From 1999 to 2020, Prune, a thirty-seat restaurant in the East Village, was a New York City institution. Its creator was Gabrielle Hamilton, a woman who (as New Yorker noted in review shortly after the restaurant opened) “is originally from New Jersey, but cooks more like a French woman.” This may be true: the restaurant was famous, among other things, for its radishes, which were served with butter and salt. But Hamilton is also a famous writer. In 2011 she published “Blood, bones and oil“, a memoir that chronicles not only her career but also her chaotic upbringing in rural Pennsylvania. Hamilton returned to the subject of her family with “Immediate family“, which was released earlier this fall. Its characters include her domineering but emotionally distant father and her mother, a former ballerina who “taught her everything” she knows “about food and cooking” – and from whom she was separated for thirty years. Hamilton joined us recently to discuss several of the books that have guided her as a writer. Her remarks have been edited and condensed.
Project No. 4
John McPhee
This McPheeA Guide to Nonfiction Writing. I don't know. Perhaps it is not fashionable now to admire such rigor, but I will still argue for it – I will still argue that you need to talk to the editor a hundred times about the word. Does this make me nostalgic? I feel like lately many people around me have been saying that we live in a “post-literate world.” I think if this is true, I'll be standing on the deck of the Titanic. I just think we have to insist that words matter. It's important to have your facts checked, and sometimes it's important to have some formality on the page. And here McPhee makes a really beautiful case for careful and proper craft. He articulates a truth that is not fashionable or trendy—a kind of truth that never expires.
Writing life
Annie Dillard
It took me forever to read Dillard's breakthrough book: “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek“, which came out in 1974. But once I got to her, I couldn't leave her. I just think that when you read her writing, you can witness an amazing mind at work.
The Writer's Life inspires me because, among other things, Dillard is so damn funny. She has a deep and self-deprecating humor. Dillard always felt like a person who could be playful and silly, even while being incredibly smart. She reminds me of people I met in graduate school who had mastered a very difficult theoretical language, but spoke so fluently that they could just rhyme and have fun and play. Meanwhile, at that time it seemed to me that I was barely holding on to the back of the bus by the wing as it rushed forward.
One Writer's Beginning
Eudora Welty
I bought this book when I was seventeen and I really admire it. It's all about how Welty became a writer—or, in fact, how she began to notice that perhaps she had that eye for observation that makes someone a writer. There is a part where she is lying on the floor of the dining room of her house and reading. It was so reflective of my own existence as a young man. I started writing young, and at that time I was such an observer – a person who noticed all the sounds in the house, who liked to watch dust particles in the rays of sunlight. It was so exciting and gratifying to read Welty's description of such an experience and think, “Oh my God, I do this too.” Perhaps I am a writer too.
Pig Earth
John Berger
I love Berger''In their works“, but I would say that “Pig Earth” is the damn Bible for me. I always look at this book as a guide to food writing. The way he talks about food is interesting because it's not really about food – it's a way of talking about peasantry and farm labor and class. For me, even when I'm writing about tomato salad at such and such a restaurant or about cheese at such and such a cheese shop, like I did when column V TimeIt's important for me to have what Berger writes in the back of my mind.
There's something about writing about food—at least for me—that makes you feel cheap and disposable. It may disappear in two weeks. And to some extent, this is probably how it should be. But there is something about Berger's approach – which is present in all his books – that seems evergreen. He always talks about brandy, soup or wine. How a character collects walnuts or holds a handful of berries in his hand. Or how a leek lies under a layer of snow outside, and inside there is someone lying on his deathbed. He makes food part of life.
