BIBLIOGRIND
The Life of a Wordsmith — Read … Live … Write
Archive for February, 2009
February 28, 2009 at 9:40 am · Filed under The Prague Blog
Just around the corner peak the noses, brows and red-red lips of several milestones: the completion of my novel, my first springtime in Prague, recalling that I’m actually 45 years old and not 44 (a midnight revelation), and watching the world’s economy plummet into irretrievable disaster. As long as the wine holds out, WHO CARES? So I’ve decided to highlight the good milestones while veiling the bad, and to do this I’m going to make Rabbit Stew.
If food and good drink are not both celebratory devices and escapist luxuries, then I’m not living life correctly. But I think I am.
I found a stew recipe at FxCuisine for Alpine Rabbit Stew, and its pictorial step-by-step has enticed me. So I need to take a trip to the market, where, not surprisingly, rabbit is usually available in the fresh meats section. If for some reason I can’t get a whole rabbit, then I’ll use the two rabbit breasts I bought the other day and make a rabbit & 2-bean soup.
Ah! My spirits are brightening already.
While a large portion of America doesn’t use rabbit in its diet, Europeans have dined on cottontails for probably all their existence. In the winter, rabbit are some of the easiest animals to hunt; all you need do is chase them through deep snow until they tire, or their hearts explode. Then into the pot they go!
Of course, bunny cuisine has become refined over the millenia, and you can find national-specialty dishes throughout the continent. In Malta, braised rabbit & garlic is the national dish, and I had many fine meals on Gozo and Malta. In Chamonix Valley, rabbit stew is a delectible dish rich with herbs provencal. The Czechs prefer rabbit & mustard sauce, where the recipe calls for the rabbit to be fried in lard before smothered in capers & mustard. (and No, I don’t wonder anymore why my students complain of having to take their ailing parents to the hospital for heart disease issues).
So I’ll be skipping the lard fry, and go straight to the Alpine recommendation of braising the pieces in the wine & herbs (with just a tad of bacon fat … a TAD). I must’n forget more wine, of course. And if I can scare up some teacher friends to make the trip out to Suchdol in this pre-BBQ phase of Suchdol life, I won’t eat alone. Otherwise … more rabbit for me!
February 16, 2009 at 5:48 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
The last few days have reminded me why I like winter. Snow has been in the air, with quick overnight dustings that melt away as the sun takes a peek on this little hill in Bohemia. But last night a real snow came down during the sleeping hours, and I walked out to crunch-step along the sidewalks.
City winters are rarely pretty for very long. About an hour or two after snowfall, all is touched by human smudge spots. When I lived in Chamonix, and then in rural Illinois, both places populated more with trees than people, winter was a presence to enjoy in sight, sound, smell, even touch and taste. I never wanted to be a farmer, but I’ve always liked the film “Jeremia Johnson” — the life of the mountain man, truly living from the land.
I recently finished reading T.C. Boyle’s “Drop City,” about a group of hippie in 1970 who move from southern Cal to the wilds of Alaska. The winter scenes were a masterful canvas for Boyle to give the truth of wild-life dangers: wolves, moose, wolverines, the cold, frozen days with -60F high temps, and six months of darkness.
I think I might like to try that for a year, but with ready access to a bush pilot’s weekly food/wine/DVD rental deliveries. Come on, you can’t expect a 21st-Century modern to so easily shed his conveniences.
February 15, 2009 at 1:22 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
I’m reading my novel from beginning to end … for the last time. It’s finished. It needs to be finished. Looking at the words are beginning to drive me crazy. Crazy.This last read is my chance to play with the language, add imagery and metaphor, if appropriate. To make the dialogue shimmer detail and possibility and character. I’ve already made lots of changes … little changes. This I expected. What I didn’t expect was how manic the process was to make me.
I’m at the upright desk, because now I need to pace. I tried sitting in a chair, but I’d need to be tied to the chair, or glued. This was supposed to be the time for happy resolution. Instead I am as doubtful as ever, a feeling that comes in waves, like the nausea of a newly minted drinker.
My consolation is that all the authors I respect (and so write for), go through this feeling during their last month with the manuscript. Philip Roth has doubts with every start and finish; Fitzgerald rewrote mightily all through publishers’ page proofs; Shakespeare rewrote lines for the stage on a given night, so we are to believe; Wilde cut one third of “The Importance of Being Earnest” in a few hours, and the producers loved it. These are my touchstones of sanity.
February 8, 2009 at 2:00 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
There is no dirth of books published in English available in CR. I need to pay for them, though. The cheapest are used books, naturally, but then there are the Penguin Classics, going for 85 Kc a copy (doesn’t matter if it’s “Hunchback of Notre Dame” – thick and weighty – or “The Heart of Darkness”– narrow and … telling of the human soul).I was off to a newly discovered (via web) used bookstore yesterday. If you know where you’re going in Prague, I mean know where you’re precise destination is precisely located, you’re one step ahead of insanity. If you have a map and generally good sense of direction, and are searching for an address in Prague, then GOOD LUCK! The twisting lanes and alley-ways of Old Town are nice to walk through if you’re looking to discover dramatic architecture, old-world charm, and get lost.
Antikvariat Kant is at Opatoviscká 26, vaguely off of Narodní, near the Vltava riverbank. I more-or-less circled it until I finally found the corner storefront, much like a dog looks for a place to safely dump, sniffing out the spot that makes him crouch, and finally … you know. But my objective was to feed, not deficate.
So there stood Antikvariat, the used bookstore advertised as “filled with English classics.” It’s now Saturday at 2 p.m.; I’ve got the proper amount of red wine coursing through my veins; I’ve not seen the sun but 3 times in the last 39 days; I’d been looking for a copy of Henry James’s “The Ambassadors” for a month; if I find a copy of Broch’s “The Sleepwalkers” I may just faint.
The bookstore is closed.
!#*$&(%!^#%@!
