Keith Miller
Zen Koans & Blood Sausages
Dirt: Adventures in French Cooking
By Bill Buford
Jonathan Cape 432pp £18.99
Dirt is Bill Buford’s second contribution to the swelling subgenre of middle-aged memoir in which a man or, less frequently, woman of letters endures a traumatic but ultimately rewarding apprenticeship in the fetid air of a restaurant kitchen. In the first instalment, Heat (2006), ‘good home cook’ Buford pulls a drastic career switcheroo, going from fiction editor at the New Yorker to ‘kitchen bitch’ of the hot-blooded Italian-American superchef Mario Batali. Cynics might say that what inspired Dirt was the drop in paperback sales of its predecessor after 2017, when Batali fell thumpingly from grace over an alleged series of sexual misdeeds. Certainly, one imagines that the prosecution team will have glanced at Heat, which is full of the kind of rampaging carnality, around both food and the body, that’s widely assumed to be a symptom of toxic masculinity, or masculinity full stop.
Dirt is a more autumnal affair (the epilogue is titled ‘Just About Everybody Dies’). Buford spends a ‘stage’ in the kitchen of Citronelle in Washington, DC, where chef Michel Richard has perfected a modern take on classical French cuisine. From there, via an entertaining imbroglio that sees him trying to
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Under its longest-serving editor, Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair was that rare thing – a New York society magazine that published serious journalism.
@PeterPeteryork looks at what Carter got right.
Peter York - Deluxe Editions
Peter York: Deluxe Editions - When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines by Graydon Carter
literaryreview.co.uk
Henry James returned to America in 1904 with three objectives: to see his brother William, to deliver a series of lectures on Balzac, and to gather material for a pair of books about modern America.
Peter Rose follows James out west.
Peter Rose - The Restless Analyst
Peter Rose: The Restless Analyst - Henry James Comes Home: Rediscovering America in the Gilded Age by Peter Brooks...
literaryreview.co.uk
Vladimir Putin served his apprenticeship in the KGB toward the end of the Cold War, a period during which Western societies were infiltrated by so-called 'illegals'.
Piers Brendon examines how the culture of Soviet spycraft shaped his thinking.
Piers Brendon - Tinker, Tailor, Sleeper, Troll
Piers Brendon: Tinker, Tailor, Sleeper, Troll - The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West by Shaun Walker
literaryreview.co.uk