name that storm

Bienvenue and welcome back to Musée Musings, your idiosyncratic guide to Paris and art. And sometimes San Francisco and food. It was lovely to receive so many comments about last week’s newsletter and Proust exhibition review. Thank you!

In one missive, J-F reminisced about a sejour at the Grand Hotel de Cabourg (Proust’s Balbec), in particular, the restaurant, Le Balbeck which overlooks the Proust Promenade, with the Cabourg beach and sea beyond. J-F remembers a menu studded with dishes marked ‘Proust Favorite’. I saw a children’s menu called ‘Le Petit Marcel’. (Figures 1, 2)

Figure 1. Grand Hotel de Cabourg

Figure 2 .”Le Petit Marcel" Children’s Menu at Le Balbeck, Grand Hotel de Cabourg

But you needn’t wait until your plans take you to Cabourg to enjoy a Proust inspired repas. Because, as I was doing research for last week’s review of the BnF exhibition on Proust, I happened upon a cookbook, Dining with Marcel Proust: A Practical Guide to French Cuisine of the Belle Époque (At Table), written in 1979 by Shirley King. (Figures 3, 4)

Figure 3. Dining with Marcel Proust by Shirley King, 1979

Figure 4. Each page in King’s book combines quotes from Proust, illustrations from the period and recipes

Ms King snagged a forward to her book by James Beard (famous for onion sandwiches and a foundation which annually honors the best in restaurants, chefs, etc.). And she snagged an interview with Craig Claiborne, the New York Times restaurant critic who transformed a women-only recipes-only cooking section into a highly regarded culinary section with far reaching cultural significance.

King’s book combines recipes for dishes served at both simple and elegant meals enjoyed by the people who populate Proust’s opus and meals Proust himself enjoyed when he dined with others and when he dined alone. The cookbook is filled with quotations from A La Recherche du Temps Perdu and lots of illustrations of scenes from it and of the people and places of Le Belle Epoque, Proust’s époque. The astuces (tricks), definitions and descriptions show how far we’ve all come in culinary sophistication in the past 45 years.

When Craig Claiborne interviewed Ms King, he asked how she came to write the book. “I lived in London and had been trained as a painter…I needed money.” Luckily her skill set included cooking and she found work as a private caterer. To make the tube ride from her home to her job and back again, more bearable, she began to read a book the friend had given her, Remembrance of Things Past. “I read it morning and night, and it suddenly occurred to me that Proust was as much obsessed with fine food as I had been.”

Then I finally read a few chapters of a book that has been sitting on my bookshelf for a while, Proust was a Neuroscientist. (Figure 5) The author, Jonah Lehrer quotes this passage from the beginning of In Search of Lost Time (the revised and now accepted English translation of Proust’s title), “I drank a second mouthful (Proust on the madeleine/tilleul tea moment) in which I find nothing more than in the first, then a third, which gives me rather less than the second. It is time to stop; the potion is losing its magic. It is plain that the truth I am seeking lies not in the cup but in myself.” Sounds very Shakespearean doesn’t it (Cassius to Brutus: ”The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves…”)

Figure 5. Proust was a Neuroscientist, Jonah Lehrer

As Lehrer writes, the madeleine may have been what got the process started but it was really only “a convenient excuse for Proust to explore his favorite subject: himself.” And at the end of the day, isn’t that everyone’s favorite subject? Lehrer goes on to explore, rather convincingly for a non-scientist at least, the points of connection between what Proust wrote and what neuroscientists can now explain. “…(S)mell and taste are the only senses that connect directly to the hippocampus, the center of the brain’s long-term memory….All our other senses (sight, touch, hearing) are first processed by the thalamus …..(and) are much less efficient at summoning up our past.”

I decided to find out what Jonah Lehrer has been up to since he wrote this really fascinating book in 2007, when he was 26. At first I was sorry I had. He wrote a couple more books. Then he was accused of plagiarism - of himself, (what we call recycling) and others, (which is a lot more serious). As a result, those books were withdrawn and he got fired from both the New Yorker and Wired magazines. But he started writing a blog (as so many of us do), and in 2021, he published another book, Mystery: A Seduction, A Strategy, A Solution in which he discusses, among other things, why humans enjoy a good mystery book. Which is as good a segue as any into another comment I received.

Martin Walker, a Scotsman who, like me, owns a maison secondaire in the Dordogne, and who is the author of the Bruno Chief of Police murder mystery series which I like very much because Martin always introduces either an historical topic or a contemporary one, even though he sets his books in the normally sleepy south of France, sent me a note. That sentence clocked in at 63 words which seemed very long to me. As you know, Proust is famous for his long sentences, the longest of which, a discussion of Jews and homosexuals, totaled 958 words, just a couple words shy of a 1000 word essay…..

