Jonathan Safran Foer Q&A: You gonna eat that?

Jonathan Safran Foer asks, what did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals? A take on that truth can be found in his occasionally inspiring, occasionally gruesome book "Eating Animals." It's the first major work of nonfiction by this award-winning novelist; he spent three years exploring the realities of animal husbandry in America. In her review, Susan Salter Reynolds writes that Foer has "a kind of fearless modernity: one part 'whatever,' one part descendant of Holocaust survivor (we've only got this one life, if that, to get things right) and one part soaringly beautiful, annoyingly entitled liberalism.... Think your way through it, Foer warns. Define the terms. Choose your priorities. You have that luxury."

Foer will be in Los Angeles this weekend, appearing at the Santa Monica Library on Saturday at 7 p.m., at a sold-out appearance at the Skirball Center Sunday afternoon and Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena on Sunday at 6:30 p.m. He spoke to Jacket Copy by phone.

Jacket Copy: In "Eating Animals," you really bring to life how horrifying factory farms are. I wonder, as a writer, what it was like to write that horror story.

Jonathan Safran Foer: I don't really think of it as a horror story, for a couple of reasons. One, it might very well have a happy ending. Two, there's plenty of moments of not only levity in it, but also joy, whether it comes in the form of my own memories of happy meals – not Happy Meals, from McDonald's, but meals that are happy – or days that I spent on really good farms. Obviously the book is about an industry that is almost entirely horrific, but the story is bigger than just that industry.

JC: You open with a story of generations – what food meant to your grandmother, your family growing up, and now you with a new son. Is choosing to be a vegetarian  a break from tradition, or can tradition accommodate change?

JSF: There are different kinds of traditions. My grandmother was not a vegetarian, and my parents are not vegetarians. On another hand, there's the tradition of wanting your actions to reflect your values. Or wanting to make good choices even when they're difficult or against certain instincts or cravings. Traditions happen on all sorts of levels, and sometimes we have to lose one tradition in order to maintain another.

JC: When you started the book, did you realize how important turkeys and Frank Reese's Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch  would be to telling the arc of the story?

JSF: No, I didn't know very much about Frank Reese. I mean, I'd read a bit about him, mostly because he wins all these taste tests – that's how he became a famous farmer, because he makes food that apparently is the best that anybody is making now. I was really moved -- I was moved by him, his story, his farm, the way he thinks about raising animals, the way he thinks about feeding people. If there's a hero of the book, in a certain way, he's it.

JC: You're going  on Martha Stewart right before Thanksgiving – are you going to talk turkey?

JSF: Presumably – I don't know. I don't boss her around, she bosses me around.

JC: Have you been on Martha Stewart before?

JSF: I was once, with my first book. I've gotten to know her a little bit just because she's very concerned about these issues. She's not a vegetarian herself, but she's a very very strong advocate of family farming, small farming.

JC: In the story you tell, factory farms are growing more and more powerful, to the detriment of more humane small farms. What lesson do you think we should take from that?

JSF: There are a lot of forces that are encouraging the growth of factory farms; they're enormously profitable precisely because they externalize all the real costs. We pay for it through subsidies, we pay for it through environmental degradation, that we are the ones who have to clean up. It's in their business model to destroy the environment. All these forces encouraging the growth of factory farms. It's very hard for small farmers, because it just costs more to raise animals the right way. Consumers are going to have get used to eating less meat – to paying more for better quality meat and eating significantly less of it. And that's not something that's easy to tell everybody.

JC: How much do you see the book as an exploration, and how much as a call to action? 

LA Bizarro returns, revived

Twelve years ago St. Martin’s Press released a green-and-purple book with the intriguing title "L.A. Bizarro: The Insider’s Guide to the Obscure, the Absurd and the Perverse in Los Angeles." Written by arbiters of arcana, Anthony Lovett and Matt Maranian, the book quickly gained footing in the city it celebrated, spending 21 weeks on the L.A. Times bestseller list, including a stint in the No. 1 spot.

