Decided: We are not going to bring back "Naked Came the Stranger" as a title. And I, Anon. #2, stand corrected, btw. In a recent blog, I said that the title was in question practically right up until it was available on Amazon. Not So. It was in question up to, including and beyond, publication date.
Which should give you some idea of how well artistic decisions made by committee work out. The whole truth is that the original, published title was "She's the One." This, after years, years, of debate. We were nubile young women (or so it seemed) when we started this project, and now we were, um, not nubile.
Some time after our book was available and set to rock the sales charts, one of our more ambitious writers discovered that there were a zillion books by that name. What to do?
A name change was in order, but what should it be? Every time we had another, wholly new and incontrovertibly zippy title, we discovered how unoriginal we were. Something had to be done before we approached menopause. I'll spare you the catchy ideas that flew back and forth. Ultimately, we went with being more au currant, and added "So," as in, "That dress is so yesterday."
But here's your chance: We're open to ideas, as long as we're still living. And we're so still living.
Not that the debates didn't continue. Belle, for instance, is not that thrilled with her name. I forget where that name came from, or Rose, for that matter, but it made for a nice graphic on the Press Release.
Maybe it was because we were all working on other projects that weeks--or was it months?--went by between chapters. Our memories had to be refreshed on what had come before so that we could pick up the drift. I didn't realize the extent to which our memories had to be refreshed until, one day, there was this e-mail in our messages: Oh, great, now we have Dr. Thompson's dead wife showing up.
Dr. Thompson's wife was dead??? Dr. Thompson had a wife? And if he did, who said she was dead? Maybe she wasn't dead, not really. Maybe it only seemed she was dead. But if she really was truly dead, what kind of a doctor was Dr. Thompson that he couldn't save her?
That's the really great thing about fiction. You can pull some amazing tricks, and bring someone back to life. That is, if you choose to. It's all up to you.
There is one chapter in which there is a terrible car accident in a snow storm. It happens on a winding country road along the river. It is dark and incredibly slippery, the snow rapidly turning to ice. The air is suddenly shrill with sirens; police are rerouting drivers up a steep hill and down the other side to circumvent the scene of the accident. The car, barely visible from the top of the hill, lay upside down, crushed like a cigarette pack. There is no question whose car it is. And no question that the driver would have be dead.
Or would he?
(Available as a Kindle e-book at www.amazon.com)
We will return to bloodless battles. In the meantime, Anon.#2 wants to talk about one of her favorite writers.
"You go to a man?!" my friend said, incredulously. I had committed a heinous crime by using the services of a masseuse, a male masseuse. How could I do that? I was a woman, after all. And I had betrayed woman kind.
Call me gender blind, if you will, but I had to think about that. It never occurred to me to go searching for a woman if there was a well recommended man who could do an excellent job. It also occurred to me that this particular man might not have noticed that I was a woman. Assorted body parts were covered up with a sheet, while he worked on my tender muscles four square inches at a time,
To say that he was indifferent to my gender would be to understate the the case. He was so impersonal as to be almost chilling. But he was good at his job; that's why I was there. He could have been a homunculus for all I cared.
Unlike other women who marched on Washington for equal rights, burned bras, and stopped shaving their legs to make a statement, I have always just taken my positions with me into the voting booth. But there are times when women who have been called strident, unpleasant loudmouths do us all a favor. So today, apropos of a recent article, I'd like to say thank you to one of those women.
A former newspaper reporter, Jennifer Weiner is the author of "Good in Bed," "In Her Shoes," and a new novel, "The Next Best Thing." This spring, her eleventh novel in thirteen years, "All Fall Down," is to be published. But for all her success, she has a grievance. Perhaps because of this success she can afford to complain. For her efforts, she has been called "strident," as well as a "whiner," as her surname is pronounced.
The gist of her grievance is the disproportionate attention given to male over female writers of fiction. She maintains that there is a bias against female writers. Thousands of writers in her positon would only be grateful, as no fewer than seven pages of a recent edition of The New Yorker were devoted to her and the source of her discontent. The photo of her, mouth open wide enough to swallow the little dog that she is holding, pretty much says it all.
The article itself is enormous fun to read--Weiner is nothing if not hilarious--but as you laugh, you feel the slight she thinks that she and other women writers have been given. Why hasn't she ever been reviewed in The New York Times? Her books have sold more than four and a half million copies. One of them, "In Her Shoes," was made into a romantic comedy in 2005, starring Toni Colette and Carmen Diaz.
I happen to love her books. I find them funny, poignant, and true. The success of any book, whether it's a heavy weight literary fiction, or one disparagingly described as "chic-lit," is how it resonates with the reader. Any woman who has a gorgeous sister can relate to "In Her Shoes."
It helped that my sister was older than I was by nearly four years. It was expected that, at a certain age, she would have breasts, whereas I would, as yet, have none. By the time one is eighteen, however, that expectation would normally change.
