While traveling last week I also finished Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces and have been trying to collect my thoughts about it since. For lack of a better way to put it, this is simply a beautiful and stirring book. I am not sure, though, that I made complete sense of it and that is disappointing for me. It is a novel of the Holocaust, but that is far too inadequate a description, for it is about so many things. The plot follows the life of a Polish boy whose family is murdered before his eyes. He is discovered as he is hiding in the woods by a Greek geologist named Athos who then takes him in and raises him. The book charts his life and their relationship, but it focuses mostly on his quest to make sense of the great tragedy of his life and of the world. Michaels' book is really about memory, a favorite subject or ours here, of course, but one that is difficult to sufficiently encapsulate.
There is no doubt that the prose in Michael's work is lyrical and poetic, more so than just about anything else I can name right now, but probably makes this book one that deserves and requires more than just one reading. She piles on one metaphor after another, and while I generally favor this kind of literary writing, I did find it a bit tiresome in spots. Then I would be struck by an absolutely stunning passage and would be pulled in again. One in particular has stayed with me.
There's no absence, if there remains even the memory of absence. Memory dies unless it's given a use. Or as Athos might have said: If one no longer has land but has the memory of land, then one can make a map.
My own head is cluttered with memories of land, hills mostly, the way the earth seems to roll across itself in the landscape I call home, gathering here and there in bunches. But I also remember the stark and flat, windswept landscapes I have seen and find myself drawn to just as much. There is something for me about terrain, the long history that the world holds for itself beneath our feet and that will outlast us all, the way the earth is continually shaped and molded and sculpted as if our presence here really makes no difference in the end. We are simply swallowed into the strata that make up the memory of the world, sandwiched into the many layers that have already been stacked beneath us.
In spite of that, I still believe in hope, as does Jakob, the main character in the book. It is difficult to imagine trudging over the ground he carries in his own memory, but he must if it is, as Michael's writes, to be given a use. Digging into geological layers to piece together a story of the past is the central metaphor running throughout the book and it is well-crafted for sure. Jakob does make a map of the land he has walked upon, following it slowly to a place where he can discover sense in the senselessness and meaning in the meaninglessness.
Cross-country flights, for all their mind numbing irritants, are at least good for concentrated reading time. On a business trip last week to Denver, I made the most of all that sitting and tore through two spectacular books, finishing one completely and wrapping up a novel that I had been working on for too long. I was especially grateful for the chance to read all of Tracie McMillan's The American Way of Eating. It was perfect for a long airplane trip, since I could not have put it down if I had tried, and because it was about a topic already much on my mind--see the previous post.
There is always more to the story and the more I read through McMillan's book, the worse I felt for my dismissive and naively worded post about American eating. McMillan researched her book by working alongside immigrant farm laborers in the vegetable fields of California, stocking groceries and produce in a Walmart in Michigan, and prepping meals in an Applebee's kitchen in New York. There were so many well-articulated and intriguing points in this one that the gentleman sitting beside me on the return flight finally gave in and exasperatedly asked me why I kept tearing up small bits of paper strips and sticking them in the pages. I did not have an easy answer for him and, though I generally enjoy the chance to tell people about my blog, I knew doing so would provoke a longer conversation and give me far less time to actually finish the book. A quick, just a lot of good stuff in here, while not actually turning to look at him did the trick. And there is a lot of good stuff in here.
My previous post, while being critical of the American way of eating in general, failed to address the larger and more important issue of class when it comes to the American diet, and McMillan fully delves into and makes completely clear the absolute centrality of the matter. There is simply far more to American eating than ignorance or a lack of awareness about calories, and I am regretful that I implied otherwise. McMillan made clear for me that food is very much a social activity in our culture. It is shared as a sign of love and hospitality, as a celebration of milestones and important events, as a signal of intimacy, and in ways elemental to who we are as human beings. We all care about food and we all need food--good food and healthy food. Lack of awareness or perspective on how we consume it, while still a large part of the issues at play here, is not all that keeps people from eating well and eating smartly.
