Saturday, June 5, 2010.
My dear neighbor Farwell Smith invited me for lunch at his place a few miles down the road, but it was my turn and I still had much remaining from the magnificent roast chicken. Plain old chicken sandwiches—with mayonnaise out of the jar on crumbly, not so good local multigrain bread—were just dandy. And then the last of my lovely California fruit: cherries and apricots, the ripeness of the latter finally at the drool stage.
Apropos of my Craig Claiborne project, Farwell and I talked about the first great wave of American travel to Europe, which he was on the front edge of: As a member of the rollicking Harvard College class of '48 he and a couple of hundred of his classmates crammed into some slow-chugging liner for the voyage of a lifetime, destination Le Havre and la liberté. They played a drinking game of which the loser had his face plunged into a cream pie.
Under the head of Never a dull moment among the dull moments: As I headed home this evening from my first walk out onto the just-greening prairie I saw something moving on the meadow in front of the house that just damn it looked like…binocs, please, and, yes, it was: a big fat male wild turkey, and then in case you had an ounce of doubt he spread his tail in full display. I tried an Indian sneak, and did get a photograph, though not a good one, and no great display, but unmistakably a tom turkey, a big new addition to the Langston yard list.
As always—it still seems odd—the earliest best flowers come in the bleakest habitat. I climbed the rubbly deserty little butte that once was mined for gravel and has remained nearly barren, and there found the following (obviously, I need help at the species level):
field chickweed, Cerastium arvense
fennel-leaved lomatium? Lomatium foeniculaceum
[but might be cous]
cliff anemone? Anemone multifida
Parry’s townsendia, Townsendia parryi
sand lily, Leucocrinum montanum
textile onion, Allium textile
field pussytoes, Antennaria neglecta
obscure bluebells? Mertensia viridis?
low larkspur, Delphinium bicolor
bristly cryptantha, Cryptantha interrupta
silvery groundsel, Senecio canus
shorter yellow composite, big center, sagelike lvs, petals sq at tip
tiny yellow multiple, lotuslike?
cutleaf daisy, Erigeron compositus
bent-flowered milkvetch? Astragulus vexilliflexus?
tiny yellow clover, Trifolium sp.
silky crazyweed, Oxytropis sericea
wallflower, Erysimum asperum
death-camas, Zigadenus venenosus
orange globemallow, Sphaeralcea coccinea
long-billed curlews
marbled godwits
meadowlark
upland sandpiper (a species elsewhere in steep decline)
—All very quiet: not nesting yet?
The morels have been visited by several neighbors and plucked in large volume. One person left with twenty pounds. They did seem infinite. So, of course, once upon a time, did passenger pigeons and the buffalo. This afternoon the morels remaining are rusty or worse. Rain is expected—maybe there will be another crop then.
For dinner, more of the chicken that keeps on giving, simply cold. I flavored some mayonnaise with toasted cumin seeds pounded in the mortar with sea salt and black pepper; saffron soaked in cream; and a tiny bit of cayenne. My avocado was shot, having gone straight from hard to rotten. My potato salad was, well, it was a disaster--my bugaboo, too damn much vinegar, which a dose of sugar couldn't fix. Arugula was fine, especially with this terrific St. Pierre California olive oil. Dr. Loosen's basic riesling, 8.5 percent alcohol, sweet and sting in viola-violin harmony, was just right.
In the late dusk a herd of deer—mixed, both mule and whitetail—passed through the cottonwoods, at least twenty, almost in file, more than half of them very small yearlings.
Monday, June 7, 2010.
To “downtown” Melville for the first time. It consists of one building, known as the Big Sky Corner, which comprises post office (with postmaster Rick), store (not much there, lots of open space on the shelves, intermittently overseen by Glen), and lunch counter (under the aegis of one or both Lindas).
The men gave me hearty handshakes, the women hugs. We were all glad to see one another. I asked them each how they’d wintered, and they all wanted to know about my new book project.
There’s always talk there, and it was natural, with the writer being welcomed back into “the country,” that today the subject was books. Glen was recommending one by a guy who had reconstructed the Battle of the Big Horn in main part by using his metal detector and his knowledge of bullet forensics; he had determined that Custer was shot in the head at the beginning of the battle by his own scout, a Crow (fellow tribesman, that is, of the Indians Custer was there to attack), and that the scout was then shot multiple times in the back by Custer’s troops. My pal Howard, a highly intellectual mechanic who is often to be seen at the B.S. Corner, told me about a rare book of which he owns two copies, a fictional memoir of a nineteenth century British trader in West Africa. He offered to lend me one of his copies, and I’m going to take him up on it.
I thought back to a gas station I’d stopped at in Idaho on the way up here, where a fellow with a Montana-licensed van took a look at my California plates and asked, “You wouldn’t be headed to Montana, would you?
