LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Missing His Pellegrino
As a lover of all things baconesque—and yes, the writer too (“Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper”)—I appreciated the inclusion of the “Bacon Explosion” recipe in the last issue (“Claiming My Pork,” Spring 2009). A family of four, struggling to fill empty bellies and guard emptier wallets, could dine out on that meal for awhile. And I suppose making it a regular part of the menu would probably mean, at least for the older members, a dramatically increased likelihood of departing our wounded world much sooner that they otherwise might have expected, sparing them the depression of the Depression. Killing two birds with one pig. Or something.
But recipes aside, it was more your depiction of our empty department stores and darkening food courts that was evocative for me. We are often told, through our wisdom traditions and psychologists and philosophers, that material goods will never make us happy. Not truly, anyway. So now some great number of us get to test that assertion, to face the world and ourselves without the shield of a credit card, without recourse to the great mall temples. We will have to look elsewhere for that elusive happiness. While bacon may hold out some hope to a fortunate few, I suspect we are in for a wrenching, and probably wretched, transition. The “new thrift,” as it gets called, implies the desertion of all those products—and places—we once held so dear. Who am I if I can’t buy a bottle of Pellegrino mineral water? How do I make sense of a life without Saks in it?
Before the calm contentment of a life spent reading the classics kicks in, I expect to see, not riots in the streets, but more of the grief you observe—a shabbier, slower, haunted population staring blankly at the cashmere in the Michigan Avenue windows, a sweater that was once so close, now so far away. Holding onto their cups of plain black coffee, no insignias in sight. Or, cursed fate, just one cup, passed around . . . •
Michael DeWilde
Grand Rapids, Michigan
What We’re Reading
Great Books Foundation affiliated book groups and councils throughout the U.S. and Canada sponsor numerous events throughout the year (if you’re interested in participating, please see p. 63 for a listing). And from time to time, we like to take the pulse to find out what our extended community has recently read or is about to read in the near future.
Here is a brief sample (and mind you, it’s only a sample) culled from the publicity of various councils including the San Francisco Great Books Council, Wachs Great Books Summer Institute at Colby College, the Houston Great Books Council, the New England Great Books Council, and the Pocono Fall Institute sponsored by the Philadelphia Great Books Council.
Don’t hesitate to drop us a line or email if you want to tell us what your group is reading. We’re interested.
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace
John Dewey, Art as Experience
Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship
Patricia Hampl, Blue Arabesque
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce, Ulysses
Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried” and “On the Rainy River”
Grace Paley, The Collected Stories
Sophocles, Antigone
John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
Jerry Sterner, Other People’s Money
William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
H. G. Wells, The Time Machine
Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas •
