From Karl May to Lloyd Price: Six Degrees of Internet Separation (or Just Five)

After my recent successful zero hits Google search [which, of course, now yields three hits, all to my blog posting], I was stunned to find that another random thought process which led me from "Karl May" to "Lloyd Price" was hugely unsuccessful, with a resounding "About 1,060 results." But given the popularity of Karl May books and movies in Germany and of Lloyd Price songs, I guess it should not be a surprise, especially since almost all of these Google hits are to sellers or resellers of CDs, DVDs, etc. [The only "substantive" hit I came across was a pairing of February 25: Karl May's birthday in 1842, and Lloyd Price being Number 1 on the U.S. singles chart in 1959 with Stagger Lee.]

But, how did I come to connect these two contributors to popular culture? What were my six steps?

Step 1: The New Yorker issue of April 9, 2012 and the article--"Why Karl May captivates Germany" by Rivka Galchen. In writing about how cowboys and Indians so captivate Germany, she refers to Karl May "whom most Americans have never heard of but whose stories of the American West are to this day better known to Germans than the works of Thomas Mann." Well, I am one of those Americans who have both heard of him and read at least one of his books (in translation). I was introduced to Karl May (and to the proper "pronounced 'my'" as Galchen writes) by my father, who was born in Germany in 1914, had grown up in a Karl May culture, but I cannot remember when, or in what context, but clearly many years ago.

Step 2: I tell my wife about the article and she jokes about how urbane I am. Well, I object and say, in any case, since I heard it from my father, his association with it could not be considered urbane. And, while my Internet wandering did not start there yet, I do believe that the Free Dictionary definition would bear me out--familiarity with Karl May--particularly in Germany--could not be considered "Polite, refined, and often elegant in manner."

Step 3: I make a joke. So in bantering about the urbane, I start singing a song about how "I got urbanality" to the tune of a song I could not remember the real words to. So first Internet wondering was did I just invent "urbanality"? Well, quick answer (9,380 results) is an even more resounding NO! It appears in a lot of different guises, but I must admit my favorite are the urBANALity t-shirts.

Step 4: Margaret starts sings the real words "`cause you got personality/ Walk, personality/ Talk, Personality/ Smile, Personality/ Charm, personality/ Love, personality" which, of course, I have to check to see if she knows the real lyrics, which, of course, she does!

Step 5: Oops, I dissemble, it only took 5 degrees of separation to find out who wrote and sang "Personality" and we have Lloyd Price.

Food in Literature: Making it Real (Part I-A)

Not ready to head back into the trenches for Part II, but I came across a new blog which would have been a wonderful find when I wrote Food in Literature: Making it Real (Part I) that I had to at least make acknowledgement of it. In Yummy Books, Chef Cara draws on the "connection between eating and reading" that she has always had along with her feeling that "some of the most romantic, most poignant scenes in literature are scenes of cooking and eating" to create blog posts about food scenes and building recipes and photo essays about making those recipes.

Thus, one can find, among other things, "Miss Havisham’s Toasted Almond Cherry Bride Cake" complete with "speckled-legged spiders with blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it" and Marcel Proust's "Swann's Ways Madeleines."

Update: November 2012: See "Fictional Foods: No Empty Calories" from Wall St. Journal.

Food in Literature: Making it Real (Part I)

The search begins because of our plan to have a "literary" theme to our neighborhood gourmet club when it is our turn to host. While my only immediate connection to this goes back many years to my reading the Nero Wolfe novels by Rex Stout, our idea would not be focused on just one author, so my Internet wandering begins by wondering how to find more recipes from novels.

My first effort was for "literary recipes". This led me to a series of books which does NOT interest me: cookbooks "inspired" by literature. Thus, one can find Literary Feasts: Recipes from the Classics of Literature by Barbara Scrafford, which "explores the significance of food in literature" by putting together recipes that will replicate a famous meal from a book, The Book Lover's Cookbook: Recipes Inspired by Celebrated Works of Literature, and the Passages That Feature Themby Shaunda Kennedy Wenger and Janet Jensen (Author), Literary Feasts: Inspired Eating from Classic Fictionby Sean Brand, and The Book Club Cookbookby Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp, which "guides readers in selecting and preparing culinary masterpieces that tie in just right with the literary masterpieces their club is reading".

Before changing searches, however, I did make one interesting connection to an Abe Books blog posting on "Louisa May Alcott’s Apple Slump", which certainly seems to provide an example of what I was looking for. While it is just one lone recipe from one lone author, its inspiration was a new blog "Paper and Salt." But I got disappointed since that blog was a step back to my first search "recreating the favorite recipes of famous authors." Oh well.

Back to a new search. After a detour for Nero Wolfe recipes, which led me to the classic The Nero Wolfe Cookbookwhich I will consider acquring, I went for  "novels with recipes"

and that led me to an Epi-Log blog posting on "The Best Novels with Recipes (Or Novels with the Best Recipes)". At least someone is on the same wavelength, but no systematic effort here, but a source for a number of comments that clearly could be food for thought (ha-ha). But the next hit was  intellectual pay dirt, even if no the Holy Grail:

In the April 9, 2007, issue of The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik wrote about "Cooked Books: Real Food from Fictional Recipes". Here, following a debate that had been going on in TLS (guess that may need to be my next search!) he writes:

There are four kinds of food in books: food that is served by an author to characters who are not expected to taste it; food that is served by an author to characters in order to show who they are; food that an author cooks for characters in order to eat it with them; and, last (and most recent), food that an author cooks for characters but actually serves to the reader.

So, now I know--I have been finding some of the first two or three types, but what I want is type four. As Gopnik spells that one out in further detail: "And then there are writers, ever more numerous, who present on the page not just the result but the whole process—not just what people eat but how they make it, exactly how much garlic is chopped, and how, and when it is placed in the pan." And, he notes, that "Sometimes entire recipes are included in the text, a practice that links Kurt Vonnegut’s “Deadeye Dick” to Nora Ephron’s “Heartburn.” That, my friends, will be the Holy Grail--a collection of "entire recipes" served up "in the text" itself. Gopnik gives a taste of the path--as he tells us of his attempts "to mimic some cooking as it is done in a number of relatively recent novels"--but really just a taste, just enough to continue on ones quest.

But, that will be for another day ... this posting is already too much. So let us call this an appetizer. [I subsequently have written an addendum but have yet to develop a promised Part II!]