I said I was.
“Well, you better be careful.”
Why was that?
“They all hate Californians. They’re all rednecks. They’ve got guns, too.”
I told him I had lived here for years and come back every summer since—with California plates—and had never experienced even a hint of hostility. I allowed there might have been some behind my back.
“Well, you better watch out. I’m leaving. I been in Livingston three years and had nothing but trouble. I’m going back to California. Livingston’s nothing but rednecks.”
I said that Livingston had been our nearest town when we lived on the West Boulder River. We shopped there, we had many friends there, I tried to do a large New Urbanist development there and so had come to know the politicians, the bankers, the whole business community—and I had never experienced anything worse than political opposition; and even that had been polite.
“I was homeless half the time. Lived in my van.”
Oh. Well. Hm. Nowhere much to go with our conversation at that point. No doubt he had in fact known a different Montana.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Friday, June 4, 2010.
Those morels: I just sautéed them in butter, and then salted them. I try not to use the word sublime too often, but in this case it is the mot juste. And with them a roast chicken truly worthy. I had brought it in the cooler all the way from the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market in San Francisco because I have yet to find in Montana any chicken to compare to these raised by Norman and Aimee Gunsell of Mountain Ranch Organics. The only comparable chicken I have ever tasted is the legendary blue-legged poulet de Bresse. Both walk around outside from an early age, eating what they find in the fields, both grow at least twice as slowly as supermarket chickens, and both develop a dense, chewy, sensationally flavorful flesh. And somehow the meat on a three-and-a-half-pound bird just keeps coming—maybe because a small serving seems like a big one, it’s so satisfying. Next to those sublime morels and a little potato gratin, all it wanted was a spoonful of pan juices. And a couple of glasses of '07 Bourgogne rouge.
Fact of the day from The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America: “Common Grackle, Quiscalus quiscula…Uncommon.” Well, not uncommon at Langston House. They're pockety-pocking for bugs all over the meadows, long tails bobbing, yellow eyes sharp: Unlike the robins, they dislike being watched, take to the trees when I raise my binoculars. The males have an iridescent blue mantle.
Yesterday—and despite camera in hand, and because Joe Stern, my only neighbor, and his dog were out for a walk on the other side of the flood, and this would be our first greeting of the year—I failed to take a photograph of Sweet Grass Creek sheeting across my driveway, at least a hundred yards’ width of it and moving fast. I have never seen the water this high. Every kind of limb and twig and grodu was strewn through the woods in intricate fractals, which showed that scary though it was, the creek was already falling. In fact, my friend and landlord Paul Hawks, on the phone, confirmed that after he had left in his tall four-wheel-drive pickup earlier in the afternoon, he had neglected to call to tell me that I was flooded in. At that time, he said, the water pouring over the little road was a good six inches deep. No fool, not even Tom Fool, would dare to try to swim a low-slung M3 Beamer across that.
Last evening’s crop of morels was beyond anything I could have imagined—so freshly emerged they all but glowed, literally hundreds within sight as I stood in one place under the burned cottonwoods. I gathered perhaps a pound. But they weren’t as good as they were last night, mushy, the taste imprecise; I think I didn’t let them dry long enough.
Those morels: I just sautéed them in butter, and then salted them. I try not to use the word sublime too often, but in this case it is the mot juste. And with them a roast chicken truly worthy. I had brought it in the cooler all the way from the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market in San Francisco because I have yet to find in Montana any chicken to compare to these raised by Norman and Aimee Gunsell of Mountain Ranch Organics. The only comparable chicken I have ever tasted is the legendary blue-legged poulet de Bresse. Both walk around outside from an early age, eating what they find in the fields, both grow at least twice as slowly as supermarket chickens, and both develop a dense, chewy, sensationally flavorful flesh. And somehow the meat on a three-and-a-half-pound bird just keeps coming—maybe because a small serving seems like a big one, it’s so satisfying. Next to those sublime morels and a little potato gratin, all it wanted was a spoonful of pan juices. And a couple of glasses of '07 Bourgogne rouge.
Fact of the day from The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America: “Common Grackle, Quiscalus quiscula…Uncommon.” Well, not uncommon at Langston House. They're pockety-pocking for bugs all over the meadows, long tails bobbing, yellow eyes sharp: Unlike the robins, they dislike being watched, take to the trees when I raise my binoculars. The males have an iridescent blue mantle.
Yesterday—and despite camera in hand, and because Joe Stern, my only neighbor, and his dog were out for a walk on the other side of the flood, and this would be our first greeting of the year—I failed to take a photograph of Sweet Grass Creek sheeting across my driveway, at least a hundred yards’ width of it and moving fast. I have never seen the water this high. Every kind of limb and twig and grodu was strewn through the woods in intricate fractals, which showed that scary though it was, the creek was already falling. In fact, my friend and landlord Paul Hawks, on the phone, confirmed that after he had left in his tall four-wheel-drive pickup earlier in the afternoon, he had neglected to call to tell me that I was flooded in. At that time, he said, the water pouring over the little road was a good six inches deep. No fool, not even Tom Fool, would dare to try to swim a low-slung M3 Beamer across that.
