David Pasternack: "The other quintessential Long Island fish"

This is, as far as I can recall, only the second or third New Yorker food issue (culinary idolatry being a nascent addition to American faith / fetish), but it’s definitely my favorite so far. I have to know this is true when one of my least favorite NYer contributors (trailing really only Katha Pollit) writes an absolutely sterling profile of David Pasternack, of Esca.

I’ve eaten at Esca only twice, but both times with spectacular results, and the bar is by far the best place for an icy martini in about a 6 or 7 block radius. I don’t have the means to become a regular there, but I wish there were a few dozen more restaurants like it in Manhattan. Beyond being full of generally well put-together people who know how to act in public, it’s not a 'scene' restaurant in the least. The formidable wine program (200 selections or so) combines ambition (and often outright obscurity) with expert wine service. And though it’s part of a general trend towards eating raw fish, it was also the innovator, one of the first non-Japanese restaurants to include naked fish flesh on its menu. I’ve had the crudo platter that Singer describes, and at least a few years ago, before it garnered so many imitators, it was revelatory. The pink snapper with black lava salt was like a salty confection, a briny balancing act that you'd eat every day if you could afford it.

As I said, Marc Singer’s byline doesn’t typically fill my heart with anticipation, as I normally find his writerly persona rather spineless (evidenced here in his “Citing my journalistic priorities, I managed to steer clear of the heavy lifting” copout), but I enjoyed the swift pacing in which he demonstrated the dual importance of Pasternack the chef and Pasternack the fisherman; without making a big fuss about it, he illustrates that Pasternack is more rooted in his local environment (dare I say terroir?) and the origins of his raw materials than most chefs of his near-celebrity stature. That goes a long way towards explaining why each time I’ve visited, Esca always seems comfortably full.

Jack Handey should be Secretary of Ha-Ha

But you already knew that.

You say we are violent and barbaric, but has any one of you come up to my cage and extended his hand? Because, if he did, I would jerk it off and eat it right in front of him. “Mmm, that’s good Martian,” I would say.

Grumpy Old Men

If I ever say this, or something like it, just smother me with a pillow. Seriously.

“I don’t go to concerts much,” he said. “I’ve heard everything. When I do go to movies, I walk out half the time. As for literature, I’ve read everything .. There’s nothing I look forward to,” Rorem said. “I’ve seen everything. It sounds blasé, but it’s true.”

Anthony Lane auditions for Andy Rooney's job

"Through a storm of bobbing heads, we watch Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Franz Ferdinan, and others--the cream of current bands, supposedly, although the uninitiated may wonder why most of the cream sounds like a cow giving birth in a wind tunnel."

Alternate title: Anthony Lane is the new W. for 10,000 hipsters.

Community Communications

Let me start by saying that George Saunders is a genius, a national treasure, a visionary, and my daddy. He's written some of the most beautiful, incandescent fiction I've read in the past few years, especially from 'Civil War Land in Bad Decline', the concluding story of which should be in the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction 2083 Edition. So I've had spectacularly high hopes for his two stories in the NYer this year, but neither of them has really connected with me.

'CommComm' is pure Saunders, to be sure; we're in a dysotopian, lightly-alternate universe where characters speak an odd jargon and refer to incidents like "The Night of the Latvians". Uncertainty and general not-knowing abound. It's a tricky thing to pull off, teasing the reader like this and refusing to disclose the full context, a trick for which Ishiguro and Murikami seem to have a special knack.

I need to read this story again, but the first time through, it struck me as a little disconnected, a little haphazard. But there's also a luminous closing passage, a feather-light limning of death which would make just about anything worth reading to get to this end.

"That is why I came back. I was wrong in life, limited, shrank everything down to my size, and yet, in the end, there was something light-craving within me, which sent me back, and saved me."

And one again I understand why George Saunders is the new icon, the new Raymond Carver, for scruffy young writers.

Rove: The Musical!

Hertzburg gets himself good and lathered up in the August 1st Comment, 'Roe vs. Rove'.


"As of last Monday, when Time and Newsweek hit the stands with Karl Rove on their covers, the elements were in place for a good old-fashioned seond-term White House scandal wallow."

Can't you just hear the joy, the blood-lust in his voice? Picture Abe Simpson appealing to his fellow parishoners "Sacrifice him to our God!!!"

"The story had a villain, who, like all the best villains, came equipped with vassals acclaiming him a here. It had a silent, remorseless lawman in Patrick Fitzgerald...it had a colorful supporting cast, including the spy herself ... her husband ... and a Times reporter jailed for her refusal to talk."

Coming this fall to theaters near you: "Rove: The Musical", directed by Michael Bay and starring
Billy Bob Thorton as Karl Rove, Sigourney Weaver as Judith Miller, and Robert Redford as Hendrik Hertzburg.

Sadly for Hertzburg, forces him to actually write about John G. Roberts, Jr.

At a time when the left is all too apt to play the innefectual part of the whiney little brother, I'm actually pleased to see that Roberts is, given the context, a reasonable candidate (the man has done pro-bono work for gay rights, or as Hertzburg so lamely states it "He is not, it appears, a hater"), that the core of the Democratic Party has recognized this (even Ted Kennedy paused between Gin Fizzes to give a hesitant thumbs-up), and that we don't appear to be headed for a sequel to "Bork: The Culture Wars".

But mainly, Hertzburg is just sad that the heat was briefly removed from 'The Turd Blossom', and consoles himself with some warmed-over wishfullness:

"Bush's popularity is at a low ebb; his plan to privatize Social Secrutity is failing; his war and his budget are in chaos. And by Friday the troubles of Karl Rove were back on the front page."

YAP! YAP! YAP! YAP! YAP! YAP! YAP! YAP! YAP! YAP! YAP! YAP! YAP! YAP!

For a time I thought I was Adam Gopnik's biggest fan. Then a former boss of mine told me that her boyfriend not only had all his first editions, but had them autographed. (Not that he has many first editions, but still...). In this same enterprise, another writer was perhaps Gopnik's biggest detractor, casting suspicion on every word he wrote, especially those attributed to his precocious children and their whimsical imaginary friends (i.e. Charlie Ravioli). Which brings us to 'Death of a Fish', Gopnik's meditation on the death of a betta fish which belongs to his daughter.

Even for me, this essay is stretching it. Gopnik (admirably) loves his daughter, but is profligate in assigning this love. Hence, his daughter's mess of fish and gills and oxygen and (finally) death becomes, in turn: Kim Novak, Frank Stallone, Grace Kelly, and Tippie Hedren. Poor fish. He only forgot how to breathe.

But the more that I ponder it, Gopnik's fault isn't an essay that swings and missses at too many meaningful metaphors, it's his own shitty fathering. By failing to pull the damn fish out of the plastic castle window, he condmned it to death. Why? Because he was worried that giving the fish a hearty yank would pull its fins out.

Imagine yourself a simple, 200-cell brain fish. You live in the home of a writer with a weakness for sweeping metaphor. Through a series of misjudgements, you find yourself very much lodged in the window of a plastic castle. Gopnik won't pull you out, and suddenly, in your microscropic fish brain you wish that George Will or William Buckley Jr. were there to save you. They'll either try their best or leave you to die a quick death. Not like Gopnik, the hoser. He'd rather have you suffer quietly than bother his wife with the grisly details.