010).  Having appreciated what I'd read of Gentilcore's work on the history of medicine, and being a tomato grower and consumer myself, I was confident the book would be an enjoyable read.  But I also hoped the book would be able to make a case for the importance, and not just the interest, of food history.

I'm pleased to report that it did.  I'll admit I couldn't always locate the "so what?" in each chapter, but there were enough big-picture connections and surprises to keep me thinking each time I put the book down.  Since then, I've read a variety of other books about food.  Curiously, one of the key things they're missing is history.
 

Get the full recipe here

I suppose I've always been curious about the history of food.  Food is so basic and mundane, yet so culturally complex (as I've been learning from Professor Kelly Brownell's fascinating Open Yale course on Food Psychology).  You don't have to go back very far in time to find people eating strange things.  How about this Jello "Egg Souffle Salad" from, thankfully not my mom's, but probably my grandma's cookbook?  The further back in time you go, the less edible the food sounds.  Two years ago, I read the chapters on medieval food and cooking in Misconceptions about the Middle Ages (2008) and Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England (2010) with great interest, considerable disgust...and also a twinge of disappointment that these examples of food history weren't contributing the sort of historical insight I expected on so, um, essential a topic.  Getting from a recipe or an image to useful historical or cultural critique is evidently more complicated than it seems at first glance, perhaps in large part because the process involves re-thinking our current assumptions about what food is and what it does.

So, for my next few blog posts, I plan to review the various food books I've been reading.  Book reviews are good writing practice, and I'd like to pin down more precisely what makes Gentilcore's book the best of the bunch (in my opinion).  Here's the line-up, in order of reading:

Gentilcore, David. Pomodoro!: A History of the Tomato in Italy. Columbia University Press, 2010.
Smith, Andrew F. Hamburger: A Global History. The Edible Series. London: Reaktion Books, 2008.
Schama, Simon. Scribble, Scribble, Scribble: Writing on Politics, Ice Cream, Churchill, and My Mother. New York: Ecco, 2010.
Pollan, Michael. In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. New York: Penguin, 2008.
Orwell, George. The Road to Wigan Pier. London: Harcourt, 1937.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. London: Harcourt, 1929.

Quite the mix!

Anti-Semitism in Freddy the Detective (Third Part): Conclusion

Conclusions are a perennial weak spot in my academic writing and lecturing. They seem so artificial – even pretentious. Have I resolved everything, tied up all the loose ends? Frankly, I hope not. If I have given the problem a name, laid out my evidence, reached and recorded a new layer of questions, I am content. Then the project can go back in its box to ferment. Someday a new thought or insight may send me back to review and rethink its contents. Or, the open question mark will snag a new thinking project, somewhere down the line.

Nevertheless, I need to conclude. The library will want its books back, other blog posts are waiting to be written, and this thread is running out of oxygen. So: how do I respond to the problem in this otherwise enjoyable book? Is the anti-Semitism in Freddy the Detective a real danger – a “snake in the grass”? Or is it just an inevitable age spot, a “fly in the ointment” – something we can pick out, discard, and leave behind?

Well, I think it’s a bit of both. On the one hand (the “fly” verdict), Walter Brooks reflects his era. The first book in the Freddy series was published in 1927, the last (and 26th!) in 1958 – the year Brooks died. Brooks’ anti-Semitic ‘pastels,’ as I’ve come to think of them, are mild compared to his times, minor compared to the preceding century. Watch Simon Schama’s beautiful PBS series, The Story of the Jews (2014), and see what a miniscule gnat I’m straining out of an all-but-forgotten 1930’s children’s book. (Though Schama’s story will convince you that this gnat matters!) Watch Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), a Gregory Peck film about anti-Semitism in post-war New York, and read about the film’s backstory too. To call it “controversial,” as the wikipedia entry does, is a considerable understatement. I find the part about John Garfield, a Jewish actor who chose to star in the film and who was subsequently [consequently?] labeled a communist, especially baffling. Or, I should say, enlightening: it demonstrates how anti-Semitism isn’t an isolated or unadulterated problem that we can eliminate with a black sharpie pen.