Last month the first update of the book (the "All-New Insider’s Guide") was released by Chronicle Books. The new edition contains 80% new material, and at 368 pages and nearly as many entries, is almost twice as long as the original. Even the entries that survived the cut were rewritten by the authors, who have clearly honed their irreverent, scathingly witty writing style.

New entries include items as wildly varied as the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. (“Americans expect spectacle from Los Angeles, and we deliver it, usually with nauseating results.”),  Studs Theater (“It’s the Grauman’s Chinese of skin flicks, a Pussycat-era Holdover that is easily missed unless you’re on foot.”, and Salvation Mountain in Niland (“Deemed folk art by many and a toxic hazard by some, one of the more awe-inspiring examples of faith-based outsider art lies on the edge of Highway 111 in arid Niland, a scant five miles east of the Sonny Bono Salton Sea Wildlife Refuge [we couldn’t make this up].”)

The new edition gets the full treatment in today's Calendar section."The quintessential 'Bizarro' place,  Maranian says, "is really hard to get to, slightly disappointing upon arrival and pretty much unlike anything you're likely to stumble upon anywhere else," adding, "I use the word 'disappointing' fondly."

-- Jessica Gelt

Photo: Maranian, left, and Lovett at Clifton's Cafeteria in 2007. Credit: Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times

Alton Brown's book tour leads to Costco

Alton Brown has been hosting his popular "Good Eats" show on the Food Network for 10 years now. He combines genuine goofiness with educated enthusiasm for food. He's hosted other TV shows, too, and written books before. Now "Good Eats: The Early Years" is on shelves, with 140 recipes, dynamic layout and recent promo appearances on the "Today" show and "The View." So where's he going to be on book tour today?

Costco.

Most authors are willing go anywhere readers are. And apparently in San Diego, readers are heading to a discount store to pick up 24-packs of chicken breasts.

Maybe it's not as weird as it sounds. Costco sells food and books (admittedly, it also has cat litter, patio furniture, shaving cream, tubs of mayonnaise, batteries, Wild Turkey by the gallon, athletic socks and almost any other consumer good you can imagine, but bear with me). Not many places sell both books and food. Sure, there are cafes and coffee shops connected to bookstores -- but is there any other store that makes it a point to sell food and books?

Brown has written a book for people who like to eat. And, presumably, to watch his show on TV. Wait a minute -- Costco also sells TVs. It's starting to make sense after all.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Alton Brown. Credit: Gregory Smith / Associated Press

Gourmet magazine will close, report says

Magazine empire Conde Nast, home of Vogue and the New Yorker, will announce the closure of Gourmet this morning, according to a report in the New York Times, which calls the move "startling."

Like many other media companies, Conde Nast is facing difficult times. In the not-so-distant past, it shuttered shopping magazine Domino and folded Men's Vogue into a twice-yearly supplement to Vogue. But so far, victims of its contractions have been newer titles.

With Gourmet apparently at the end of its run, that has changed. The magazine has been published since 1940 and is edited by the popular food writer Ruth Reichl (former restaurant critic and Food editor for the L.A. Times). It's also given Pulitzer Prize-winner Jonathan Gold, who has celebrated L.A.'s diverse low-end restaurants, a different kind of platform for his writing. Gourmet may have been seen as more prestigious than sibling magazine Bon Appetit -- founded by Pillsbury 15 years later -- but Bon Appetit will be the one that continues to publish.

Other Conde Nast magazines headed to extinction are Cookie, Modern Bride and Elegant Bride (fear not, engaged ladies, Bride itself has survived). 

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: SuperFantastic via Flickr

When you need to know why fish fart

OK, chances are no one ever needs to know why fish fart. But those interested in such odd factoids -- who might gleefully explain that the bubbles coming from the backside of a cod are not technically farts but those near a herring's are -- will find Francesca Gould's new book "Why Fish Fart & Other Useless or Gross Information About the World" is just what they've been waiting for.