Last evening’s crop of morels was beyond anything I could have imagined—so freshly emerged they all but glowed, literally hundreds within sight as I stood in one place under the burned cottonwoods. I gathered perhaps a pound. But they weren’t as good as they were last night, mushy, the taste imprecise; I think I didn’t let them dry long enough.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Back in Montana, back to serious posting, I mean it this time
Langston House, Greater Metropolitan Melville, Montana, June 2, 2010.
How do they have robins anywhere else when it seems that all the robins in the world are gathered here? And all hollering. Starting at five in the morning. Welcome to Montana.
There are many other birds as well. Sandhill cranes, for example, are much louder than robins. Eagles are better-looking. Warblers warble. But the robins—suburban and human-tolerant though they are—run the joint.
Never mind the hours of phone hell trying to get the internet connection up and going.
Look at the blazing white snow on the Crazies, the broken tree limbs bobbing down Sweet Grass Creek and slamming into the new log jams, the first flowers in the woods, so much blacker and deader than I had thought they were going to be by now: violets violet and white; crazyweed; strawberry; phacelia in the creekbed gravel; bluebells amid the leggy new cottonwoods in the burn.
And: morels. Their feet in the burn. Pale blond. I research them online, I soak them in cold salt water so the tiny bugs will depart, and finally, just to be (as it were) dead certain, I take them to my dear neighbor Elli Hawks for approval, who assures me that they are unmistakably fine. Ah. I believe there will be more tomorrow. I believe there will be a great many, because the habitat in which I found them—blackened, moist, sandy soil—is widespread. Voilà:
And the water in the house, from the new well, is exquisitely clear.
Thunderstorms yesterday, curtains of blinding downpour as I drove north from Big Timber. More gathering over the mountains this afternoon, and the sky purple-black to the east, at the prairie horizon.
It has been three and a half years since that savage November fire, and recovery (vegetative, I mean) is everywhere; yet so are weeds—houndstongue, thistle, mustard—and the unhappy smell of wet charcoal. Young tender browse is abundant, but there seem, at least at first glance, or sniff, to be a lot of dead deer. I must ask about this, someone who knows.
How do they have robins anywhere else when it seems that all the robins in the world are gathered here? And all hollering. Starting at five in the morning. Welcome to Montana.
There are many other birds as well. Sandhill cranes, for example, are much louder than robins. Eagles are better-looking. Warblers warble. But the robins—suburban and human-tolerant though they are—run the joint.
Never mind the hours of phone hell trying to get the internet connection up and going.
Look at the blazing white snow on the Crazies, the broken tree limbs bobbing down Sweet Grass Creek and slamming into the new log jams, the first flowers in the woods, so much blacker and deader than I had thought they were going to be by now: violets violet and white; crazyweed; strawberry; phacelia in the creekbed gravel; bluebells amid the leggy new cottonwoods in the burn.
And: morels. Their feet in the burn. Pale blond. I research them online, I soak them in cold salt water so the tiny bugs will depart, and finally, just to be (as it were) dead certain, I take them to my dear neighbor Elli Hawks for approval, who assures me that they are unmistakably fine. Ah. I believe there will be more tomorrow. I believe there will be a great many, because the habitat in which I found them—blackened, moist, sandy soil—is widespread. Voilà:
And the water in the house, from the new well, is exquisitely clear.
Thunderstorms yesterday, curtains of blinding downpour as I drove north from Big Timber. More gathering over the mountains this afternoon, and the sky purple-black to the east, at the prairie horizon.
It has been three and a half years since that savage November fire, and recovery (vegetative, I mean) is everywhere; yet so are weeds—houndstongue, thistle, mustard—and the unhappy smell of wet charcoal. Young tender browse is abundant, but there seem, at least at first glance, or sniff, to be a lot of dead deer. I must ask about this, someone who knows.
Monday, January 4, 2010
A NEW YORK MEMORY, C. 1975
Never were Louise and I more at home in New York than when we went to see Bobby Short at the Café Carlyle.
I learned that if you went for dinner, as few did, you would have a table in front, ten feet from the great man, the most perfect wearer of black tie in New York, the smiler of the brightest smile, the best-ever embodiment of the Cole Porter persona. We would order steak tartare, with its staring raw egg yolk, and a bottle of Champagne, and the headwaiter, recognizing (I flatter us to think) the very type of a good-looking and sophisticated and young Manhattan couple—younger than nearly everybody else in the joint—would refill our glasses and joke with us till at last the lights went down, and Short and his bassist and drummer would take their places in the dark.
