Category: Books

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Pigs Spotted

The Spotted Pig, trendy mainstay of the West Village has been the fodder for recent #MeToo due to bad behavior by restaurateur duo Mario Batali and Ken Friedman. Friedman’s chef co-owner April Bloomfield has parted ways with him after pretending to be oblivious to the debauched behavior in the venue’s after-hours-upstairs. Drugging and raping staff. Allegedly.

News today that another woman is going to partner with Friedman to revive The Spotted Pig. Gabrielle Hamilton, author of Blood, Bones & Butter and decades-acclaimed chef owner of East Village gem Prune. A renegade rebel from lobster fiascos at upscale camps in the Berkshires, to line chef at Curtis & Schwartz in Northampton while at Hampshire College, as told in Table’s Edge. This is an interesting decision. But. Hey. Go Gabrielle! You are a true survivor.

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Aside Posts

Killing Eve. BBC America’s mesmerizingly unique love story. Assassin pursued by a British agent. Vice-versa. To dub this a feminist trope would be soul-less and silly at best. It’s an intimate sensuous cold look at raw characters. Sandra Oh. Jodie Comer. Acting, writing uncannily different. In a similar spirit, HBO’s Barry has an edgy ensemble, with laugh-out-loud Russian caricatures. Violent. Ironic. Startling. Jaundiced. Captivating. Both. Must see.

Warlight. A new novel by the brilliant author Michael Ondaatdje. Not as good as one of my all-time favorites The Cat’s Table, 2011. His table metaphors continue, nonetheless. It is a melodic poetic post-WWII tale of a boy abandoned by his parents and left to the care of loving Dickensian rascals. His mother, Rose, worked with one of them on the roof of the Grosvenor House Hotel in London during the war, intercepting enemy communications.

Mansour Ghalibaf of the Hotel Northampton in Table’s Edge, happened to be partner with owners of the Grosvenor House consortium, descendants from those days. As an aside.

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Psychic Picnic

Memorial Day Weekend is traditionally the gateway to summer. Picnics, cookouts, barbecues. In search of a psychic picnic, Amazon’s mini-series The Picnic at Hanging Rock kept us up late and bleary-eyed. Based on a 50-year old book by Joan Lindsay, it’s set in a remote Australian mansion turned girls’ boarding school with a sociopath headmistress played by GOT’s Margery aka Natalie Dormer. On Valentine’s Day 1900 the girls go on a picnic to Hanging Rock. Clocks stop. Never sure why. Stray plot strands abound.

The picnic ends up with 2 girls and a teacher disappearing into thin air. Never found. Through a pink cloud? What this wasn’t was a rich story. More a titillating soft-porn Victorian lesbian-like but not thing. Need a real picnic in the fresh air to dispel this stale still-life.

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City Writes

Recently Joey3Sticks ran into an old customer from Frank Stella men’s clothing store on the UWS. Philip Roth recognized him and they chatted for a bit near the Park on the East Side. RIP. New York authors falling by the wayside. Wolfe now Roth. City benches will miss them.

Still living. Stephen King has a new book, The Outsider. In keeping with his genre. He was in the ‘hood for the 2018 PEN America Literary Awards at the Museum of Natural History and later sighted wearing a tux in the lobby of The Mark Hotel on the UES.

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White Wolfe

Author Tom Wolfe. His books stand the test of time. No one ever coined cultures better. Social x-rays. Limousine liberals. Radical chic. The ME generation. University athletics as centers of corruption. Astronauts as heroes of a generation. Wolfe’s white suits and literary legacy live on.

I Am Charlotte Simmons. Bonfire of the Vanities. The Right Stuff. Back to Blood. All-time favorites on the Book-Treks shelf.

It seems that Tom’s first job in journalism was as a reporter at The Springfield Union, in Springfield, Massachusetts.

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A Season in Limbo

Dominick Dunne’s 1993 best-selling novel, A Season in Purgatory. Anatomy of the murder of young Martha Moxley in the exclusive enclave of Greenwich, Connecticut in 1975. Bludgeoned by a golf club one night after a country club dance, Martha was left dead or dying in nearby woods. Steps from her home. Ethel Kennedy’s cousin Michael Skakel the presumed culprit. Cover-ups and obfuscation ensued. The wealthy wagons circled. In 2002, thanks to Dunne’s research, Michael was convicted and sentenced to 20 years. He served 11 before he won an appeal for having been incompetently represented. Today the case was vacated.

Dominick is rolling over in his grave. The Moxley’s live in a forever limbo.

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Ladies Who Lunch

Not a fan of lunch with just ladies. Have to dress up. Makeup. Pink tablecloths. Perfume-permeated rooms. Boring menus. Power business lunches used to be de rigueur. With women. And men. That was fun. When I was young. There I said it. Hate shopping, too.

However, 150 years ago women couldn’t go out to lunch unaccompanied by a man. Right, Mike Pence? Until Delmonico’s held a luncheon for women in 1868. This week Gabrielle Hamilton has created a menu to commemorate this milestone at Delmonico’s for a Ladies’ Lunch.

Nice. But. No. Won’t be going.

Blood, Bones & Butter, Gabrielle Hamilton
Hamilton’s book is a Glass Castle-esque memoir. She was a line cook at Curtis & Schwartz Café in Northampton while at Hampshire College. She’s the acclaimed chef-owner of Prune in the East Village today.     Book-Treks.com

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Season Collusion

It’s the first full day of Spring. Yet. Wintry all-day snow. Upper West Side got more than most. Over 8 inches. So. Read Autumn by Ali Smith for tomorrow’s book club:

Collage campus. I didn’t intend to like this book based on its subject matter. Dying old guy and young girl as friends. Yet. I did like it. More for its richness of language, word play, concision of phrasing. And. Daniel’s perspective on life as a collage alum, rather than a college one. An asymmetrically smart relationship. Historical. Topical. Not a story novel. More a literary read.

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Green Day

I know. Musical allusions abound. Anyway. That was fast. Virginia out. Busted brackets making more racket than St. Patrick’s Day parade marching bands up Fifth Avenue. Tiger sure didn’t burn up the greens either yesterday. So. Guess it’s dyed beer at the pubs to drown sorrows and boredom. Or read a book. Autumn by Ali Smith next on the book club list. Even though it’s nearly Spring, it’s cold. Yeah. One of those days.

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Do the Lighten Up

Make America laugh again. Journalists are such easy prey. They take themselves so seriously that any jab puts them into supercilious overdrive. Get a grip. Stop swinging at low hanging fruit and do some real reporting. Stormy. Really? And. Of course. Dennis Rodman would love to join the Rocket Man summit. Why not?

Speaking of light. Two out of three books so far fit the bill. The Wife Between Us, by Greer Hendricks, Sarah Pekkanen. Not sure why this took two women to conjure it. Disturbed families. Vulnerable adults. Worth a few hours on a wintry Saturday. Mrs., Caitlin Macy. Upper East Side moms. Nothing more than trite. However, The Woman In the Window, by A.J. Finn is not light at all. Dr.Husband reports depressing and tedious. So nope. Won’t read that one.

Apologies to Archie Bell & the Drells. Go Tiger!