What have I Gotten Myself Into?

Ever hear yourself saying something you really don't want to say, but then you said it and it was out there hanging in a word bubble over your head and no matter how much you want to take it back, you can't? That's me in my first day of classes at Mount Ida this semester.

I make my students read for pleasure and journal about their reading. They bitch. They moan. They gripe. They grouse (isn't that a great word?) about the impossibility of the situation.

So, Wednesday (first day of classes) I hear myself saying, "Of course it's possible. In fact, I'll do it with you."

Damn! See that uneraseable air bubble up there? Yep, it's mine. Oh well. Here's my first attempt. Maybe it'll get me writing real stuff here.

Background they know: I picked the following book because I heard the author interviewed on NPR + it was 50% off at Barnes and Noble. That is what we in the Book Addiction business call kismet.
Background they don't know: I deliberately picked a book I felt "Meh" about because I thought I would give it up and show them by example that they are allowed to do that too.

Journal #1:

I honestly didn’t really expect to enjoy Born Round: A Story of Family, Food, and a Ferocious Appetite. In fact, I chose to start a book that I wasn’t incredibly excited about in an attempt to show how connections can be found between whatever someone reads and their own life.
I started Born Round during the time in between my office hours at Mount Ida and my first class at Northeastern. I usually have about an hour and a half, and I thought that would give me enough time to get through at least most of my reading. I wound up reading the Introduction and whole first chapter, around 30 pages, and I had to hustle to get to my class!

Born Round unexpectedly had me laughing from the Introduction. The book opens with the author working as a correspondent in Italy (incidentally, a place I’ve never been but definitely tops on my list of next places I’d love to go) when he gets a call to become a food critic in America. I found myself laughing because leaving Italy to become a food critic in America seems kind of like leaving the Vatican to study religion in a biker bar. While I’ve never been to Italy, I’ve had a lot of Italian students and colleagues through the years. Bar none, they are obsessed with food, specifically good food. Every single one of them would have been appalled by my Pizza Hut greasy lunch!

Born Round covers a topic everyone can relate to – our relationship with food. American eating choices disturb me. Even before picking up this book, I have an interest in healthier eating (not claiming I have an ideal diet by any means!). I heard someone say once, “If your Grandmother wouldn’t have known what it is, it CAN’T be food.” I think that’s true.

We all have a history of food. I can’t say I can relate to the author’s constant ranking of candy bars in order of preference, and I certainly never threw up to make room for more food as a toddler (like the author claims he did). That said, the role food played in his family does bear some resemblance of the role food played in mine. I think our parents had similar ideas about what exactly it meant to provide nourishment to a family.

Starting on page 13, the author relays his favorite foods at different ages. As my taste buds have certainly change and I hope evolved, it is funny to hear of the “gross” foods others once found so appealing. For the author, it was lamb chops (I have no idea – my family didn’t do lamb). For me, it was hot dogs. I can’t STAND hot dogs now, but while I was growing up, they were my family’s go to meal for me. The author’s obsession about food (on page 14: “The quiche had to cool for about 45 minutes before it could be eaten; I knew because I’d often kept count.”) definitely goes way beyond what mine ever was, but the abject devotion to particular foods is, indeed, universal.

The author attempts to explain his mother by saying that she threw her talents and efforts that could have very easily been channeled into work outside the home into feeding and caring for her family. “Those schoolmates had nicer homes, nicer clothes. But they didn’t eat any better than he did.” I think this is true of a lot of smart talented women of the 50s and 60s. They had nothing to stimulate them outside of the home so they might have often gone overboard inside the home. This lasts even today when most women work. I often find myself thinking that the messy house, when it is messy, is always my fault, even if none of the mess is mine….. Wonder why that is? Maybe something to think about as I continue this book…..

I love the author’s references to meals in his house as “gastronomic rugby matches.” I love eating with big noisy families who reach and grab all over each other and chow down with the confidence and happiness of a table that has never known hunger. Meals at my house, both growing up and now, are far more “civilized” affairs, much like those of the author’s mother’s childhood home (from page 15: “Harry would get 8 ounces of steak. Everyone else would get four to five ounces apiece. And everyone would chew it slowly, with firmly closed mouths.”) I don’t know what I’m getting at here. I guess dinner at the Bruni household – even though it made the author pretty chunky for most of his life – sounds really really fun.

I also laughed out loud (to the chagrin of all the other diners in Curry Student Center!) at the scene revolving around the author’s Grandmother’s homemade sausage. I laughed because I vaguely remember, when my family first moved from Connecticut to South Carolina in the 1970s, my father’s horror to discover that there was NO Italian sausage available anywhere! It’s hard to imagine, in today’s globalized world, a time when things just couldn’t be gotten in the grocery store, but it really existed when I was younger. It wasn’t just the South. I have only recently seen things here readily available to me in South Carolina as a kid. Anyway, this lack of homemade sausage was, in my Father’s mind, bordering on sacrilegious, so he got a whole bunch of his friends from work together (they were all transplanted from Connecticut), went in on a side of pork, and they all made homemade Italian sausage. For the record, although all the kids of all the family’s got together and played and made some of the greatest childhood memories I have….. The making of Italian sausage is gross, and will make the highest end kitchen kinda look like a slaughterhouse.

I’m looking forward to reading more about this family. There’s nothing wrong with a love of food, but it will be interesting to see how the author (now decidedly not “round”) gets his insatiable cravings and unstoppable curiosity about food under control. I’m thrilled today was a snow day because I really wanted to read further in this book, but found myself not wanting to get too far ahead before I had time to stop and write this journal.

I hope this helps show you a little about what I mean when I say you should “use” the text rather than just report the events. I know that you can read something and put the events in chronological order. What I want to hear is your reaction to the text and why you have that reaction. Go down memory lane. You didn’t need to hear about my childhood memories, I know. What connecting the book to my memories does FOR ME is to help me remember some of the details (not all – no one remembers everything) for the next time I pick up the book. I did NOT include a lot of stuff that happens in the text. That isn’t the point of a journal. It’s there for YOU to make SOME meaning from the book FOR YOU. I also didn’t bog you down with details. You don’t know what paper he was working for. Why? Because it wasn’t what I felt like focusing on in this entry. Try less to “get it right” and just write. Good luck on your journals.