Food in america

Why can't you get a decent cup of coffee in New York? asks culture kiosque.

It may well ask, why is it impossible to get anything decent-tasting to eat or drink in the whole of the United States.

Following the gourmet boom of the 90's, things are better in most places of the country than they once were, but they are only relatively better: mass produced Canadian "President Brie" still passes for "gourmet cheese" in most snazzy places of new England; restaurants still serve the same tired, tasteless food, concentrating their marketing efforts on service and ambiance instead; and verbal innovation: it is "Thai-fusion" now instead of "sushi", though, with your eyes closed, you could not tell the difference; and produce -- meat, fruit and vegetables -- remain as indistinguishable from each other in taste and texture as they have always been. (I have always suspected that they were all produced in the same factory out of the same basic pulp merely injected into different molds and then spray-painted to create a pleasing appearance).

The health food boom may have made organic vegetables standard, but it only satisfies the moral urge to be good to one's body (being good to one's body is one of the pillars of the code of ethics in the US¹): it has done nothing for the taste of the stuff. In America, to paraphrase a character from Madness of King George, it turns out, it is possible to eat healthy food every day of one's life and -- never enjoy it.

The article then haphazardly gropes for explanations ("Protectionism? Nostalgia? Fierce brand loyalty? Hostility to fancy-schmantzy European drinks?") but brings me no closer to the mystery that, apparently, the whole American nation has no taste buds. If one did not know they -- the New-Worlders -- pretty much all come from here -- the Old World -- one would suspect some evil mutation. As it is, one is left with just two viable theories: either cultural determination, Barthes-like, extends to taste-bud formation; or emigration to the US was taste-bud asymmetrical: the genetic material was somehow sifted by the boats. ("No, you cannot embark on this boat, sorry.")

Shouldn’t the center of the civilized universe be able to provide a visiting Brit with a reasonable caffeine fix? asks the article, Brit-like, tongue in cheek. It means: it isn't.

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¹ As predicted by someone -- Wittgenstein? No, he didn't have the wit; more likely Russell, he had so many things right! (Except the main point, of course).

Unsinn

Last Sunday I listened to a "cultural" program on the BBC; or so its title said. As it went on, I grew more and more alarmed, eventually, as a sort of self-defense, I suppose, breaking out in loud, silly guffaws, and going into spasms -- which in turn ruined my breakfast.

The program went something like this.

Some East End gallery specializes in up and coming artists ("buy it for a penny, sell it for a pound"); some of these artists were then interviewed: one, a Pakistani, makes large installations of planes locked up in huge blocks of ice which then slowly melt under harsh lights (yeah, duuude! pass the sheesha!); the interviewer asks her: you wear a chador (‘conservative’) but you make such modern works! (She doesn’t have a damn clue, does she?)

Meanwhile at the White House the What's-their-names are assembling a collection of borrowed art; it’s all modern (i.e. post-1950) of course, and American (probably has to be), including someone’s mediation on the square (!); except a DAY-ga (American enough when you pronounce it that way); except this last is judged risque (hush: legs); but the former first lady was also cultured, we are told: she owned a de Koenig (along with hyper-realist representations of West Texas landscape). Ah, the uncultured me: who de hoeck was de Koenig?

(Ah... upon consideration, don't tell me, I don't want to know).

Then, we were told, an Algerian band in France plays an electric oud. (Lousily, as it happens). You play such a mix of traditional and modern! gushes the interviewer.

(Huh?)

*

Sorry, I don’t understand this language, though everyone around me seems to.

Here, for instance, is Florian Zeller (who?) invited to speak at a kind of book fair in Egypt (probably because no one better would go), offering the humid fruit of his precious brain-tree:

if the Islamic world generally had difficulties with the novel, it was because it was living to a large extent in an era that belonged to the period before modern times, bogged down in archaisms that were by their essence incompatible with the foundations of the novel: freedom, fantasy, complexity, the ambiguity of all truths and the suspension of moral judgement. In this respect, the novel could easily become the battle ground between two civilisations.

(Er? Has Zeller ever read any archaic poetry, either Islamic or -- European? And if so, which part of his anatomy does he use to think (and speak) about it?)

The terrible thing: he thinks this drivel actually means something; and – oh, emperor’s new clothes! -- his Egyptian colleagues believe him! How's that for conversation: you issue forth a series of grunts, pretending that you're saying something; then, in turn, they do the same, pretending their grunts are a meaningful response. It's possible to keep this up for quite some time!

How do you explain to these... village people that the language they speak –which happily interchanges modern, western, good, inevitable, free, sexually liberated, and cultured is incoherent; that it is broken; that it means nothing; that it is impossible to say or think in it anything that makes any sense at all and that by speaking it they just bury themselves in some horrendous dark hole of the mind?

But then -- what could possibly be the point of explaining?

Un conte de Noel or The wretched tiresomeness of the anglos

There are numerous films with this title, both French and English.

Invariably, the English movies are about the same things as the French ones: betrayal, disloyalty, sexual dalliance, parents’ failure to love their children (and the reverse), failure to live up to standards of friendship; and so forth. In short: moral failure all along the line; which is to say, well, life.

But – and this is my point here -- also invariably, the English language films are dark, sick, depressing – Scandinavian – while the French films – though they can be profound – manage to be lighthearted and – well, generally quite funny.

(Profundity, it turns out, contra my anglo friends, has no need of moral reproach).

The anglo productions are invariably steeped in the five thousand year old sauce of divine moralization: even the famous sexual revolution has not cured the anglos of their leviticus moralizing zeal: the rules remain, they have merely been tweaked (“dally all you want before you’re married, but once you marry, well, then have eyes only for daddy” – how does one who has dallied all her life do that?); while the French – well, the French seem to make do – with all the heartache it entails but without the divine retribution and without the moral disgust.

Here is to the French. (Herdade grande, red, 2006; and well before noon, too; but, hey, it's afternoon somewhere in the world, no?)

*

BBC7 is mostly lower-middle-brow. But it sometimes rises above itself to produce something quite good. Last month it was Wharton’s Reef. Good, excellent, wonderful, insightful, wise – well written and well acted, too boot. But, oh, so bloody Anglo-Saxon, so damn – well – sick.

My reaction to this literature is like my reaction to Dostoevsky: instant, deeply felt, uncontrollable revulsion.

(I am a Crime and Punishment tosser, i.e. one of those who have pitched it out the window with disgust… in fact, I suppose, I am a serial-tosser since I repeated the same – Heimlich? -- maneuver with Brothers Karamazov twenty years later. It is a kind of monoethlon: how far anf fast can you pitch your Dosoevsky?)

Yet, surprisingly – or not surprisingly, if you know their literature – the anglos love Dostoevsky.

There is something about the feelings of moral disgust that stimulates the anglos; they appear like that madman who having accidentally stepped into a piece of dog poop in the street, turned round, retraced his steps and, re-locating the poopismo, trod it again; and again; and again.

One assumes – with delight.

(Not my kind of party).