McMillan's book is worth the read alone for the opportunity to learn about the astoundingly vast logistical network we have created for cultivating and distributing food in our country. She discusses the evolution of this system and the social and cultural shifts that brought it about. While it is impressive and ingenious, for sure, once you understand a little about how it works and how concentrated is the control of it, you will not in any way be able to think of the food you buy in your grocery store in the same way again.
There is actually nothing natural about this system. To walk through Walmart's cavernous aisles is to walk through a landscape created by a century's worth of decisions America has made about its food. We prized agricultural bounty; we valorized mass marketing; we made transportation and distribution into a science. We've built a massive infrastructure capable of taking whatever we grow and delivering it wherever we choose, on a scale heretofore unseen; this much is true. And yet I'm reminded, in a small way, of what John Steinbeck wrote when he visited migrant labor camps not far from where I picked grapes: There is a failure here that topples all our successes. It is far easier to eat well in America than in most of the world, but we've done little to ensure that fresh and healthy food is available to everyone.
I was prompted as well to consider the implications of the added stress and required decision-making that planning and cooking meals entails. Interestingly enough, I have seen and read a bit of late about how we make decisions as humans. Our brains, over the course of a day, actually develop decision-making fatigue, to the point that we eventually give up and guess or make the easier choice as the decisions, even the seemingly smallest ones, pile up and overwhelm us. This is intuitive, sure, but it plays an important role in the decisions we make daily about our health and our eating. Couple that fatigue with the stresses of making ends meet or working long hours or worrying about one's own physical safety and it becomes obvious that eating well is either a choice too wearisome to make or simply not a choice at all for many Americans. Which means, then, that one of the points I made in the previous post still stands: that the nutritional value of public school lunches is incredibly important. If a school lunch is the only real food choice provided in a child's day, it is all the more important that it be a good one.
The key to getting people to eat better isn't that they should spend money, or even that they should spend more time. It's making the actual cooking of a meal into an easy choice, the obvious answer. And that only happens when people are as comfortable and confident in the kitchen as they are taking care of the other endless chores that come with running a modern family--paying bills, cleaning house, washing the car.
Because, really, that's what I'm helping with back here amid the grease and the steam and the clang of tongs on metal: Coordinating a basic household task. There will be days for every person, every family, where it is worth paying four times more for the service. That's fine. But the longer I'm at Applebee's, the more I think everyone should be making that choice from equal footing: with easy access to fresh ingredients, and a solid ability to cook. Our health, as that of our ancestors, depends on it.
There are many, many reasons for the woeful state of our nation's eating habits and I glossed over this all too easily last week, but McMillan makes strongly the point that this issue is an economic one at its core.
Geography and the minute variations between the lowest rungs of our economy might change the details, but the healthiest route through the American foodscape is a steep and arduous path most easily ascended by joining its top income bracket. So far as I can tell, changing what's on our plates simply isn't feasible without changing far more. Wages, health care, work hours, and kitchen literacy are just as critical to changing our diets as the agriculture we practice or the places at which we shop.
This idea of kitchen literacy struck a chord with me, especially when she linked its importance with another issue that is of utmost importance to this blog, basic literacy in general.
If we managed to incorporate cooking into public education, we'd make sure the next generation could prepare healthy meals . . . leaving those skills to chance strikes me as shortsighted. Just as we have an interest in having kids who can read, we have a very strong public interest in having healthy kids. We recognize that the former is too important a skill to leave to parents alone, and therefore teach it in school; given the links between a healthy diet and knowing how to cook meals from scratch, we might want to try doing the same with cooking.
Even if you do not find yourself agreeing with McMillan's conclusions and the solutions she offers, her book is one that digs deeply into things that affect each of us every single day. Having a better sense of where our food comes from, how it is handled and delivered to us, and how this system is controlled is something that should be of interest to every American. These are things that are simply far too important for us to ignore.
