Word: colwin
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...such great masters of culinary writing go unrecognized by the American public. But despite their anonymity, food writers have crafted some of the best prose of the twentieth century. They face a unique challenge in trying to represent in words experiences that are primarily smell- and taste-oriented. Laurie Colwin, a little-known author who, during her short life, published a few novels and several stories in the New Yorker, is one of the great American food writers. This summer, working three jobs to make rent and reduced to herbivory, I would open up “Home Cooking...
Flatter than Texas, flimsier than New Year's resolutions, Colwin's supporting cast garnishes her narrative with outright cliches. Jane Louise's schoolmate, Edie, scandalizes her wealthy WASP family when she drops out of cooking school in Paris to marry Mokie, a Black man. Mokie, in turn, laughs at how uncomfortable he makes white people feel when they mistake him for a waiter. Sven, Jane Louise's colleague, manages to think and talk about nothing but sex, to send a frisson of enigma and anticipation down every woman's spine, yet maintain his job as director of the design department...
...Colwin probably intends these paragons of unoriginal thinking as types, to highlight Jane Louise's `normal' abnormality. We all worry because we don't lead lives of endless Kodak moments strung together, but no one really does, Colwin reassures. This cunning ruse fails, in part because Jane Louise just isn't that normally abnormal, but mainly because it makes for dull reading...
Most critics praise Colwin highly for her prose, which they rightly credit with wry, elegant clarity. When she merely narrates, Colwin's unusual voice charms the reader. But she puts this remarkably stylish turn of phrase in the mouths of her less-than-remarkable protagonists. Stilted, unnatural dialogue results...
...looking for a whiz-banging pageturner, an unputdownable crackerjack, a humdinging literary tour de force, a ripping yarn, look elsewhere. Laurie Colwin has written several delightful, original books. Her last, A Big Storm Knocked It Over, isn't one of them...