Ditto for the long, dark eyelashes. I loved to hear that she was jealous of me. My mother confided to me that my sister took a pair of scissors when I was a baby and cut my eyelashes. Years later, apart from being locked into a hostile dependency on Clinique eye products, I enjoyed knowing that she had some vulnerability. Even if, in my dreams, were the lashes of a llama.
It has been said by other writers, some men, including Jonathan Franzen ("Freedom"), that Weiner's outrage is borne of publicity, that she engages in self-promotion. Her response at the time, in true Weiner style, was to change her Twitter bio to "Engaging in Jennifer Weiner-ish Self Promotion."
Even in the smallest of revolutions, things change. The New York Times Book Review, for example, now has a woman editor, one who is reportedly "woman friendly." Weiner does not take credit for that change or others. "No one," she says, "has sent her a thank-you note." But she does, admittedly, take satisfaction in them.
And so can we.
Well...maybe "Carthaginian" might have been a little stuffy. All I really meant to say was that no blood had been spilled.
I have to come clean and admit that I was one who did not think that recipes belonged in our book. How many people were going to stash their e-reader on the kitchen shelf for easy reference? I mean, Heartburn doubled as an actual cookbook. When you weren't laughing at the story, you could cry, and Mashed Potatoes for One is the perfect dish for a lonely heart.
Having said that, I like Anon #1's recipe for Chicken Sicilian. I cannot help pointing out, however, that it calls for a half-cup of unsalted capers. Even unsalted, Nora Ephron would not touch a caper, going so far as to mention the fact in her screenplay for the movie, "My Blue Heaven," starring Steve Martin as a member of the mob in the Witness Protection Program.
Anything that tastes good with capers in it, she once said, would invariably taste better without. I agree. So I'd leave them out of my Chicken Sicilian. But they might work in Tuna Carthaginian, with a nice bottle of Beaujolais and a little blood.
__Anon.#2
Anonymous #1 has been waiting in the wings with her recipe, which was to be included in our book, and which was vetoed. She's still smarting, so be on the look- out for a little attitude.
Carthaginian? What does that even mean? I had to look it up and I still don’t know. Just one example of the different styles we had to mesh. For example, I would never use Carthaginian. And Anon #3 with the Chick-lit Man. Naked or clothed. What was she thinking? The Chick-lit man as I recall, was to morph into our handsome hero. But what a stretch! Thank God I was able to, as you put it, fire him.
I don’t mean to carp, Anon #2, but I still think we should have kept the recipes. It worked for Nora Ephron in Heartburn. I’m not blaming you. I honestly don’t remember who lobbied to cut them, but everyone else agreed, except me, Anon #1, whose brilliant idea it was. And out they went.
I mean, I am one of the few people in the world outside his family, or perhaps the Family, who had the recipes developed by Cous, chef to the Philly Mafia, the real deal. Author of Angelo Bruno’s last supper. Remember his South Philly restaurant, Cous’ Little Italy?
Maybe his most famous was Chicken Sicilian. After customers went crazy for it, the dish popped up on the menu of every home-style Italian restaurant in the city. It was major plagiarism, but Cous just shrugged. Whattayagonna do?
OK, OK, fans of She’s So the One! Here it is:
Chicken Sicilian (serves four)
4 boneless breasts of chicken [skinless]
8 hot cherry peppers, cleaned and cut in half
½ medium size onion-sliced
1 cup cooked mushrooms
Salt to taste
White pepper to taste
¼ tsp. paprika
¼ tsp. oregano
¼ tsp garlic powder
2 oz oil
½ cup unsalted capers
½ cup dried black olives
¾ cup butter
Cut chicken into bite sized chunks and sauté in the oil, adding peppers and onions. When glazed or chicken is done, remove from heat. Discard all grease. Return to low heat and add all seasoning, olives, capers and mushrooms. Melt butter over all, until creamy. If butter separates, add 1 tbs of water and blend well.
This is written just as Cous gave it to me. I also have Sausage Genovese. (That was our little Angel’s fave. Why-oh-why did we cut it?) I’ve got his Vegetable Soup, Pork Chops with Mushrooms and Peppers and his Spaghetti, Oil, Garlic and Spinach.
And Tuna Carthaginian.
If, I ever thought that once our book was written, we'd all congratulate ourselves on a job well done and live happily ever after, I was wrong.
Having spirited, that is not to say, Carthaginian, disagreements was to be expected when four people with very disparate personalities are trying to focus on a single project. Most of them were resolved, but that does not mean that everyone was happy.
Even the title was in dispute for years, practically right up until you could buy the book on Amazon. The title I liked best was a spin-off of an old book, Naked Came the Stranger, published in 1969 by "Penelope Ashe." A satire poking fun of American culture, it was touted as the "Dirtiest Book Ever Written by a Group of Newspaper Guys." The newspaper was Newsday, and "Penelope Ashe" turned out to be 25 guys. I was very young at the time, but old enough to read. What I remember mostly was that ice cubes were used in a provocative fashion.