I finished Scott Jurek's book, Eat and Run, last week. Jurek is well-known in the world of distance running, having won the Western States Endurance Run--a one hundred mile race through the mountains and wilderness of California--seven consecutive times. And that is just one of the many pieces of evidence for his ranking as an ultrarunning legend. He has won multiple times and holds records in the world's toughest and most demanding ultrarunning events. Hopefully, you have heard of him. If not, I am nearly certain you have by now heard of a landmark book called Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, which introduced the world to a reclusive tribe of indigenous people who inhabit the remote Copper Canyon in Mexico and are renowned (now) for their ability to run seemingly effortless for long distances. Very long distances. McDougall's book also, of course, sparked much conversation about the concept of barefoot running and may even be credited in part for the latest marketing ploy by shoe companies to develop so-called minimalist footwear. Jurek is featured prominently in McDougall's book and for that reason has come to know an even greater amount of fame in the last few years.
As if his running accomplishments were not enough, though, he has been for the better part of his career a vegan. Jurek's life and his book are ample evidence to all the naysayers and skeptics and myth followers out there that a finely tuned and highly successful athlete can, in fact, compete at such a level while living on a plant based diet. Yes, plant centered eating can give you all the balanced nutrition you need and--get this--more. Yes, there are ways to get ample amounts of things like protein and iron on such a diet. Imagine this: our planet has been equipped to provide us with plentiful nutrition on which to live and thrive far longer than our completely counter-intuitive American diet has been around.
I have welcomed over the last few years and have learned a great deal from the widening conversation about food in this country. Three eye-opening books for me have been Joel Fuhrman's Eat to Live, Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, and Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. People are beginning to ask questions about what they are putting into their bodies. And for good reason, I believe. I have shaken my head at the recent news stories about the uproar from kids and parents about the new nutritional standards for public school lunches. Do not give me that argument about a so-called "nanny state." If public school lunches are going to be subsidized by tax payer dollars, then we have every right to expect them to be of the highest nutritional quality. We have every obligation as a society to make sure our kids eat balanced, healthful meals. In some of the articles there were high school kids complaining about being hungry and not getting enough to eat from the new school lunches. Do you know what the maximum calorie allowance is for high school lunches under the guidelines? 850 calories. Without even knowing it, I am certain that many of those kids consume that many calories per day on sodas alone. It would not take many twenty ounce bottles to hit that number. And therein lies the crux of this issue. Americans have no perspective about the amount of calories they consume. But, it is not simply about a number of calories. It is about eating things that are fresh, colorful, grown and not processed, not packed full of antibiotics and hormones, and not shipped from one end of the country to the other. At the very least, we should educate ourselves. We are, after all, given only one life and one body in which to live it. If you ask me, it comes down to simple common sense.
I also, of course, enjoyed Jurek's book for the stories of his running exploits. I have a difficult time explaining to non-runners why I am out there nearly everyday, pounding out the miles. They think of running as some sort of punishment and some people are even afraid of it. I cannot begin to tell you how many people have told me I am ruining my knees. I have news for them. My knees and every other joint in my body are stronger than theirs and, I would wager, are certain to last much longer. My heart also works less and pumps more blood and oxygen through veins that are stronger and clearer. I sleep better. I do not get sick as much. And, best of all, I reach a state of pure mental bliss regularly. Without illegal or, for that matter, legal stimulants. I have said it before. We humans were made to run.
More importantly, though, Jurek gave the best explanation I have ever heard or read for why he pushes himself and his body to absolute extremes. You simply have no idea what you are capable of until you ask it of yourself. And that goes for most anything. There is something important to be said about setting for yourself a goal, staying disciplined and focused in your work toward it, and then accomplishing it. And, there is something difficult to put into words about the power of going as far as you think you can physically and then finding that deeper, mysterious thing that takes you a little further.
