Art, Steaks, and Free Books—UPDATE, extended, etc.
The Art Detective
by Philip Mould
Here's a perverse thing to note as a complaint, but I'll do it anyway: I got Steak and The Art Detective in the same padded envelope, and had a hard time choosing which to read first—not because neither looked or seemed compelling enough, but because they both did, almost too much so. Steak or art sleuthing? I chose to avoid a book that'd make me hungry and went the art route first.
In Mould's The Art Detective, the reader's guided through six works of art and their attendant stories. What sort of stories? How about, from the book's most riveting chapter, the story of a Norman Rockwell which ended up being a fake (the cover image, at least on the paperback, features the painting, and best of luck deciding whether it's the real or fake that's pictured [it's listed on the back as being owned by the Rockwell Family Agency—presumably it's the real one])? What ends up being fascinating about the story of that particular Rockwell painting, and why Mould ends up being the perfect guide, is that, at the heart of art authenticating (the british edition of this book was titled Sleuth!, let's not forget, and Mould's part of the Antique Roadshow crew) is a moment in which a master—a skilled appraiser, certainly, but someone who can operate with a level of gut and feel as well—looks at a painting and can, while looking at the whole, deduce that there are innapropriate or off aspects. Imagine this, for just a second: imagine being skilled enough at looking at art to be able to look at a painting and say, well, the hair shouldn't be like that, or that hat's clearly not correct. We do this, day to day, in our own lives: we look at our bathrooms and put things away—the brush back in the drawer, the floss in the cabinet—in a recognition of the rightness of certain things and where the should be placed, but can you imagine being able to look at a painting that way?
I couldn't, when I opened the book. Mould, of course, not only can but does, and the result is riveting. I'm now in my early 30′s, and I didn't give much of a shit about art writing until maybe two years ago, and now I find myself most excited at a new New Yorker if it's got some Schjeldahl pages in it. Meaning, I guess, that I've taken a shine to art writing in ways that are recent and, to me, still pretty unclear. Why's reading Schjeldahl so fun anyway? Because through his writing one can actually almost see the work he's describing, one can feel the textures and bigger designs at work. I'd argue Mould's just as adept a guide: the trickiest part of good art writing is making sure the reader's hand's firmly held as she's walked, with words, through the visual world, and you should absolutely know that Mould's as good as guide as one could hope for. Get The Art Detective.
I'll admit off the bat that, yes, I read Steak with increasing hunger, and maybe halfway through the book I finally broke down and bought a steak to eat as I was reading. You should know it's that sort of book, one which'll all but demand the reader take active part: I'd guess that, if you've got the means, you'll either purchase and eat a stake while you're reading the book or purchase and eat one immediately on finishing the thing. And how will that steak taste? Let's hold off on that for a second.
Schatzker's incredibly engaging writing about steak (I'd say his food writing, but the writing's not really about food at all: Steak is as much about the food made from dead cow as it is about the almost mystical aspects of this food [for any of you non-veggie folk who've been just over-the-moon hungry for steak and not known why, this is your book]), and you're best off knowing as you approach this book that it's not, at all, a book that's complemtary with Foer's Eating Animals or Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, or at least I didn't think it was at all. Maybe the best way to understand Steak is to think of it as something of a Platonic book, or a book which is hoping to, through its pages (and its author's travels), divine and/or describe the key aspects to great steak—and not just to describe great steak, but find a way to replicate the experience. Steak is about and for those of us who've had a tremendous steak at some point (anyone in NW Iowa: ARCHIE'S WAESIDE. Unbelievable), and who have, later, tried to repeat the experience only to be almost heart-breakingly let down.
I'm gonna take it as a given that you'll purchase and consume a piece of steak at some point while this book's in your life, and here's why it'll be hard: almost no matter what, the steak you eat while reading Steak will taste like total crap. It's true. It's not Schatzker's fault, at all: there's no better, hungrier, or more willing host to traverse the world of steak with, that I can imagine. But the dude loves steak, and describes it with such succulence you'll be sort of amazed the book doesn't emit vague whiffs of fat sizzling or charcoal smoldering, and you'll end up reading along and agreeing that there's quite a bit of beef which delivers that opening note of beefiness but is suddenly flat, tasteless (Schatzker, like many, argues strongly against factory cows [which in all likelihood will provide for the majority of steaks most of us'll ever eat, sadly]), and you will, like Schatzker, by the book's end wonder at just what it is that makes good steak good steak.
I think it's to Schatzker's credit that he doesn't find or provide any pat answer (because there is no pat answer). Grass-fed is not the silver bullet, nor is excess marbling (hey there Japan). Steak ends up, intentionally or not, being a very good crucible of a book to consider taste and food overall—meaning the book makes clear that there are many ways to horrifically f up a meal or piece of food but far fewer available means to guarantee, at a massive, ramped-up level, consistently amazing flavor (given certain palates: plenty of us are convinced of the deliciousness of Lucky Charms). It's a riveting, hunger-inducing read: let's everybody read it and search for deliciousness thereafter.
We've got a copy of each of these books to give away for free–please send an email to wlcutter[at]hotmail[dot]com by noon (central) on Friday, 20 May, and I'll draw a winner for each book then.