With a thunderous hammering chord he would herald his entrance, the lights would blaze, his eyes would blaze, and Short would almost bellow his way into a grand old Porter song—say, “At Long Last, Love”—and we were there, we were in it, in him, in love, in New York, even back in the now mythic moment of the song’s making in the thirties, believing in forever. That past was long; why shouldn’t our future be equally so? I in my double-breasted slim-waisted navy-blue Paul Stuart suit, Louise in her silk Armani and Tiffany pearls, we looked the immortals that New York Magazine and our own friends too believed in. And when we spoke, and joked, and laughed, and danced, we limned—all unknowing—the patterns that our peers of course had not themselves designed but felt from within as though they had. At the end of the song, Short stood up suddenly from his bench, launched himself, really, with a huge smile, his eyes sweeping the room, demanding applause.
His eyes rested a moment, pleased, on us: He knew us, he recognized us, we were the type he wanted there. And then one bright Sunday brunch at the Trattoria Alfredo on Hudson Street we saw him, wearing a blazer and an ascot, sitting with the clothing designer Calvin Klein. Our companions were a young French girl and her fiancé, Anne and David, both undergraduates at Columbia, both spectacularly good-looking. Via a waiter Klein sent a note to David, asking if he was interested in modeling for him. It occurred to Louise and me for the first time, such innocents, that Bobby Short might be gay. We didn’t like the thought. We liked the romantic woman-loving man who occupied those songs. David, a lifelong New Yorker, rolled his eyes and said, “Tom, are you kidding me? Just look at the fucking ascot.”
David did end up doing some modeling, and appeared (fully clothed) in a few Calvin Klein magazine ads. Every single male involved was queer—David’s word—but nobody ever bothered him. Then he started medical school and was too busy to continue. He didn’t need the money anyway.
Louise and I continued to go see Bobby Short at the Café Carlyle, and his performances were always magical. Who cared about the man’s private life? We were all New Yorkers.
I learned that if you went for dinner, as few did, you would have a table in front, ten feet from the great man, the most perfect wearer of black tie in New York, the smiler of the brightest smile, the best-ever embodiment of the Cole Porter persona. We would order steak tartare, with its staring raw egg yolk, and a bottle of Champagne, and the headwaiter, recognizing (I flatter us to think) the very type of a good-looking and sophisticated and young Manhattan couple—younger than nearly everybody else in the joint—would refill our glasses and joke with us till at last the lights went down, and Short and his bassist and drummer would take their places in the dark.
With a thunderous hammering chord he would herald his entrance, the lights would blaze, his eyes would blaze, and Short would almost bellow his way into a grand old Porter song—say, “At Long Last, Love”—and we were there, we were in it, in him, in love, in New York, even back in the now mythic moment of the song’s making in the thirties, believing in forever. That past was long; why shouldn’t our future be equally so? I in my double-breasted slim-waisted navy-blue Paul Stuart suit, Louise in her silk Armani and Tiffany pearls, we looked the immortals that New York Magazine and our own friends too believed in. And when we spoke, and joked, and laughed, and danced, we limned—all unknowing—the patterns that our peers of course had not themselves designed but felt from within as though they had. At the end of the song, Short stood up suddenly from his bench, launched himself, really, with a huge smile, his eyes sweeping the room, demanding applause.
His eyes rested a moment, pleased, on us: He knew us, he recognized us, we were the type he wanted there. And then one bright Sunday brunch at the Trattoria Alfredo on Hudson Street we saw him, wearing a blazer and an ascot, sitting with the clothing designer Calvin Klein. Our companions were a young French girl and her fiancé, Anne and David, both undergraduates at Columbia, both spectacularly good-looking. Via a waiter Klein sent a note to David, asking if he was interested in modeling for him. It occurred to Louise and me for the first time, such innocents, that Bobby Short might be gay. We didn’t like the thought. We liked the romantic woman-loving man who occupied those songs. David, a lifelong New Yorker, rolled his eyes and said, “Tom, are you kidding me? Just look at the fucking ascot.”
David did end up doing some modeling, and appeared (fully clothed) in a few Calvin Klein magazine ads. Every single male involved was queer—David’s word—but nobody ever bothered him. Then he started medical school and was too busy to continue. He didn’t need the money anyway.
Louise and I continued to go see Bobby Short at the Café Carlyle, and his performances were always magical. Who cared about the man’s private life? We were all New Yorkers.
Friday, December 4, 2009
CRAIG CLAIBORNE: DIGGING IN
A week and a bit ago, I spent eight days in New York and one in East Hampton, Long Island, where Craig (we're on first-name terms now) lived for most of his professional life. My mission was to interview some of the people who knew him best and who knew him as it were from different angles. It was an illuminating experience, and already, here only at the beginning of my research, I can see that he presented often dramatically varying versions of himself to different people. And so what is developing is, you might say, a sort of cubist portrait.