This is where the gnat becomes a snake, as far as I am concerned. I could buy my own copy of Freddy the Detective and ink out the rats’ names. I could name them…well, what would I name them? Tom, Dick and Harry? (So dull!) You see, even though the names are the tipping point where Brooks’ poisoned inspiration becomes explicit, the problem is not just the names. Nor is it limited to Brooks, or his era. It’s a way of thinking. I see Brooks’ “Simon the Rat” character as a small but apt illustration of what David Nirenberg is talking about in his book Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (2013). In his introduction, subtitled “Thinking about Judaism, or the Judaism of Thought,” he proposes that “Judaism” is not merely the religion or culture of the Jews, but a long-standing ‘habit of thought’ in the West:

'Judaism'…is not only the religion of specific people with specific beliefs, but also a category, a set of ideas and attributes with which non-Jews can make sense of and criticize their world. Nor is 'anti-Judaism' simply an attitude toward Jews and their religion, but a way of critically engaging the world. (p. 3)

The book unfolds, century by century, the terrible impact of this ‘habit of thought.’ Nirenberg’s point is that we need to "become self-conscious about how we think" about both past and present; we need to know "how past uses of the concepts we think with can constrain our own thought." (p. 2) I heartily agree. What concerns me most about the anti-Semitic elements in Freddy the Detective is that they worked on me. I was two-thirds through the book before I realized what the rats’ names meant.

I agree with Nirenberg’s statement of the problem, but it lacks a solution. I still don’t know what to do about the pattern of thinking evident in the Freddy plot other than confronting it with its history, giving it a name and calling it wrong. That is what I have tried to do in these posts. I don’t think the problem can be blacked out or confined to the past. Since composing the last post, I’ve looked again at the rat character in Charlotte’s Web, and I’ve watched the BBC Television Shakespeare production of The Merchant of Venice (1980). I found the two oddly similar. Templeton is “always looking out for himself, never thinking of the other fellow.” (Charlotte's Web, p. 89) Earlier, White sums him up like this: “The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feelings, no friendliness, no anything.” (p. 48) Doesn’t this fit Shylock as well? In Shakespeare’s words, Shylock is “A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch,/Uncapable of pity, void and empty/From any dram of mercy.” (Act IV, Scene 1). What keeps either of these examples from being like Freddy the Detective is that Templeton and Shylock are presented with sufficient candor to condemn their surrounding society. The honest response is “mea culpa.”

Beyond flagging the anti-Semitism in the Freddy series as a small example of a big problem, there’s no need to boycott the Freddy series. The books are quite dated, and, in spite of their humorous bits, unlikely to reach much of an audience today. Nor does Walter Brooks appear to have been actively racist. The impression I get from reading a couple other books in the Freddy series is that his characterizations were fluid and inconsistent from book to book, and his ‘political incorrectness’ wide-ranging. Freddy and the Men from Mars (1954) is a good example: it serves up a scramble of social, space-race, and ‘red-Commie’ anxieties, topped with a little bona fide science fiction. The rats still have their habitual anti-Semitic tint, but it's muted by blending with these other shades.


So that is the end, for now.  The books can go back the library, and I can think about something else.  I owe Freddy the Detective and several of its companion volumes many hours of entertaining distraction over the last four months, but I can't say I care to read on. If I did read on, I would have to be on my guard - and that's not how I like to read children's books. What I'll remember the book for won't be the humorous little details that originally fascinated me, but the rude reminder that poisonous habits of thought lurk in unlikely places.

Anti-Semitism in Freddy the Detective (Second Part): The Evidence

Freddy the Pig encounters a variety of antagonists in Freddy the Detective (1932), ranging from strangers (a pair of looney bank robbers, a city-slicker detective) to various misbehaving barnyard residents. The chief ‘bad guys’ in the book, however, are neither strangers nor community members. They are a gang of rats, who had once maintained “a large establishment” under Mr. Bean’s barn.  A series of battles with Jinx the Cat (before the book begins) resulted in their formal expulsion from the barnyard community. The book’s primary storyline follows the rats’ attempt to resettle their “old family mansion” in the barn, despite “all the rules” as enforced by Jinx and Freddy. The rats’ leader is “old Simon,” and his sons “Zeke” and “Ezra” are his henchmen. None of the other rats are named (with the brief exception of “Olfred,” who has a bit part at the end of the book).