Chock-full of anecdotes, the book is divided into not-your-usual-table-talk chapters: "obscene cuisine," "weird creatures," "vile bodies," "pernicious practices," "disgusting diseases, curious cures, and savage tortures." Not all the blurbs are entirely revelatory -- you've probably heard that Aztecs practiced human sacrifice and that jackals regurgitate to feed their young. But many are strange enough to keep the curious paging through for the next curiosity.  Here's a super-truncated version:

Q: What is the world's tastiest insect?
A: This is a matter of taste, but the author recommends the Australian Honey ant, which "stores so much of a sugary fluid in its body that its hind end swells up into a ball that is big enough to eat. ... They say it's just like eating honey, only crunchier."

Q: Can it really rain frogs and fish?
A: Yes.

Q: Could cat ear mites live in a human ear?
A: Yes, and eww, a doctor experimented on himself.

Q: How clean is your toothbrush?
A: Don't ask.

Gould, whose first book was "Why You Shouldn't Eat Your Boogers and Other Useless (or Gross) Information About Your Body," has a knack for making the gross, um, digestible reading. It's a fun little book, if not for everyone.

As for those farting herrings? The escaping air emits a high-pitched sound that scientists think is used to communicate with other herrings at night. No other fish can detect the noise of their emissions: The herring farts are silent (if not deadly) .

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo credit: Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times

Barbecuing like a mad man

Even though Angelenos can barbecue pretty much year-round, there are only two official summer weekends left. Which means it might be time to break out the grill for a final seasonal hurrah.

To make like Don Draper in his best daddy mode, get a chef's hat, apron and gloves -- and an appropriately vintage cookbook. The three above are available on EBay now. "Big Boy Barbecue," from 1957, does not appear to be connected to the hamburger chain, but it will help you make hamburgers. It's listed at $2.50. "Jim Beard's Barbecue Cookbook" (1959), is going for $3.99, and includes a "special summertime bar guide." The all-too-timely "It's Fun to Barbecue ... and Economical Too" was published in 1962 and is the least economical of the trio at $9.99.

The price for a basic vintage barbecue cookbook tops out at about $10. They can be found on EBay, on Alibris and Abebooks, and in many local used bookstores.

If hamburgers can make a comeback as a cuisine, we can certainly cook them the throwback way. And if you want to try Jack Lemmon's barbecue sauce -- from one of my vintage cookbooks -- it's after the jump.

Scenes from the Goodreads book swap with Kogi BBQ at Book Soup

If you weren't at Book Soup yesterday afternoon, you missed the Goodreads book swap. The social-networking-through-books website provided tables where people brought books to give away -- and where they gathered to take away books left by others -- all free of charge. That's Otis Chandler, Goodreads' founder, above left in the white T-shirt; he picked up a couple of James Bond books.

Those who were patient enough to wait in line for 45 minutes or more got lunch -- for a reasonable price -- from the Kogi BBQ taco truck, which set up shop in Book Soup's back parking lot.

A DJ booth behind the truck kept those waiting in line entertained, if not entirely distracted from their grumbling stomachs.

The Bauers came from Burbank. Steven, left, picked up a copy of the 1975 bestseller "Shogun" by James Clavell, while Lauren, right, got a copy of "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle," a 2008 Oprah book club selection. Claire, center, came for the tacos.

More swap scenes after the jump.

Julia Child's cookbooks: hot hot hot

This weekend, the movie "Julie & Julia" took second place at the box office, which is pretty hot. But Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" is even hotter.

By Sunday, Pasadena bookstore Vroman's sold out of the first volume of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." The tome, which Child coauthored and plays a central role in the film, is credited with introducing French cuisine to the American mainstream.