Just to mention three of the people I talked with:
Arthur Gelb, now 87, was for many years the managing editor of the New York Times, and if ever there was a Grand Old Man of that Great Gray Lady, he's it. He started from almost nothing, a poor kid from the streets of the Bronx, and rose to what is of course one of the most powerful positions of influence in the world. (He tells his own story with vigor and wit in his memoir, "City Room"--a wonderful book redolent of cigarette smoke, strong whiskey, fedoras, all the classic appurtenances of the good old days of reporterdom; his is a story also of courage and integrity.) Gelb was CC's protector and defender at the Times. He created a wall of safety around Craig that meant, effectively, that the food editor and restaurant critic didn't really have a boss. He was free to write as he chose, travel where he chose, make a culinary star of whatever clever home cook he chose, condemn a restaurant as he saw fit (and a Claiborne condemnation could be a restaurant's death sentence). It was Gelb who saw to it that CC and his columns were treated, at the Times, with a seriousness and respect equal to that accorded the paper's critics of books, art, film, and the theatre.
Gelb is still a strong-willed, strongly opinionated powerhouse. He and his wife, Barbara, wrote a biography of Eugene O'Neill when they were quite young, and now they're writing another one. "Covering the same ground?" I asked, a little mystified. "With the benefit of improved perspective," he said, from a height (both figurative and literal; he's very tall).
Ed Giobbi is as diminutive as Gelb is towering. An artist by trade, a very good one indeed, he is also widely known as a brilliant cook; and has published several cookbooks. He was a friend of Craig's from way back and all the way to the end. Unlike many of the others in CC's orbit, Giobbi never wanted anything from him--they were simply friends. Like the truest of true friends, he saw Craig whole, and did not shrink from criticizing him. He struggled with Craig's tragic weaknesses--especially his drinking, which grew worse and worse as Craig grew older and sicker. He also had many funny stories to tell about Craig's less troubling weaknesses, most of them harmless enough to call mere eccentricities. The more we talked--and we talked for hours--the more eccentric I realized Craig Claiborne truly was. And the more intriguing this project became.
The richest interview of all was with Diane Franey, the daughter of the late Pierre Franey, who shared a byline with Craig Claiborne for many years. Pierre was not really a co-writer--he was French, for one thing, with an imperfect command of English--but he was certainly a co-creator of the many joyous occasions that formed the basis for the best of CC's writing about food and food people. Craig discovered Pierre in 1960, when he was chef at what was then indisputably the best restaurant in the United States, Le Pavillon. When the tyrannical owner of the restaurant demanded concessions from the kitchen staff, Pierre led the whole staff out on strike, Craig got wind of this unprecedented scandal, and the story got major play in the New York Times. Suddenly a new category of star had been born: the star chef, an idea that had never before existed in America. And Craig and Pierre became friends for life, and, before long, collaborators--Pierre at the stove, Craig at the typewriter.
What I had not known till meeting Diane was how Pierre's wife and children became Craig's family. For years Pierre worked with Craig without compensation--he literally refused to take money--and so Craig, in gratitude, would shower the whole Franey family with gifts. They often went on vacation together, all on Craig's dime. They were so comfortable together that even though Pierre and his wife Betty knew that Craig was gay, they had no problem with little Diane being Craig's roommate aboard ship or in a hotel (the children were too young to know what it even meant). (It was a source of some irritation through the years that people who knew that Craig was gay but didn't really know him or Pierre just assumed that they were a couple.)
Diane's mother died just a year or so ago, and she now lives in the house she grew up in, a short distance from Craig's East Hampton house. She was just a kid through some of the most important years of Craig's and Pierre's collaboration, but she has a most remarkable memory. She went to nearly every dinner party, knew the regulars, knew the food, knew her father and Craig inside and out. She also has an extraordinary collection of memorabilia, which I didn't have nearly enough time to go through with her. I'll be going back and setting aside much more time for that. One of the real treats of that trip to East Hampton was going with Diane to Craig's first beach house, where many of her fondest memories are set. It has been remodeled, but the dazzling view across Gardiner's Bay remains the same, and she could re-create in her mind where every piece of furniture, every pot and pan used to be. It was the first time she had been there in over forty years, and she was clearly moved.
I had a number of other conversations and will have many more. It is fascinating to see a person taking shape this way. When I have finished writing this book, I believe I will be the one person in the world who knows Craig Claiborne best, because I'll have seen him through so many eyes. And what a gratifying opportunity, and honor, it will be to share that portrait.
