Where We Going, Daddy? by Jean-Louis Fournier

This is a book that deserves more attention than it’s getting. It’s a quick read, no more than an afternoon of time.

Before going any further, here’s letting you know that I’m going to refer to the children in the book as handicapped. I don’t know that this is the most sensitive term, though I am certain it’s not the most insensitive. I am a believer in the power of words, but part of that power is their ability to shift. Yesterday’s retard is today’s differently-abled person. That’s fine, except don’t forget that today’s acceptable term is tomorrow’s slur. So just understand that I am using “handicapped” today with no malice or agenda.

Jean-Louis Fouriner is a French humorist who fathered two severely handicapped sons. He doesn’t go into great detail about just what we’re talking about, but that’s what makes the book so excellent. He’s not trying to convince anyone out there to treat handicapped people one way or another. The book isn't about how hard it is to be handicapped, how the other kids make fun of his boys and that sort of thing. It's about being the father of two boys who have, as the phrase he adopted goes, "heads full of straw."

If you are looking for an uplifting tale of humanity and all its different forms, you will be disappointed by this book. He mocks them at times, almost seeming cruel when he asks idly, “How is the trigonometry coming?” Or when he tells his son, “Close your mouth. You look retarded.” He also spends a lot of time speculating what his life might have been like if his sons were different. How would they spend their days? What would they enjoy? However, it's clear that he truly cares for the boys. He has spent so much time speculating on their shuttered inner lives that it would be impossible to say otherwise.

The truth is that the humanity explored here is Fournier’s, not that of his boys. As he puts it,

Aren't you ashamed, Jean-Louis, you of all people, their own father, making fun of two little kids who can't even defend themselves?

No. It doesn't mean I don't have any feelings.

I think maybe this book is missing the broader audience for a few reasons. I think to some it seems too precious, to likely to fall into the category where all life is a miracle and handicapped children happily fingerpaint and never really grow old. I assure you this is not the case. In fact, it is far less so than most baby books and growing up memoirs.

Clearly this is not a comfortable topic for many people, which must also have something to do with it. But this is not a book written for parents of the handicapped. Fournier gives the reader a gut check every here and there, but not the kind designed to make the reader feel guilty. Not the kind that says, "You'll never understand." Like any good artist, he tries to help the reader understand something without trying to point out how little they already grasp.

If I can make a sort of analogy here, I don't read a lot of books related to the Holocaust. Sure, it was horrible and fascinating in its own way. There's a lot of material to cover there. But often you'll find that books that use the Holocaust as the center are using it to up the emotional ante. They aren't really telling me much about the topic, and they are counting on our history classes to fill in the characters. It's a way of creating a sort of artificial high, a tension and emotion that is implanted into the book by force of history. Going in, that was my fear with Fournier's book as well, that this was going to be a day-in, day-out drag of life that's a little off course, but that the tension would be raised by the very existence of handicapped children.

It's not.

Just like any good book that deals with the tragedy, you get the sense that if things had been different, this book never would have been written. And just like any good author dealing with hard times, you get the sense that the author would have preferred to forgo living the material.

Cheesemonger by Gordon Edgar

I’m not what you’d call a foodie. I do like to cook, and I’m working on getting better at it, but at the same time knowing the ins and outs of foods isn’t a passion of mine. To put it simply, I love me an Oatmeal Cream Pie that’s been sitting in the glovebox (aka Dessert Cart) for a couple days.

That said, this book is pretty entertaining for someone who isn’t already interested in cheese.

What separates this book from other food books is that Edgar, though passionate about cheese, doesn’t try to foist his passion on everyone else. Edgar’s cheese vocabulary is helpful. He doesn’t use a bunch of bullshit terms that have no meaning. Edgar’s realistic, unapologetic for growing up on cheap-ass cheese, and he must have taken half a dozen opportunities in this book to say that you shouldn’t waste your money on the best cheese if you’re putting it on a plate for a big gathering or preparing a meal for a large group. The strengths of the book are the writing and Edgar’s honesty. In other words, he is not interested in making cheese the new wine.

The book also has some pretty decent sections on running co-ops and the harsh reality of agribusiness as well. Definitely worthwhile if you’re any sort of manager, but also if you’re interested in the world of work in general. One could draw parallels to books like Waiter Rant in terms of dealing with some difficult people and the ways in which retail economics play into food.

The rougher sections, for me at least, were the larger geo-political portions. I think he may have some decent points about Reaganomics and our reasons for fearing French cuisine, but I was a lot more interested in the ins and outs of the cheese.

The biggest success of the book is in its desire to introduce noobs to the cheese world. Every chapter ends with specific cheese recommendations and the book ends with a brief guide on how to buy cheese. This isn’t a book for food snobs or people that think certain foods are only for people who know all about them already. Edgar can’t say it (though, without putting words in his mouth, he seems to dance around it) because these people are his bread and butter, or at least the spreadable cheese, but food insiders can be really goddamn annoying. They’re kind of like people who like a band only up to the moment in which they become popular in that they seem to like the actual product less than what the product says about them. To them, a food becoming popular is a bad thing. A club just isn’t a club if you can’t turn people away at the door.