Jinx and Freddy confront Simon and his sons (illustration by Kurt Wiese)

Now, rats will be rats. Thus, one expects certain behaviours of rats in barnyards: stealing food, damaging property, annoying the other animals, being selfish, etc. It’s familiar from other classic barnyard tales, such as Beatrix Potter’s Tale of Samuel Whiskers (1908) and E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web (1952). Robert O’Brien’s Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (1979) is an intriguing inversion of this pattern, with the former lab rats labouring to invent a non-thieving lifestyle for their community.

On this level, the ‘rat profile’ in Freddy the Detective didn’t raise any red flags for me. It seems natural that Simon’s family is unwanted in the barnyard. They are a “gang of thieves,” stealing grain (and a toy train!) from the Beans. They are entirely untrustworthy, alternately flattering, taunting, or deceiving the other animals. Their mischief culminates in an attempt to frame Jinx for killing and eating a crow, which elicits Freddy’s detective masterpiece. In the trial scene at the end of the book, Freddy is able to shred the rats’ evidence against Jinx – partly through the rats’ own testimony – and the barnyard court condemns the perjured rats to prison “at hard labour.” Though the rats escape back to the woods at the last minute, they are once more blocked out of the barn, and order is restored…till the next book in the series.

Freddy interrogates Simon (illustration by Kurt Wiese)

This would be a predictable and satisfactory storyline, IF the rats had different names. But Brooks chose Simon, Zeke (short for Ezekiel) and Ezra. These names, I realized in a flash about two-thirds of the way through the book, are unmistakably Jewish...post-exilic, in fact. The namesakes are famous leaders and prophets of the return from exile. I was aghast. Suddenly the innocuous rat-barnyard relationship took on a nightmare tint, echoing of the history of anti-Judaism and the stereotypes of anti-Semitism at every turn.

The most obvious connection to this history is the expulsion of the rats from their old home, their bid to return, and the other animals’ concerted effort to banish them once more. “But we have to live! Even the humble rats have to live,” Simon protests. Freddy himself admits, “You know…there’s really something in what they say. It must be rather hard to be driven out of your home and hunted from pillar to post.” But Jinx blames the rats for their predicament: “[Y]our sympathy is wasted on these rats. Nobody’d hunt ‘em if they’d behave themselves.” Although this exchange makes sense on the rat-barnyard level, the rats’ names force me to think further. Expulsion, demonization, legalized persecution – the West’s horrible history of atrocities against Jews throbs in my head.

Worse still, Simon’s character is gratuitously coloured on the stereotype of the hypocritical, self-serving Jew. He’s a “sly old wretch,” with an “oily smile,” a “malevolent glare,” a “hypocritical leer,” a “mock humility.” He starts with insincere and thus insulting flattery, but underneath the “soft-soap” (as Brooks likes to call it) he has deep-laid plans for the subversion of the order that has excluded his family.

Who knows how much Brooks actually knew of the history he was evoking. One or two literary classics such as The Merchant of Venice or Ivanhoe would have supplied all the necessary shades. But let the history shout back; it’s the only antidote I know for this casual handling of poison. Here’s the most compact description I found among the Medieval & Early Modern Europe history textbooks on my shelf:

“While relations between Christians and Jews had always been difficult, the high and later Middle Ages witnessed an intensification of popular and official hostility, with Jews expelled from England in 1290, France in 1306, Spain…in 1492, and Portugal in 1497. Even where Jews were allowed to remain, outbursts of fury against them were a recurrent possibility, often fuelled by the ‘blood libel’ that Jews kidnapped and murdered Christian boys to use their blood in the baking of Passover bread. A related charge was that of host desecration: Jews were believed to wish to steal consecrated eucharistic wafers in order to torture them, and thus perpetuate their violence against the body of Jesus. Hostility to Jews was often stirred up by the preaching of the friars, but by and large secular and religious authorities sought to restrain popular violence against them, mindful of their importance to the urban economy and state financing arrangements.”  - Peter Marshall, The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction (2009), p. 118