The movie is based in part on the blog "The Julie/Julia Project," which became the nonfiction book "Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously." In it, author Julie Powell (played by Amy Adams in the film) chronicled her efforts to cook every recipe in "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in a single year.

But Julia Child's new-found success hasn't been limited to "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," which  currently tops Amazon's bestseller list. Her co-written autobiography, "My Life in France," and "Julia's Kitchen Wisdom" have also been hard to keep on Vroman's shelves.

It's been five years since she died, but as an author, Julia Child is one hot tomato.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Jon Chase / Associated Press

A Malt Whitman sundae?

A New Jersey librarian's lighthearted Facebook petition for a Ben & Jerry's library-themed ice cream flavor might just come to fruition -- or should that be chocolate-swirl-ition? Launched in early June, the petition has picked up momentum as summer temperatures have risen -- there are currently more than 4,800 members in the group, and folks from as far away as Canada and England have volunteered flavor ideas.

Suggestions included Gooey Decimal System (dark chocolate alphabet letters with caramel swirls in hazelnut ice cream), Rocky Read (vanilla with chocolate-covered nuts, chocolate chunks and raisins) and Sh-sh-sh-Sherbet! (either lime or chocolate/vanilla).

But, like an autodidact left free to roam the stacks, later ideas have strayed from the original to embrace anything bookish, related to authors or reading or titles.

Like Bookworms, with Gummi Worms in the ice cream, a suggestion on the Facebook page. The Judy Blume coming-of-age homage Are You There God? It's Me, Marshmallow, from the comments on Jezebel. Two from the New Yorker's Book Bench: Writer’s Block (coffee with fudge chunks and nicotine stains) and Chick Lit (fat-free peach-mango swirl with pieces of Chicklets chewing gum).

Here in L.A. we have Scoops, an adventurous ice cream parlor that tries flavors like Black Currant Lychee, Brown Bread and Strawberry balsamic vinegar. Imagine what they might come up with for L.A.-oriented titles like White Oleander, Ask the Dust and I, Fatty.

Despite all the enthusiasm behind the idea, it might be best to leave ice creaming to the professionals. My favorite idea so far -- for Malt Whitman, a malt ice cream with chocolate alphabet letters and two caramel and fudge swirls -- came from Arnold Carbone, Ben & Jerry's flavor guy.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: ginnerobot via Flickr

A book for a boozy weekend (or two)

You will have no trouble finding something to drink in the simply titled "Cocktails '09" from Food & Wine magazine.

It's a compact white book with candy colors highlighting the various sections: aperitifs, Latin drinks, seasonal drinks, frozen drinks, pitcher drinks, after-dinner drinks, classics, mixologists' drinks and mocktails ... and party food, as an afterthought. It's really about the booze.

I admit, it's not like I needanother cocktail book. I've got a stash of vintage drink books, from a Depression-era treasure called "3 Bottle Bar" (no need to buy all those special liqueurs -- or even vodka) to the swank 1980s "Playboy's Host & Bar Book."

But I find this one charming. It's got lots of cute icon-based codes that quickly show what kind of glass, what kind of liquor and what kind of skill it'll take to make each drink. It's bright and zippy.

And it has drinks that sound both good and simple, like the punches, which allow you to make a delicious drink for a party without spending the whole time behind the bar. I'm absolutely going to whip up a batch of Cajun lemonade -- white rum or vodka mixed with Pimms, lemon juice, sweetener, 7-Up, lemon wheels and Tabasco -- for my next party. Or maybe the Thieves' Punch.

Or maybe a batch of the drink they call the Beatnik (bourbon, port, Averna Amaro and bitters). Will it really get guests reciting poetry?

There are some fancy drinks -- one that requires a thin slice of cucumber to be delicately skewered and folded for its garnish -- for the adventurous bartender. And for the truly lazy drinker, a list of top cocktail bars nationwide.

I think I may have to make room on my shelf for "Cocktails '09." Those 100-plus recipes are just begging to be put to the summer party test.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo credit: Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times