We Need Not

Illustration by Maira Kalman

By generous, happy accident I was reintroduced to Maira Kalman. If you don't know her, really, you must.

Oh My! Julie Powell, Skanky, Girl.

Photo by Carlo Allegri

In case, you haven't seen this yet:

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A Q&A with Julie Powell
By Jackie Burrell
Contra Costa Times

Posted: 12/09/2009 12:00:00 AM PST

One thing seems fairly clear: Amy Adams, who played the food blogger in last summer's breakout hit, "Julie & Julia," probably won't be donning a butcher's apron for Julie Powell's newest memoir.

Nor will anyone who devoured every last morsel of naive, witty adorability in Powell's first book that recounts the year she spent cooking all 524 recipes from Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," willi find the new book to be the polar opposite.

"Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession" is a tale of tortured wedlock, jaw-dropping adultery, unbelievable wine consumption, and more meat than you could ever imagine. Yes, there are recipes, but after reading about the metallic fragrance of freshly butchered, "custardy-smooth," burgundy-tinged livers, you may find yourself in the mood for a nice bowl of soy products.

But flying cartilage and sinew aside, the most brutal parts of the book outline Powell's two-year affair with D — an old flame from her college days with whom she cheated once before on her then-boyfriend Eric Powell. Fast forward to 2004 and "Julie & Julia" is soaring up the bestseller lists when D comes around again. What ensues is an affair that verges on obsession, even cruelty, including sexting and wee hours makeout sessions in her apartment, while Powell's husband, Eric, sleeps in the next room. That Eric quickly discovers the infidelity and has an affair of his own does not make any of it

Yet we're helpless to resist. We keep turning the pages and when Powell, who has made a career of baring her soul, offers to chat, we grab the phone.

Q: So what happened? You worried that people thought you were too adorable last time around?

A: People are reacting in all kinds of ways, very strongly. People who were invested in Eric's and my relationship in "Julie & Julia" — and then the movie was a sweetened version of that — it's unnerving. A lot of people saw the relationship as this paragon. It's not that it was a lie, but I wrote it at this period where I was very naive and I thought marriage was a pretty little box with a bow. Marriage is incredibly difficult and the people in it change. I wanted to honor that. Both of us — primarily me — have made some really terrible choices.

Q: Eric and Damian know they're in the book, right? With... everything?

A: Eric and I are together now. He's not tripping through the roses (about the book), but we talked a long time about this, did counseling. I could never have published it without his blessing. I've exposed our life in a way that's not comfortable for both of us, but he's been extraordinarily supportive. D had to sign off on it. He read the manuscript. I don't know that I'd say he's on board. I haven't spoken to him in a great while.

Q: So in the midst of this crisis, you decided to do ... a butchering apprenticeship?

A: I've been fascinated by butchers for a really long time. I grew up in Texas, where all the meat I bought was from a supermarket, wrapped in cellophane. I discovered these old world New York butcher shops and these guys who had been doing this work for decades. They'd learned from their fathers. I was envious of that innate skill. One facet of my personality is, when I'm in crisis, I seek a project. I needed a haven of sorts, and this idea of spending all this time in a shop with guys who didn't know me or anything about me, it felt like an escape.

Q: But big macho butchers? Flying meat?

A: There's this stereotype of butchers. They're big macho guys, no question, but what I found was how delicate the work is, how meditative — 85 percent of butchery you can do with the tip end of a boning knife. There's a sort of road map with everything, how muscles are supposed to come apart, that tiny crevice between the cup and ball of the joint. There's this rote aspect and yet you still have to concentrate your mind and body on what you're doing. It became this way to work through this crisis.

Q: OK, so you leave your butcher apprenticeship and instead of going home to Eric, you head off on a Grand Meat Tour of Argentina, Tanzania ... and the Ukraine??

A: It was a little random, I'll grant you. Argentina makes sense — it's a great meat culture, also a good first country to visit alone. I'd always wanted to visit the Carpathian Mountains. Tanzania? The people who live there, the Masai, their entire identity as a culture revolves around the animals they raise. And the bleeding of the cow —

(A pause, while we reread the description of Masai tribesmen piercing a cow's jugular vein so everyone can drink.)

— It's so primal and so central to their tribe. It's the sole reason I went.

Q: Does Amy Adams have any idea what's in store for her?

A: I have this little fantasy. In this alternative reality, Amy Adams is going to be forced to play Julie Powell in all her guises. I don't think we're going to see a Nora Ephron movie of this one. I haven't even sent (the book) to Nora Ephron. I'm terrified she'll explode.
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"What had they been doing all those years?"

This was our 180 degree view at Bodega Bay for our girls' weekend earlier this month.



Notice the lack of fog.