This is a tame description of the historical roots of anti-Semitism, with many details missing, but it captures the basic gist: recurring expulsions, obscene hysterical rumours, official exploitation. Anyone who knows this history will feel very uncomfortable with Brooks’ decision to present his rat characters under Jewish names, and thus to tint them with anti-Semitic stereotypes. That angle was unnecessary to the story, and given Brooks’ pungent character snapshots elsewhere in the book, I assume this one was no accident. So how do I respond?

...to be continued...

Anti-Semitism in Freddy the Detective: Snake in the Grass, or Fly in the Ointment? (First Part)

I wouldn't care as much about the horrible problem in this book if Freddy the Detective hadn't won my heart gradually over the course of six weeks' slo-o-o-ow reading aloud.

Not every children's book reads aloud well.  We started the elementary school's "home reading program" with a winner, E. B. White's Charlotte's Web (1952), and those are the (admittedly large) shoes that I try to fill with each succeeding title.  Besides that read-aloud cadence - you notice it more when it's missing - the book must be comprehensible to a child, but also intriguing to a parent.  Vocabulary needs to be pitched just slightly above the child's reading level, so that there are occasional "new" words.  Short chapters and large print are a boon.  Most importantly, the pace of the story has to be quick enough that reading a few pages each night will keep otherwise recalcitrant readers hooked.

On most of these criteria, Walter R. Brooks' Freddy the Detective (1932) was a highly satisfactory selection.  Though lacking E. B. White's literary quality, it had intriguing characters, steady-paced humour and action, and plenty of dialogue to invite expressive reading.  It took a while to learn Brooks' slightly idiosyncratic cadence (too many commas per sentence), and the chapters were a bit long.  But the book's unusual characters and storyline managed to hold our interest till the humour sucked us in.

There is plenty to grin about in Freddy the Detective, not just in the plot itself but also in the peripheral details.  Take the three cows, for example:  Mrs. Wiggins, Mrs. Wogus, and Mrs. Wurzburger.  I haven't stopped laughing over those names yet.  Mrs. Wiggins' conviction that she never has ideas also cracks me up:

"You know thinking isn't my strong point, Freddy.  I mean, I've got good brains, but they aren't the kind that think easily.  They're the kind of brains that if you let 'em go their own way, they are as good as anybody's, but if you try to make them do anything, like a puzzle, they just won't work at all."

Two pages later, when she's casually given Freddy the very idea he needs to solve his current detective case, she protests, "Gracious, Freddy, that isn't an idea; it's just something I thought of." (p. 104-107)

Brooks' main characters, such as Freddy the Pig and Jinx the Cat, are a tad confusing and inconsistent; you're never quite sure what to expect of them.  But his peripheral character sketches can be dead-ringers.  I began to take Brooks' literary skill more seriously while listening to Charles the Rooster's speech in chapter 5 (p. 92-96).  As Brooks explained,

"The rooster was a fine speaker and he used words so beautifully that they all liked to hear him, although they didn't always know what he was talking about.  Neither did he, sometimes, but nobody cared, for, as with all good speakers, what he said wasn't half so important as the noble way he said it."

The ensuing speech was exactly as advertised.  It was tough going for a new reader, with four pages of big words that didn't seem to mean anything.  I thought to myself that Brooks must have had a specific person for his model to get the effect so perfect.