After reading this book I was motivated to try a couple cheeses he recommended. I should point out that I don’t live anywhere near a cheese shop or even a Whole Foods, so these were purchased at the tiny salad-bar-cheese-counter-conversion thing at King Soopers. To recap: a know-nothing purchasing cheese from a place that probably spends more time deciding what goes in the Halloween aisle than the cheese case. So take it all with a grain of salt. The size of a meteor.

The first was Parmigiano Reggiano. This cheese comes up over and over in the book because it’s reasonably priced, hard to mess up, and because there is honestly a world of difference between the wedge of cheese I bought and the dust that comes in the green can. Don’t get me wrong, this is not me swearing off the green can. But the cheese is pretty damn good plain, and maybe it’s not the best use of good cheese, but try it as the cheese for your next Alfredo sauce. I wasn’t an Alfredo fan until I tried it with Parmigiano Reggiano. The flavor of the cheese is tempered a little by the cooking, I think, but the Alfredo has an actual taste besides salty milk, and the sauce had some stick to it instead of being so watery.

The second cheese I tried was Taleggio. The book said that it’s somewhat of a beginner in terms of stinky cheese. And stinky it was. The smell was…unpleasant. Biological. Foot-y. But I cut a piece off and ate it anyway. This is one of the few food experiences I can think of where the smell of the food was somewhat distant from the taste. It was like a horror movie where the trailer is scary as hell, but then you sit down and the overall feeling is much milder.

Taleggio, I’m afraid, won’t be finding its way into my regular rotation. The softness combined with the stink was a little, um, advanced for my liking. The texture was a little like a rubbery cream cheese. I know, really appetizing. But hey, as an adult you really never have to eat new things. When you’re a kid, you’re eating new crap all the time. You hate it half the time, maybe because it’s infused with the bitterness you feel towards your parents for making you eat it, but there’s something to be said for trying a new food variety once in a while, no?
If you are interested in food, or at least want to take a second look at that cheese case when you go to the grocery store, give Cheesemonger a shot. Hell, it’s a good read either way.

Tips on Banning Books

This gem of a human you see to my left recently tried to have manga (Japanese comics) banned from the library.

Why?

She says of the books, "My son lost his mind when he found this...Now he's in a home for extensive therapy."

I don't want to attack the victim too much here, but if a Japanese comic from the public library sent you spiraling into a loony bin, maybe you didn't have a super tight grasp on reality to begin with.

Could that dude in the middle of the picture look any more bored? He doesn't look like he gives one damn.

So why do people try to ban books? Really, what's the point, especially when most attempts to ban a book only result in a dramatic sales increase?

However, that sales increase is what I'm banking on should I ever crank out some shit book, so I would like to present a little advice on getting a book ban done right.

Tip 1: Try your best to come off as some sort of sane person. If you appear in front of some board or city council at some point, don't wear your loudest blue floral dress. I know you really want to draw attention to yourself, but you're taking it a little too far. Museum guides don't use those glowing orange popsicle things that the guys on the airport runway use, so let's calm it down a couple notches. Broadcast your sanity and people might take you a little more seriously.

Tip 2: Maybe be a little more realistic about your claim of a book's effects. For example, rather than trying to convince me that a teenager's psyche was destroyed by a scantily clad woman or someone with a sword slicing through his abdomen, you explain the realistic consequences. For example, in this case these books have the negative effect of you bothering everyone at this stupid meeting where they probably don't get anything done anyway, so they can reduce this effect by pulling the books.

Tip 3: Leave god out of it. I know you're really tempted to get god-y, but hold on a sec. What you really want to do is call someone out, not bring someone in. Tango Makes Three is challenged a lot because the penguins are gay(?), but let the others bring in the part where god's not cool with that. Call out the gays, the people who speak Spanish, or whoever, but let god be implied. Hell, he's everywhere, right? He doesn't need your help.

Tip 4: Actually read some of the material. The first questions a library or school are going to ask you will concern the specifics of what you found offensive. That means page numbers. That means passages. Luckily for you, when my shit book comes out it'll have a little card in the back that tells you where all the absolute worst shit is. That will help you speed up the process.

Tip 5: Don't hold a book burning or try to hoard all the copies or some such shit. And there's a damn good reason for this: Where are you getting the copies? Unless you're robbing an author of copies in his garage, the author is putting coin in his pocket when you bring one to toss on the fire. A book sells for the same money regardless of whether you take it home and read it a hundred times or use it to steady a wobbly table. Even if you steal it, the store absorbs that cost, not the publisher, definitely not the author. And they will order more. So again, don't waste your time trying to take away the copies from anybody else, except in the case of my book. In that case, you're lucky because I'm doing an extra print run of cheaply bound copies meant to be burned. Please buy enough to make an impressive fire and keep me in sunglasses.

In conclusion, stop wasting your time. More importantly, stop wasting everyone else's time. I'm a fan of a lost cause, but don't push it, freedom fighter.