“There’s something very strange about you, because you look normal, but it’s all going on inside. Yes, you have got a slight pleading look in your eyes.”

Nigella Lawson to Anthony Bourdain, “London”

When Anthony Bourdain killed himself, a lot of people on traditional news outlets and social media expressed astonishment that someone so successful could commit suicide. I was stunned that they were stunned. For my part, I had long been surprised and impressed by the fact that he chose and was able to maintain functionality after heroin addiction. To me, that was the unlikelihood.

Yet on some level, I do understand other people’s reactions. It wasn’t just because Bourdain had received accolades, amassed wealth, and scored what seemed to many of us the perfect job. We know enough about suicide, or should, to grasp that it is usually not a reaction to one specific event, and even objectively good circumstances may not preclude it. I think the shock came because Bourdain was always chasing and articulating something so elemental to the human spirit. As a companion in the “Spain” episode of Parts Unknown puts it while they share tripe-spiked tapas: “Sun. Plaza. Guts.” If Bourdain couldn’t be happy with regular dosages of all three, then it seems like we’re all kind of screwed.
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My favorite books fill my mouth.

Lolita is Tang and crème brûlée, America and Old Europe duking it out on the tongue.

The Street of Crocodiles, by Bruno Schulz, consumes things not meant to be eaten: exotic birds, predators nearly extinct.

Love in the Time of Cholera is eggplant, of course—lost love as real, regal, and bitter as aubergines.

Nightwood is darkest chocolate, kept in a Joseph Cornell box chilled by Marie Taglioni’s ice cubes.

Don Quixote’s fanciful avocado dish should be downed with xocolati.

Absalom, Absalom piques with warm biscuits, blue cheese, and a strangling shot of absinthe.

The Tale of Genji is a meal parceled into small, exquisite servings, a tray of intricate delights.

The Alexandrian Quartet’s bloody steak demands to be inhaled along with Chateau Margaux, while the diner drops her veils.

Proust can only be strawberries soaked in ether.

The Dream of the Red Chamber is pungent soup served by an acrobat in a jeweled, crimson bowl.

As they say in Japan, gochisō sama deshita—I have been feasted. And I have, ever since I learned to read.

Copyright © Cynthia Gralla, 2018

I love a juicy metaphor, and a great extended one can send me reeling. In my own writing, I rely heavily on their transformative power. In The Seductions of Sick, my memoir, metaphors link the tale of Rumpelstiltskin with hair loss and obsessive-compulsive disorder, while in Snow Queens, my historical novel, shells, clocks, and tulips are used to render the rip-roaring ephemera of the female orgasm.

In my recent reading, I have been treated to delicious, startling, poignant, twisted metaphors from contemporary writers like Leslie Jamison, Elif Batuman, Jesmyn Ward, Rachel Cusk, and Carmen Maria Machado. Here, in no particular order, are my favorite ten metaphors from my reading this year—so far. (It’s only July, after all.) I include similes as well as metaphors.

Of course, these metaphors, through my selection, do not just illuminate the thing being described but my own interests and investments. That said, please don’t read too much into #10. Continue reading →

Riverdale makes no excuses for its excess. The CW’s much hyphenated, gorgeously shot murder-mystery-slash-steamy-teen-drama-slash-mob-war-meets-occasional-musical leaves no cinematic, literary, or pop-cultural reference unturned. Its characters are references in themselves, drawn from the Archie Comics. Each episode is named after a famous movie—often genre fare or noir, but arthouse flicks like There Will Be Blood are thrown in for good measure. Its characters may date from the 1940s, but their dialogue is shameless post-Buffy, post-Juno quip-speak. Continue reading →

In no particular order, here are ten works that testify to the importance of finding words when there supposedly are none—which is to say, when there are no simple ones, yet many things that need to be said.

Primo Levi, The Periodic Table

Only a few of the elements in The Periodic Table—one of the best creative nonfiction books of the twentieth century—relate to the Holocaust. Still, when I assigned it to my students in Japan and watched them struggle to situate the Lager, I realized that Levi’s descriptions of Auschwitz are perhaps most powerful when they are part of an evocation of the larger world in which we all live, love, and make meaning.

Diane Ackerman, The Zookeeper’s Wife

Sensuous and often joyful, The Zookeeper’s Wife tells the true story of the couple who hid Jews in the empty cages of their Warsaw zoo after the Nazis seized or shot the animals. Reading it makes you want to be a better caretaker of all the creatures around you. Continue reading →