Just to mention three of the people I talked with:
Arthur Gelb, now 87, was for many years the managing editor of the New York Times, and if ever there was a Grand Old Man of that Great Gray Lady, he's it. He started from almost nothing, a poor kid from the streets of the Bronx, and rose to what is of course one of the most powerful positions of influence in the world. (He tells his own story with vigor and wit in his memoir, "City Room"--a wonderful book redolent of cigarette smoke, strong whiskey, fedoras, all the classic appurtenances of the good old days of reporterdom; his is a story also of courage and integrity.) Gelb was CC's protector and defender at the Times. He created a wall of safety around Craig that meant, effectively, that the food editor and restaurant critic didn't really have a boss. He was free to write as he chose, travel where he chose, make a culinary star of whatever clever home cook he chose, condemn a restaurant as he saw fit (and a Claiborne condemnation could be a restaurant's death sentence). It was Gelb who saw to it that CC and his columns were treated, at the Times, with a seriousness and respect equal to that accorded the paper's critics of books, art, film, and the theatre.
Gelb is still a strong-willed, strongly opinionated powerhouse. He and his wife, Barbara, wrote a biography of Eugene O'Neill when they were quite young, and now they're writing another one. "Covering the same ground?" I asked, a little mystified. "With the benefit of improved perspective," he said, from a height (both figurative and literal; he's very tall).
Ed Giobbi is as diminutive as Gelb is towering. An artist by trade, a very good one indeed, he is also widely known as a brilliant cook; and has published several cookbooks. He was a friend of Craig's from way back and all the way to the end. Unlike many of the others in CC's orbit, Giobbi never wanted anything from him--they were simply friends. Like the truest of true friends, he saw Craig whole, and did not shrink from criticizing him. He struggled with Craig's tragic weaknesses--especially his drinking, which grew worse and worse as Craig grew older and sicker. He also had many funny stories to tell about Craig's less troubling weaknesses, most of them harmless enough to call mere eccentricities. The more we talked--and we talked for hours--the more eccentric I realized Craig Claiborne truly was. And the more intriguing this project became.
The richest interview of all was with Diane Franey, the daughter of the late Pierre Franey, who shared a byline with Craig Claiborne for many years. Pierre was not really a co-writer--he was French, for one thing, with an imperfect command of English--but he was certainly a co-creator of the many joyous occasions that formed the basis for the best of CC's writing about food and food people. Craig discovered Pierre in 1960, when he was chef at what was then indisputably the best restaurant in the United States, Le Pavillon. When the tyrannical owner of the restaurant demanded concessions from the kitchen staff, Pierre led the whole staff out on strike, Craig got wind of this unprecedented scandal, and the story got major play in the New York Times. Suddenly a new category of star had been born: the star chef, an idea that had never before existed in America. And Craig and Pierre became friends for life, and, before long, collaborators--Pierre at the stove, Craig at the typewriter.
What I had not known till meeting Diane was how Pierre's wife and children became Craig's family. For years Pierre worked with Craig without compensation--he literally refused to take money--and so Craig, in gratitude, would shower the whole Franey family with gifts. They often went on vacation together, all on Craig's dime. They were so comfortable together that even though Pierre and his wife Betty knew that Craig was gay, they had no problem with little Diane being Craig's roommate aboard ship or in a hotel (the children were too young to know what it even meant). (It was a source of some irritation through the years that people who knew that Craig was gay but didn't really know him or Pierre just assumed that they were a couple.)
Diane's mother died just a year or so ago, and she now lives in the house she grew up in, a short distance from Craig's East Hampton house. She was just a kid through some of the most important years of Craig's and Pierre's collaboration, but she has a most remarkable memory. She went to nearly every dinner party, knew the regulars, knew the food, knew her father and Craig inside and out. She also has an extraordinary collection of memorabilia, which I didn't have nearly enough time to go through with her. I'll be going back and setting aside much more time for that. One of the real treats of that trip to East Hampton was going with Diane to Craig's first beach house, where many of her fondest memories are set. It has been remodeled, but the dazzling view across Gardiner's Bay remains the same, and she could re-create in her mind where every piece of furniture, every pot and pan used to be. It was the first time she had been there in over forty years, and she was clearly moved.
I had a number of other conversations and will have many more. It is fascinating to see a person taking shape this way. When I have finished writing this book, I believe I will be the one person in the world who knows Craig Claiborne best, because I'll have seen him through so many eyes. And what a gratifying opportunity, and honor, it will be to share that portrait.
Friday, November 6, 2009
GEARING UP FOR CRAIG CLAIBORNE
I'm mapping this biography job out almost as thoroughly as a real grown-up writer would do. I've got a couple of dozen books on order--I will soon own everything Claiborne ever published. And I'm making a list of the interviews I need to do, and putting the names in order of priority. I leave for New York a week from tomorrow--November 14--and will be there for eight days, seeing as many people as I possibly can.
