THE WRITING LIFE: A Recipe for Failure

Pat Conroy. Remember him? (I ask myself). Author of some pretty okay books: THE WATER IS WIDE, THE GREAT SANTINI, THE PRINCE OF TIDES, BEACH MUSIC, MY LOSING SEASON…and, just published, THE PAT CONROY COOKBOOK.

The what?

I study the ad I have stumbled across in a magazine, very late at night, actually, early the next morning. I am almost asleep but feel my blood beginning to boil in anger, mixed with two tablespoons of despair. Should I continue? Why do this to myself. Conroy’s looking right at me from the ad…a baseball cap on a bowling ball…looking mighty round-faced and thick these days. Comfortable.
“Let the incomparable Pat Conroy Guide you through 100 of his favorite recipes from the South and beyond. Along the way, savor marvelous stories of the people, places and meals he’s enjoyed all over the world. And delight in the presence of a man who write, cooks, and lives passionately.”

I hate the South.

Crab Cakes

• 1 pound lump crabmeat, picked over and cleaned, with all shell fragments removed
• 1 egg white, lightly beaten (until just foamy, not stiff)
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons finely snipped fresh chives
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 2 teaspoons coarse or kosher salt
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 2 teaspoons peanut oil
• Lemon wedges

1. Place the cleaned crabmeat in a medium mixing bowl. Pour the egg white over crabmeat slowly, stopping occasionally to mix it through. When the crabmeat has absorbed the egg white and feels slightly sticky to the touch, sift the flour over crabmeat and sprinkle the chives, black pepper, cayenne, and 1 teaspoon of the salt evenly over the top. Lift the crabmeat from the bottom of the bowl, turning it over gently, to mix the ingredients without overhandling.

2. Separate the crabmeat into 8 equal portions and gently roll each between the flattened palms of your hands to form loose balls. Flatten slightly and transfer to a plate. Sprinkle both sides liberally with the remaining 1 teaspoon salt and refrigerate for at least 1 hour before cooking.

3. Line a baking pan with paper towels. Fry the crab cakes in two batches to ensure a crisp crust. Using a small (8-inch) heavy skillet that conducts heat well, melt half the butter and oil together until the mixture is foamy and begins to brown. Carefully place the crab cakes in the hot fat and fry until a crust forms, turning only once, about 2 minutes per side. (The fat should be sizzling hot, enabling a crisp crust to form before the crab absorbs the cooking fat. This is the Southern secret to perfect crab cakes.) A small pastry spatula (with a thin tongue) will make lifting and turning the delicate crab cakes a lot easier. Remove the crab cakes and drain in the prepared pan. Cover loosely with aluminum foil to keep warm while you make the second batch.

4. Carefully pour off the cooking fat from the first batch, wipe out the pan, and return it to the heat. Prepare the second batch of crab cakes using the remaining butter and oil.

5. Serve hot with lemon wedges. Makes 8
And there it is, “A Recipe for Crab Cakes” from: THE PAT CONROY COOKBOOK (Recipes of My Life), another American writer bites the dust; succumbs to the great god Mammon; listens to a stupid agent, editor, publisher: rolls the dice. (Daddy needs a new BMW).

I hate to see a good writer go bad.

God knows there are times the devils of Sell-Out won’t let a man go. And times to hold on to every ounce of integrity a writer hopefully still possesses and ‘do the right thing’ as they say. Write the right thing. Write what you know you must write. Forget the market place.

Dustin Hoffman said in an interview the other night: “I was always prepared for failure.” (And then “The Graduate” came along.) In the arts, to keep that edge, I suspect it’s best to be always prepared for failure.

There are all kinds of ways for a writer to say…slow down. Tread water. Bid farewell. Admit the best,
which was yet to come, probably won’t.

But one of the worst: To write a goddam cookbook.

Think of the honorable Bob Dole peddling Viagra. Or June Allyson pushing Depends. How low can you go to make a buck-especially when you probably don’t really need it? Or you screwed up your life so much you can’t afford not to lower your own standards? Less is less. More is more.

This is akin to the twilight zone of the once famous comedian playing strip joints in his golden years; the once, nationally acclaimed folk singer strumming; his guitar in bucket-a-blood bars; the sports figure selling auto mufflers.

Better to attempt to keep on truckin’, do what you do best, try for better even if you fail, than lower oneself to a coffee table-type pot-boiling cookbook for…? Well, reasons pretty self-explanatory.

Granted there are good writers with solid literary credentials, writing strong prose about food and the art of cooking, raising it all to a level of art. Jim Harrison, a most potent American poet, novelist, essayist comes immediately to mind. He sets a big table, should you wander into his literary kitchen sometime. A Zen Master of the hungry soul. One part Takahashi; one part Rabelais:

“The idea is to eat well and not die from it-for the simple reason that that would be the end of your eating,” writes Harrison…”Small portions are for smallish and inactive people…Life is too short for me to approach a meal with the mincing steps of a Japanese prostitute.” Now there’s an appetizer one swallow whole/ (From, THE RAW AND THE COOKED: Adventures of A Roving Gourmand. Harrison’s latest.)

Or take the late M.F.K. Fisher (“poet of the appetites,” says Updike), who wrote a whole shelf of great works on the art of eating with reverence, style, and dollops of insight to soothe the savage stomach in us all. Among them: THE GASTRONOMICAL ME, I WAS REALLY VERY HUNGRY, HOW TO COOK A WOLF, not to mention her classic, THE ART OF EATING, a new 50th anniversary edition just recently in print..

What separates the artful writers of food from writers writing just another cookbook (for Christmas sales?) are lines like these from M.F.K. Fisher:

“When I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and then it is all one.”

“Family dinners are more often than not an ordeal of nervous indigestion, preceded by hidden resentment and ennui and accompanied by psychosomatic jitters.”

“In general I think human beings are happiest at the table when they are very young, very much in love, or very alone.”

Chew on that awhile.

What it finally boils down to is this: Did Chekhov ever write a cookbook? Did Emily Dickenson pen a collection of her favorite recipes? Bukowski certainly never got around to Coq Au Vin. It was just Coq Au everything or nothing.

And what about Old Hem?

Hemingway set the big table only once, on his own terms. A time (the Twenties) and place (Paris) to digest heartily, stick to the bones. One memorable meal to fill whatever emptiness one may fee, at anytime: A MOVEABLE FEAST.

Which is not so much about food as an appetite for life.

“Hunger was good discipline,” he wrote.