Yes Sir, Chef

Marcus Samuelson’s memoir, Yes, Chef, is a tough and unsentimental book that carries with it an unexpectedly emotional punch. Born in Ethiopia, adopted and raised in Sweden, and then a wildly successful chef, Samuelson is famous for who he is and what he has done. His story has appeal. It to speaks to opportunity and advancement, fitting within a comfortable western middle class narrative. But that is not really his story.Yes, Chef

Samuelson steadfastly resists simple narrative arcs. He does not present his life as rags-to-riches, or as a testament and example of the benefits of hard work. He is appreciative of where he is now, to be sure, but the memoir is not a work of gratitude. Samuelson’s book is a critical look at self and personal history. Although he is not a particularly self-reflective man – he tells us how he repeatedly bottles up deeper emotions – Samuelson challenges himself in this very engaging work. He challenges the reader, too.

Driven and extraordinarily competitive, Samuelson’s personal journey began when his mother, dying of tuberculosis, walked for 75 miles to deliver him (then named Kassahun Tsegie) and his sister to medical care. As child in Sweden he desperately wanted to be a professional soccer player, and it was only after he was cut did he turn to cooking. All his energy and passion turned to food; he was, and remains, obsessed. He writes of food and its preparation with enthusiasm that leaps from the page.

Samuelson’s commitment to his career was not without cost. It prevented him from maintaining a close relationship with both of his adopted parents and from developing a meaningful relationship with a child he fathered. With ever greater successes, particularly at Aquavit, ,an extremely successful high-end Swedish restaurant in New York City, came more work. It was only after the success that he was able to work for himself, enabling the possibility of this book and a return to his past. Samuelson takes a tough look at his choices. He also stakes out a claim for trying to become a more complete person. He possesses a very powerful fundamental human decency.

That same integrity shapes Samuelson’s many descriptions of how his race has shaped his life. The book is not a polemic or an airing of grievances, yet it conveys – with directness and clarity – the insidious ways in which he was not seen, listened to or respected. A triple-outsider, Samuelson is aware that his search for identity will never resolve. His past will always be, in many ways, inaccessible. The memoir is a powerful way that he can assert his own identity and change the expectations of others.

Samuelson’s current restaurant, Red Rooster, is in Harlem and “celebrates the origins of American food.” Samuelson found an appropriate location, and it is close to his home, too. I finished the book looking forward to a visit and possibly some of Helga’s meatballs – delicious and prepared with thought and care, I’m sure.

David Potash

January 30, 2013 Reviews

Political Cartoons and Oliphant’s Lament

Is it just me, or have political cartoons lost their punch? One would expect that in our visually rich society we would be awash in popular cartooning. Animation is everywhere, to be sure, but political cartooning – or “editorial cartooning” as the professionals call it, does not seem as relevant.Oliphant- Betsy

It could be that shrinking influence of newspapers has undermined the access of political cartoon. The rise of corporate culture, too, has been cited as a corresponding deterrent to stinging political cartoons. But other factors are at play.

It was not always such. From Thomas Nast’s Tammany Tiger to Pat Oliphant’s caricatured Nixon, talented political cartoonists have been able to reduce complex political situations into easily recognized images.  When they get it right, their visuals are widely copied and repeated. Yet in 2013 there has been no viral cartoon and no one image that sums up last year’s presidential election.

After reading Oliphant’s Anthem, a companion book and website to the Library of Congress’s 1998 exhibition (note – the website is live and worth a gander), I believe that the underlying cause of the political cartoon’s wane reflects a broader shift in American popular culture. Oliphant, an Australian native who won a Pulitzer way back in 1966, is one of America’s most influential political cartoonists. His work is reproduced nationally and readily available. Along with MaNelly and the late Herblock, the trio were the most influential American political cartoonists of the last 50 years.

Most political cartoons, from the 1800s through the early 2000s, shared a common purpose: to shine a light on hypocrisy, to knock the pompous off their perch, to mock. Politicians are often the target, but not exclusively. Political cartoons’ energy derives from the difference between what is and what is proclaimed. That difference is all the easier to portray if our leaders access and utilize the language and imagery of the ideal, the preferred. The more ambitious the claims of a political leaders, the more energy available for a political cartoons. And ambitious assertions – especially moral testaments – are unusual in our ironic age.  When the proud fall, it is far too often medicalized and pathologized. Elliott Spitzer and Anthony Weiner serve as prime examples.

We have come to expect our leaders to cheat, to philander, to obfuscate, and to lie. We have low expectations for presidential candidates a lower expectations for Congress. Without much faith in the system or the people closest to it, we gain little pleasure or insight from the humor of political cartoons. We have been habitually disappointed too often – and there are few professing optimism.

Ironically, we need a little more idealism for political cartooning, with all its dark humor, to gain traction.