By this point in the book, I was often tempted to read ahead just for fun; there was no danger of being bored the second time through.  I was watching for the clever details I'd come to expect.  Surely it's no accident that Charles the Rooster is married to Henrietta the Hen, and hen-pecked to boot.  Presumably Brooks had read some vivid 17th C English history, just like he'd absorbed political speechifying!  I also noted the pairing of Frederick the Pig and Ferdinand the Crow as prosecuting and defending attorneys, respectively, in the book's climactic trial scene.  Any connection to the Bohemian Revolt at the outset of the Thirty Years' War in Europe (1618-1648)?  (Admittedly, I have yet to find hard evidence that Frederick of the Palatine and Ferdinand the Hapsburg might be in view...)

Given all this evidence of subtle artistry, I was shocked to realize one night - in the middle of the night - that the "bad guy" rats in the book are Jews.

...to be continued...

What it takes to write

I almost named this blog 'Simpkin's Mice' instead of 'Marc is not here.'  I have a strong sense of affinity for the housekeeping methods of The Tailor of Gloucester's cat.  Simpkin's stash of mice for future consumption corresponds nicely to my collection of random "This is fascinating!" ideas.  The blog, I thought, could be my kitchen dresser full of inverted teacups, bowls, and basins, trapping various ideas for later investigation.

I decided against the name, in the end, for two reasons.  First, while the stashing image fits, the mouse/idea equation doesn't.  (Ponder the Simpkin/me equation at your own risk).  I am too fond of Beatrix Potter's story to regret the escape of the mice...and that effectively subverts the parallel to writing exercise.  Second, the mental image of Peter Rabbit pastels and tea-cup blog decor was intellectually revolting.  (Such a shame!  Potter's stories and images are well worth mature reflection.  I even put Tom Kitten in a lecture once.)

All this serves to introduce my latest batch of ideas for future pursuit, which are multiplying out of control and thus in need of crockery-constraint.  I want to sort out several bits around the theme of what it takes to write.  I've been mulling over this for a while.  The most recent spark was trying to compose a post around Virginia Woolf's "opinion upon one minor point - a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."  (A Room of One's Own, 1929)  Trying to figure out when that statement first grabbed my attention would be a project in itself; I don't think it struck me when I first read the book in 2007.  However, I became particularly interested in it about a year ago when I realized that it wasn't true of the 17th C woman writer I had been studying intensively.  Woolf's thesis is missing crucial elements such as audience and motivation.  Indeed, it's fascinating how much Woolf's reconstruction of 17th C women writers, starting with the mythological Judith Shakespeare, missed the factors that not only allowed but impelled women (oh...and men!) to write in that period.

That's under one tea cup.  Under another is George Orwell's corresponding statement in The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), which I happened on last night:  "[T]o write books you need not only comfort and solitude...you also need peace of mind" (Ch. 5).  Like Woolf's remark, I find this entirely convincing in its original context, but as soon as I take it into the 17th C it falls apart.  John Bunyan writing The Pilgrim's Progress in prison, for example, totally refutes it.

So it looks like I'm pursuing two different angles here.  One is why Woolf's and Orwell's statements are so convincing in the present.  The other is how, and then why, the 17th C is different.  The practical application, aside from my ongoing 17th C research, is thinking about the author-audience connection that's inherent in writing and lecturing.  Why is it that thinking about audience cripples my creative impulse?  I know all too well that missing my audience ultimately stymies my creative output.  Tom Kitten only baffles students who haven't read Beatrix Potter!

Why Marc is not here

"M is for Marc, a mysterious bear; whenever you visit, you won't find him there."

When I first borrowed "Marc is not here" from the Hagues' Alphabears (1984), some twenty-odd years ago, it was a bid for creative space.  I drew a sign and hung it on my door, just like Marc in the picture, to keep inquisitive visitors (a.k.a. my siblings) at bay.  But unlike Marc in the picture, I wasn't merely hiding; I was making things.  When my project was finished, my siblings could come in again.  Though I needed the alone space to work, there wasn't any point in being creative without an eventual audience.

This blog is a creative space, for an eventual audience.  I still make things, but in the main I want to discipline myself to write things:  to write things out, to practice herding, sorting and pruning my ideas into marketable shape.  The things to be written are mainly research interests, books and such - things that might end up in lectures or conversations someday.  But for now, the audience is on the other side of the door.