Our book was going to be called, Naked Came the Chick-lit Man. There was a naked man, and he was quite attractive to be sure, but the last we saw him in print (if not in the flesh), he was supplying a vending machine with Chiclets. I have no idea why he was fired from the script, but maybe one of the Anonymouses can fill you in. And who knows? We may see him again. For having finished the story, we are not in complete agreement about the blog.
Stay tuned.
It looks as though Anonymous #1 is traveling, so we'll have to wait on the recipe blog. In the meantime, Anonymous #2 never reported on a former life, that is, what she did before she contributed to our book.
This is excellent timing, Belle, because only this morning, I read an essay, "Repercussions," in The New York Times Magazine by Teddy Wayne, author of "The Love Song of Johnny Valentine."
It wasn't just that he was an indifferent student in high school; he was, as he put it, "an ambitious slacker" who aggressively squandered his potential. There must be thousands of readers who might identify with his feelings. I am one.
Very early in my life, I decided that I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to see how things worked inside the body. Lacking a cadaver, I went to work on a mole that my father had trapped in our yard. I borrowed, which is to say, I took, my mother's manicure scissors, and set off with my mole into the woods.
It occurred to me, as I placed him belly up on a log, and began cutting into him from end to end, that he had been dead for a while. He was more than a little stiff. When I was about half way down his body, the rings of the scissors making deep gauges in my fingers, I noticed his teeth. They were like tiny white bits of rice, ringed in red. I stared at these teeth, in their small, even row within the dark, down turned mouth and imagined that he was crying.
Feeling suddenly shaky, I shot up from my perch on the log, grabbed the mole and hurled it deeper in the woods. That should have ended my medical aspirations forever. It should have; but it didn't, not quite.
Years later, "studying"--using the word in its loosest possible terms-- experimental psychology, I ordered a dozen hamsters for the psychology lab. The plan was to determine the effects of drugs on the socialization of hamsters. I don't remember the names of the drugs or where they came from. What I do remember is that I received a notice in my mailbox that the hamsters had arrived. Would I please come to the lab and begin conducting the experiment?
It was January. The ground was covered in ice and snow. I put off traversing the frozen tundra to meet my hamsters. I put off meeting them for quite some time until, actually, there were very few of them left. And those that were still there were enormous. No one had mentioned that hamsters were cannibalistic. I, of course, had not bothered to find out.
Fudging piles of fake statistical data on a dozen rodents, two-thirds of which were non-existent, was a lot of work in one night, and could be construed as punishment enough. And perhaps it was, because, after all, I've never forgotten it.
I've never forgotten any of it. Even the mole still lives within me, as well as the nail scissors, which my mother found inexplicably sticky. What kind of surgeon doesn't boil her instruments?
Indeed. What kind? So that door closed on me forever--and fortunately for future patients.
It's always sad, on the brink of a brand new year, to read about those the world has lost. Even if we didn't know them, or even heard of them, it's the sudden silence, knowing that they've left the earth forever, that gives us pause.
But this year, I just had to smile at the cover of the New York Times Magazine, on December 29th, the last Sunday edition of 2013. There, in all its silver glory, was the Cadillac convertible, a "beat up, busted old bucket of bolts" that James Gandolfini bought from one of the guys who worked on "The Sopranos."
According to the article, "The Lives they Lived and the Things they Loved," the Cadillac was one of Gandolfini's favorite possessions. When he bought it, the top wouldn't go up. So Gandolfini said he'd just take it as it was. Isn't that exactly what a "Waste Management Executive" like Tony Soprano would do--except possibly to blow the guy away before he drove off?
Well, the mourning has passed; I've removed my black arm band. But I loved "The Sopranos," every episode. Apart from the stories themselves, I loved the way those people ate. So it was a moment of true joy when I saw that there was a cookbook, "The Sopranos Family Cookbook," compiled by "Artie Bucco." Remember him? He owned the family restaurant, always in financial trouble, that was frequented by the Sopranos.
There are excellent recipes from the whole cast, and rave comments, like this one, by "Bobby Baccale," "If I couldn't eat it, I'd f**-ing die."
None other than "Dr. Jennifer Melfi" has contributed an excerpt from a paper titled, "Rage, Guilt, Loneliness and Food."
The cookbook also includes photos of the cast, as well as a news clipping of a fire with the headline, "A Fire Destroys Famed Eatery. 'A heartbreak,' says owner. "Arson not ruled out."
Even "Uncle Junior," has agreed to an interview. He says that he grew up in Newark. "What was it like?" he says. "I'll tell you what it was like. It was Valhallla, it was the Golden Age of Life. My brother, Johnny, and I had what you'd call Carte Blanche, we'd go anywhere, do anything and we had a great time. We'd steal garlic from the vegetable peddler on the street and throw them at people we didn't like."
Not incidentally, the mob features somewhat in "She's So the One! " and including recipes was one of the original ideas. There were a few in the beginning, but after a heated discussion among my creators, they were eliminated. I had an opinion about this, but I was just listening in. Eating is one of my favorite activities, and yet, I didn't want to have recipes. One of the writers strongly disagreed. But she can speak for herself.
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