The most important interview of all, with Arthur Gelb, is already scheduled. Gelb was for many years managing editor of the New York Times, and he was Craig Claiborne's protector and defender par excellence. Apparently CC sort of didn't have a real boss--he was an independent power center at the Times--and that unique position was due to Gelb's indulgence. I don't want to spoil the story, but in later years Gelb played a critical role in what amounted to a plunge into darkness on CC's part. Gelb is a classic old newspaperman, with a growly voice and a get-it-done hurriedness. I'm reading his memoir now, "City Room," of the days when the newsroom was full of smoke and noise and characters.
I hope also to see Diane Franey out in East Hampton, Long Island, where CC lived for many years. Diane's father, Pierre, was considered probably the most brilliant chef in America when he resigned from the best French restaurant in America, Le Pavillon, and began to work with Craig Claiborne at the Times. Their partnership was extraordinary, and CC had a hard time getting Franey's contribution recognized by the paper. In fact he had to quit to persuade them. When he came back, thenceforward the byline would be "by Craig Claiborne with Pierre Franey." It drove them both nuts that a lot of people thought they were a gay couple. CC was gay, and Franey was not. His daughter inherited a ton of memorabilia from their work together, and she remembers both of them vividly, so that's going to be an important interview too. Diane is expecting a grandchild, however, precisely on the day our interview is scheduled, and if that baby's not late, then we're going to have to get together later on in the winter. It looks as if I'm going to be in and out of New York a lot.
Because New York still feels more like home to me than any other place on earth, and because I have so many wonderful friends there, and because I just love that city and its people, I am very happy at the prospect of going there often over the coming months.
The most important interview of all, with Arthur Gelb, is already scheduled. Gelb was for many years managing editor of the New York Times, and he was Craig Claiborne's protector and defender par excellence. Apparently CC sort of didn't have a real boss--he was an independent power center at the Times--and that unique position was due to Gelb's indulgence. I don't want to spoil the story, but in later years Gelb played a critical role in what amounted to a plunge into darkness on CC's part. Gelb is a classic old newspaperman, with a growly voice and a get-it-done hurriedness. I'm reading his memoir now, "City Room," of the days when the newsroom was full of smoke and noise and characters.
I hope also to see Diane Franey out in East Hampton, Long Island, where CC lived for many years. Diane's father, Pierre, was considered probably the most brilliant chef in America when he resigned from the best French restaurant in America, Le Pavillon, and began to work with Craig Claiborne at the Times. Their partnership was extraordinary, and CC had a hard time getting Franey's contribution recognized by the paper. In fact he had to quit to persuade them. When he came back, thenceforward the byline would be "by Craig Claiborne with Pierre Franey." It drove them both nuts that a lot of people thought they were a gay couple. CC was gay, and Franey was not. His daughter inherited a ton of memorabilia from their work together, and she remembers both of them vividly, so that's going to be an important interview too. Diane is expecting a grandchild, however, precisely on the day our interview is scheduled, and if that baby's not late, then we're going to have to get together later on in the winter. It looks as if I'm going to be in and out of New York a lot.
Because New York still feels more like home to me than any other place on earth, and because I have so many wonderful friends there, and because I just love that city and its people, I am very happy at the prospect of going there often over the coming months.
Monday, October 26, 2009
REALLY, REALLY, THIS TIME I MEAN IT
I'm serious, I'm getting back into the blogging business.
I've just made a deal with the Free Press to write a book about Craig Claiborne, the first food editor of the New York Times. He was kind of the father of everything in the food world--before him there wasn't much but gray roast beef and canned green beans and a few not very good French restaurants.
What I'm planning to do with the blog is not so much to publish samples of my manuscript as to document the process of researching and writing the book. Right now all I've done is write the proposal that was sent around to publishers. Well, I say "all." My ruthless agent, David McCormick, kept me writing and re-writing the damned thing all through the summer and well into the fall before he'd even show it to anybody. I am, in the end, grateful to him, but it was an exhausting experience.
I've also been blessed with a singular piece of luck, in the form of a thesis on Claiborne written by Georgeanna Milam Chapman for her master's degree at the University of Mississippi's Center for the Study of Southern Culture. She did an amazing amount of research, and she has made the whole thing available to me. She is also going to be helping me as I go along, as is her major professor, the redoubtable John T. Edge, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance as well as a notable food writer. Georgeanna and John T. know a great deal about Claiborne--he was a Mississippi Delta boy--and they have both been wonderfully generous to me with their knowledge and their time.
I was in New York a couple of weeks ago and met with my new editor, Emily Loose, and we talked a bunch about all the "non-writing" aspects that are so important to a book's success these days. Literary purists don't love to think about this stuff, and I'm not perfectly comfortable with it myself, but it's the real world, and I remind myself about how artists in the Renaissance had to butter up popes and cardinals and so forth. 'Twas ever so, in fact. Anyway, in the last few days I've been working on this non-writing business, making lists of all the people whom I want to know about the book before it comes out, events we might tie it too, places I might try to publish an excerpt, and so on. Now I start lining up interviews: I'm going back to New York in a couple of weeks for that purpose--that's where many of the most important surviving witnesses to Claiborne's life are. (He died in 2000, at the age of 79.)