David Potash

January 21, 2013 American Culture Today, Things someone who grew up in NJ might write

No Shaming This Shrew

Alisa Valdes is a prolific journalist, blogger and author. Fearless when it comes to writing about herself and affairs of the heart, she has fashioned a career of being an outspoken feminist. Self-reflection and self-disclosure can take an author far. It takes an extraordinarily life or talent, however, to do more than describe.Feminist and the Cowboy

In the Feminist and the Cowboy, her latest book, Valdes recounts her turbulent relationship with a handsome New Mexico rancher of few words, a dominant personality, and a cleft chin. Part memoir and part polemic on gender roles and identity, the book is a first-hand account of a slow-moving train wreck of a relationship written by a passenger in first class. She’s a liberal feminists. He’s a libertarian Republican. She wears Uggs. He wears cowboy boots. Can they find love? It might be possible, but for the lovers’ respective problems and conflicts. Valdes is high-functioning and consistently self-destructive. The cowboy is controlling and damaged.

Shortly after the book was published, Valdes revealed that her romance with the cowboy had ended. She then briefly posted and quickly pulled down an account of abuse at the hands of the Cowboy. It was not rape, she later attested, but many in the blogosphere disagreed. In fact, the post-publication woes of Valdes generated a high-number of blogs, comments and articles (See here , here and here).

I have no desire to write about Valdes’ love life, past or present. If that interests you, read the book. I found it frustrating, entertaining, and shallow. It is neither profound nor substantial, and suffers from a “just written” feel. But Valdes’ talent is keeping the attention on her and the discussion about her going. In fact, her gift is an ability to turn self-absorption into a career. It may only be the knowledge that at the age of 40 she was living in her father’s house and dating a control freak that keeps one from jealousy.

Why do so many of us pay attention? Because Valdes’ open and trusting narrative, her raw emotions, her lightly edited vacillations, echo the language of an old friend. For a traditional memoir, unedited connotes sloppy. For a blogger/journalist/author, an unedited memoir means that nothing is held back. Valdes is definitely not discreet.

So many of us work too hard, run around too much, and simply lack the time and opportunity for sustained interaction with friends. Humans are social animals, though – there is no denying our nature – and we want friendship and trust. Valdes offers her story couched in the familiar language, structure and genre of a friend.She trusts, she cajoles, she argues and she explains. You can almost hear the pauses in the text where she waits for us to nod, to ask a question (“you did what!?”), and to console. Valdes is well-practiced in the perfect genre for an age with few rules protecting privacy and no meaningful understanding of intimacy.

David Potash

January 19, 2013 American Culture Today, Reviews

Ann Hamilton – Hanging By A Chain

Thread 1Since 2006 the Park Avenue Armory in NYC has been a mecca for performances and site-specific art installations. It is a difficult commission, for the building has a history and scale that competes for attention and can easily overwhelm.

Ann Hamilton’s Event of a Thread at the Armory was a complex “multisensory affair” featuring 42 swings connected to a large flowing curtain bisecting the Drill Hall, and a conglomeration of creative ephemera: caged pigeons, newspaper-wrapped radios, a daily song captured in vinyl (which was played back the following day), and some somber looking functionaries, dressed like extras in a Margaret Atwood dystopia, focused on various tasks with great seriousness.

Hamilton very cleverly coupled the swings, each of which could seat two comfortably, in the ceiling. This dampened their arcs and made for some Thread 2very interesting patterns in the curtain, which moved in relationship to the swings. Part steam punk, part Stevie Nix, the exhibit was both an invitation to play and a challenge to experience. What do you look at? And what do you take seriously?

New York State built many armories after the Civil War when wide-scale street violence was a near memory. Armories were military training grounds, repositories of weapons, club houses for militia, and visible reminders of the power of the National Guard to maintain domestic tranquility. The wealth of the NYC’s upper East Side insured that the Park Avenue Armory was much more than a very large military shed. Some of the period’s most successful designers contributed to the Armory’s lush and elegant social spaces. Its drill hall is enormous with 55,000 square feet unobstructed space. As a point of contrast, Tate Modern’s famous Turbine Hall in London is significantly smaller at only 36,600 square feet. The sheer size of the Drill Hall infantilizes most pieces. It is indifferent to the largest of objects.

The swings in Hamilton’s exhibit kept me busy for the better part of an hour. The swings, playful and childlike, belonged.  There was not question about their purpose or integrity. As for the extras, pigeons and the prose, I have not a clue. The complexity of the work rendered it inaccessible. The disparate activities may be related by some common reference, a shared thread of meaning. Or they may not.

Sustained engagement is a necessary but not necessarily sufficient criteria for art to succeed. Hamilton’s simple was far more effective holding attention than her complex. Isn’t it interesting how often that turns out to be true?

January 12, 2013 Reviews, Things someone who grew up in NJ might write