We timed the wildflowers perfectly. That's Point Reyes at the far left point.



Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

"The rest of them said, no, they didn't play. People began recounting stories of a couple of lessons or the lessons of their children. It seem to Gen (and he included himself in this assessment) that never had a more uncultured group of men been taken hostage. What had they been doing all these years that no one had bothered with such an important instrument? They all wished they could play, if not before then, certainly now."

There was no piano playing in Bodega and very little longing for anything more than being.

"I'll take two, please."

Today, I wish I had checked out two books.

Hail Andrew Carnegie & Al Gore?

Despite a fever I dragged myself to the library this afternoon to return Carlos Fuentes and picked up my next read being held for me at the library. I slid The Years of Laura Diaz into the return conveyor belt and walked to the books awaiting special-order to pick up mine, Revolutionary Road, in the number-three slot.

It's moments like these I like my newish name. While I constantly bemoan the fact this simple five-letter name is mispronounced eighty percent of the time, "Even in Mexico," Jeff sighed on our trip, I do have the pleasure of finding my book at the top of the heap by virtue of the first two letters Ac. So easy, I relished--like a personal service. Walking to the electronic checkout, I slid my card under the bar-code reader, scanned my book and walked across the courtyard admiring a new paperback while I thought, "Isn't this amazing?! I can come to this library and they'll lend me any book I want for free."

It took me a long time to love the library. In my 20s and half of my 30s, I bought every book I read and I read a lot of books. I had the idea that I needed to own every book I read because they were like friends that I wanted around to comfort me and remind me of good times. But I'm not sure they did, and I also wanted a bigger savings account.

Manolo Blahnik wasn't my problem; I had a problem with Penguin. So I went searching for my Manolo Blahnik's at Goodwill or Know Knew Books in Palo Alto. But one day I realized I my bookshelves were outgrowing my wall space and my piled-high books were seriously impinging on my idea of zen living. Expanding my idea of "my" and "mine," I decided that I could think of the used book store as my bookshelf outside my home. I would sell my books to the used book store and if I ever needed them again, I could buy them back. It seemed like a good idea until Know Knew Books closed its doors and I felt the loss of my books.

I had a hard time adjusting, just as I've had a hard time adjusting to life in Cupertino. But there are two things I like about my new home: easy access to the foothills for hiking and the beautiful new library about a mile from my house.



As a lover of beauty, it might be that this aesthetically pleasing place started my gradual love affair with the library. I started slow. If the book was available immediately, I'd check it out; if not, I'd hand over the plastic. When I wanted to read The Glass Castle a few years ago, there were something like 35 requests for the book and that seemed like a ridiculously long time to wait. The first time I decided to "get in line" for a request, I doubted I'd wait. But to my surprise, being number 35 was no big deal. Within two to three weeks, I had an email that my book was waiting for me. I put aside the book I was reading, collected at Ac, and started my "hot" new book.

The most challenging library check out is the 1-week-only book. I can read a book in a week, but I don't like the beat-the-clock pressure. I usually divide the number of pages by seven days and give myself daily goals. Fortunately, there aren't too many of those books for me.

Before I learned to love the library, I regularly mounted up sky-high library fees on a single book. I didn't know how to check out a single book. A trip to the library meant checking out a dozen books. Why? Maybe I was on some left over Pavlovian response from by childhood days of checking out picture books. Checking out one book is a great discipline, because despite my burgeoning list of books to read, I never know what I'll want to read next until I've finished my last read.

In the old days, my library fees grew in response to my laziness to drive to the library to renew a book. Who wants to go to the library to get the book you already have? Thankfully the Internet has saved me that hassle. Renew? Log on from home and renew. Search for a book? Request a book? Log on from home. To make it even easier, I have my library card number printed out on a label and pasted under the screen on my laptop.

Finally, I have to give credit to Shelfari for helping me let go of my book buying obsession, which I know, is the opposite of their business model. They give me a beautiful, virtual bookshelf like a kids' bookshelf where I can see all the covers. I like that I can write a review as notes to myself to remember what I like including favorite passages as if I'm underlining my personal copy.

When I worked for a nonprofit that believed in helping children build libraries of their own and gave away books in addition to tutoring lessons, it made me wonder if school age kids reading chapter books really need these libraries? Is having a personal library a part of our consumer culture? And what's my responsibility to support writers who need to make a living and sell their books?

These days my criteria for buying a book is wanting it as a reference. At Christmas, I spent a book gift certificate on Alice Waters, The Art of Simple Food. For my birthday, I asked for Steinbeck's East of Eden because I thought I'd want to read it again and again. I'm not sure I needed the latter. It's at the library and waits for me anytime I want. Why do I need my own copy?