When I was in New York I also had dinner at Claiborne's favorite restaurant, Le Veau d'Or, which astonishingly is still there and unchanged. Even M. Treboux, the owner and host, 85 years old, is still there every night, rising creakily from his chair to greet every arriving party, "Bonsoir, madame, bonsoir, monsieur." The whole place is beautifully old and old-fashioned, and I had a meal that Claiborne would have ordered (I know this from his not very good memoir, "A Feast Made for Laughter") (more on that some other time): a martini; a bowl of cool vichyssoise sprinkled with chives; veal kidneys in mustard sauce atop a really much too large mountain of rice (Claiborne detested overlarge portions); and--where else can you get this in New York?--floating island! Was it great? No. But it was fine, and it was a ride in a time machine. The crowd was elegant, civilized, and, so refreshingly, quiet. M. Treboux will be one of my first interviews.
Elegance. Civilization. Gentility. These are going to be some of the qualities Claiborne will evince in the narrative. He felt himself to be an antique in his lifetime, swept aside by waves of vulgarity. Was he...a fuddy-duddy? And in taking this on, and in espousing those values, am I, now, too, or becoming one? I'm not going to worry about it.
The popularity of Barack Obama, I believe, attests to the enduring appeal of elegance and gentility. But I digress.
Bye for now.
I've just made a deal with the Free Press to write a book about Craig Claiborne, the first food editor of the New York Times. He was kind of the father of everything in the food world--before him there wasn't much but gray roast beef and canned green beans and a few not very good French restaurants.
What I'm planning to do with the blog is not so much to publish samples of my manuscript as to document the process of researching and writing the book. Right now all I've done is write the proposal that was sent around to publishers. Well, I say "all." My ruthless agent, David McCormick, kept me writing and re-writing the damned thing all through the summer and well into the fall before he'd even show it to anybody. I am, in the end, grateful to him, but it was an exhausting experience.
I've also been blessed with a singular piece of luck, in the form of a thesis on Claiborne written by Georgeanna Milam Chapman for her master's degree at the University of Mississippi's Center for the Study of Southern Culture. She did an amazing amount of research, and she has made the whole thing available to me. She is also going to be helping me as I go along, as is her major professor, the redoubtable John T. Edge, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance as well as a notable food writer. Georgeanna and John T. know a great deal about Claiborne--he was a Mississippi Delta boy--and they have both been wonderfully generous to me with their knowledge and their time.
I was in New York a couple of weeks ago and met with my new editor, Emily Loose, and we talked a bunch about all the "non-writing" aspects that are so important to a book's success these days. Literary purists don't love to think about this stuff, and I'm not perfectly comfortable with it myself, but it's the real world, and I remind myself about how artists in the Renaissance had to butter up popes and cardinals and so forth. 'Twas ever so, in fact. Anyway, in the last few days I've been working on this non-writing business, making lists of all the people whom I want to know about the book before it comes out, events we might tie it too, places I might try to publish an excerpt, and so on. Now I start lining up interviews: I'm going back to New York in a couple of weeks for that purpose--that's where many of the most important surviving witnesses to Claiborne's life are. (He died in 2000, at the age of 79.)
When I was in New York I also had dinner at Claiborne's favorite restaurant, Le Veau d'Or, which astonishingly is still there and unchanged. Even M. Treboux, the owner and host, 85 years old, is still there every night, rising creakily from his chair to greet every arriving party, "Bonsoir, madame, bonsoir, monsieur." The whole place is beautifully old and old-fashioned, and I had a meal that Claiborne would have ordered (I know this from his not very good memoir, "A Feast Made for Laughter") (more on that some other time): a martini; a bowl of cool vichyssoise sprinkled with chives; veal kidneys in mustard sauce atop a really much too large mountain of rice (Claiborne detested overlarge portions); and--where else can you get this in New York?--floating island! Was it great? No. But it was fine, and it was a ride in a time machine. The crowd was elegant, civilized, and, so refreshingly, quiet. M. Treboux will be one of my first interviews.
Elegance. Civilization. Gentility. These are going to be some of the qualities Claiborne will evince in the narrative. He felt himself to be an antique in his lifetime, swept aside by waves of vulgarity. Was he...a fuddy-duddy? And in taking this on, and in espousing those values, am I, now, too, or becoming one? I'm not going to worry about it.
The popularity of Barack Obama, I believe, attests to the enduring appeal of elegance and gentility. But I digress.
Bye for now.
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