Discussing our latest read, The Dangerous World of Butterflies, which turned out not to be so dangerous after all.

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=philip+roth+indignation&emb=0&aq=f#

Cooking Dirty by Jason Sheehan

But then we moved to downtown, the small epicenter of the Denver nightlife and culinary scene. I needed a guide. I found Jason Sheehan in Westword, the foul-mouth critic who can run on a thousand words before you even know what he is reviewing, if he liked it, or if he would prefer to eat pork rinds out of a dirty ashtray instead. But his long, manic riffs on hamburgers and green chili are oddly engaging, often turning on the salivating waterworks in my mouth.  I imagined him as a fat — after all, the guy seems to put away several meals and appetizers at one sitting — and loud Irishman, quick to drink and quarrel, a lusty foodie (a term he actually abhors) who once did a few turns in the kitchen himself, so he knew a thing or two about it.

It turns out he’s not really fat. But in his book “Cooking Dirty: A story of life, sex, love and death in the kitchen,” Sheehan reveals himself as a hard-living, hard-drinking, hard-driving chef in a memoir that reads like a Jack Kerouac story if the Beat writer had been a short-order cook in a combat zone, where frying pans are mortars and howitzers and the dregs of society have been recruited to fry eggs and burn toast. Sheehan boasts serving in about 30 kitchens over about 10 years or so — though the timeline is a little vague, scattered, like the novel “Dispatches” that he references in his own story, a book about the Vietnam war that many consider to have best captured the fragmented, hallucinatory experience of that brutal jungle warfare.

Indeed, the war analogy is a thread throughout the book. He even calls those not in the industry “civilians.” It’s a device he often uses in his reviews, and always seemed a little spurious to me until reading his book and seeing the insanely violent way these people — almost all men — allow themselves to be brutalized. Grease burns and chopped fingers, blitzed on cheap wines and weed, standing on their feet for 12-, 14-, 16-hour shifts, feeding waves of hungry people — the enemy — holding the line, barely acknowledging when someone would pass out in the Dante-Inferno-heat of the kitchen.

The story is fast paced. There’s lots of drugs and alcohol and general abuse of the senses that also beg comparisons to Hunter Thompson. There’s a woman, of course. And lots of stories about the good kitchens and the bad, the freaks and criminals that he calls his friends and family. The Life, as he writes, provided an instant ticket to excess and camaraderie, the tale romanticized and nostalgic to the point that I even thought it would be cool to live The Life. Until I realized it would probably kill me within a week.

My only quibble with the book is how often Sheehan pounds out the chaos, blood and fire in the kitchen. After a while, you want to say, “I get it. It’s trench warfare. You’re gastro warriors in an epic battle that you’ll always lose in the end.” I want to learn more about how he went from a cooking dervish to a writing whirlwind, but that story unfolds in only the last few pages, as if what he’s really ashamed of is the respectability and steady paycheck he started collecting seven years ago as a full-time writer.

All speculation, of course. He may just be saving that for the second course. And I’d definitely go back for seconds.

Links to the books on Amazon:

Rushdie

Roth

O’Neill

All fiction books. The first two authors we’re probably all familiar with, but I never heard of the last guy. Apparently it was one of the big books of 2008 (even Pres. Obama mentioned he was reading it).

The worst, however, were the professionals, those stocking their used book stores. These people carried Palm Pilots with an additional device that they used to scan the barcodes on books. They had downloaded the entire Amazon database, so immediately knew which books were valuable and which were not. Most were at least courteous if annoying by their need to handle every book on the table, though a few were manic, rushing through the crowd — packed tighter than a mosh pit — pulling boxes from under the tables and generally making everyone in their path miserable.

I only lasted an hour before giving up, leaving with only six books. The most interesting score was a 1900 edition of Chinese and Arabian literature. Also picked up a Guide to Middle Earth (never know when that will come in handy), a paperback history of the Denver Post and the city, a poetry book, a botany dictionary, and a 2005 Best of Science and Nature Writing. Total cost: $10 — and my faith in humanity.

Here’s the info from the Denver Public Library events page:

34th Annual Used Book Sale

After the sunny success of our 2008 event, the 2009 Used Book Sale will again be held outside on the lawn at 14th Avenue and Broadway. And, we’re adding an extra day this year, so you’ll have all the time you need to find those special treasures.

Friday, June 12, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Saturday, June 13, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Sunday, June 14, 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.

The Fish Can Sing by Halldor Lackness (Cori)

In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje (Alisa)

Indignation by Philip Roth (Peter)

Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Andrea)

What is the What by Dave Eggers (Henry)

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon (Andrea)

Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel (Peter)

The Billionaire’s Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace (Peter)

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman (Henry)

Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell (Cori)

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson (Cori)

The Rescue Artist by Edward Dolnick (Alisa)

The Big Year by Mark Obmascik (Alisa)

We’re a small group of literary minded folk who enjoy a drink or three while discussing good literature. I had just been thinking of the left-leaning politico group, Drinking Liberally, when the name came to me in an epiphany of Samuel Adams lager. A good name deserves a Web site or blog or something, we thought, so here it is … a place for our members to post book suggestions, critiques, book lists or ponder and piddle around. And maybe this could serve as a way for us to join the book club community at large — assuming anyone but the five of us actually reads it.