Martin writes that as he read my brief note about hurricanes and their names, he was reminded of a country rock song called 'They called the wind Maria.’ Maria? I thought they called that wind Mariah. And I thought maybe that’s how he was thinking of it, in his head, too. In a tomato/tomahto way. So, of course I had to look it up. And this is what I found, "They Call the Wind Maria" was written in 1951 by Lerner and Loewe for their Broadway musical Paint Your Wagon. And Martin remembers correctly (I never doubted that for a moment), by the end of the 1950s, folk singers were beginning to sing that song. And while all of that may be interesting, more interesting to me is that Lerner and Loewe were inspired to write a song about the wind because of a book, called Storm, written in 1941 by G.P. Stewart. When Stewart was asked how the name of the storm should be pronounced, he said to “put the accent on the second syllable, and pronounce it ‘rye'".

And I am sharing this little story why? Because Stewart naming his storm was the impetus for US Military meteorologists to give women’s names to storms in the Pacific during World War II. A practice that became official in 1945. Eight years later, women's names began to be used for North Atlantic storms, too. And as I mentioned last week, in 1979, the gender most responsible for destroying things, started to get their turn. Men’s names as well as women’s are used to name North Atlantic hurricanes. And yes, if you were wondering, it appears that the singer, songwriter Mariah Carey was named after Lerner and Loewe’s song.

On the cooking front. Just as I was about to prepare my galette des rois, my oven door became unhinged. And so did I. But not Ginevra. Who came to the rescue with a toaster oven. Which was not large enough for a proper galette. Necessity being the mother of invention, I baked two rectangular galettes, sized to fit the toaster oven. The galettes taste great, (Figure 6) especially with what’s left of the Monbazillac wine (poor man’s Sauterne) that I brought home from France to eat with the foie gras I also brought home with me. (I have written about artisanal duck breeding and foie gras making elsewhere, so I won’t bore you with that here).

Figure 6. Homemade Galette des Rois

Finally, between flash floods and thunderstorms, for which I am getting alerts on my French telephone these days, warning me to shelter in place, we got to the movies to see Bill Nighy in a new film called Living. The screen play was written by Kazuo Ishiguro, Japanese born British author of Remains of the Day (about the butler of an elegant manor house in Oxford) and Never Let Me Go (about children at an English boarding school). This film, Living, is an adaptation of a 1950s Japanese film co-written and directed by Akira Kurosawa, whose screenplay was loosely based on Tolstoy’s 1886 novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

This film is set in London of the early 1950s. The scenery and costumes are perfect. Bill Nighy is, too. (Figure 7) He portrays a bureaucrat who works (?) for the Public Works Department as the head of a group of 4 other men and one woman, presumably the secretary. When we think of faceless bureaucrats, we (or at least I) think of lone individuals sitting at small desks in their own claustrophobic cubicles. But that’s not the set-up here. There isn’t even that level of autonomy. Instead, these five men (and one woman) sit around a large desk. At each man’s side is a multi-level file tray, into which he puts in or takes out files, all day, every day. But the piles of files never seem to diminish in size. Nothing seems to be getting done. One imagines that it is these men’s jobs, to ensure that nothing ever does get done.

Figure 7. Living with Bill Nighy

But what is in the files does matter to somebody. We know that because a group of women keep showing up. They want a park built for their children. They need this group to sign off on the project. We see Nighy and his colleagues putting the women off, time and time again.

What happens when Bill Nighy learns that he has a terminal illness changes everything. At least for Nighy. As we watch the film, we start to believe that it’s never too late to do something, to believe in something, to fight for something. That no matter what the circumstances, a project can connect you to other people in ways you couldn’t imagine and ways that can give you a sense of purpose which can infuse dignity and meaning to your life. See the film, tell me if you were as moved as Ginevra and I were by Nighy’s transformation. Gros Bisous, Dr. B.

Here is a link to a review I wrote a couple of years ago, about Galettes des Rois: Fit for a King or a Queen I wrote it during the Pandemic, what we called Confinement in France. So it's a little about life during a pandemic, too. I hope you like it.

Below are Comments I received last week, for which I am truly grateful.

New comments on a dark and stormy night:

One summer while in Switzerland, we home based in Pontresina. Taking trains, trams, ski lifts, and busses we enjoyed sampling not only the wonderful scenery but nut tortes of all varieties. It seemed everyone had their version with different sorts of nuts. They looked much like your panfortes. I’m so hungry now! Elaine, Bloomington

I was wondering how you were faring in all that weather. I guess you have missed the major floods. Whew! Wow! You are a fabulous baker. I am impressed. I thought this Proust article very interesting. Between all of your articles on his exhibits I feel as though I have taken a college course on Proust. Thank you. Deedee, Baltimore & Naples, FL

New comments on "If you can eat it, it's not art”

I loved the BnF expo and now, your excellent review makes me want to go again. Merci. Melinda (another Proust-obsessed San Franciscan)

I love this: “In fact, he thought they were kindred sprits. She used meat, bones and vegetables the way he used words. And they had a common goal, to create an organic and unified whole out of their respective raw ingredients.” Bobby, South Carolina

Dear Beverly, I loved reading this post, especially to learn about the madeleine/toast moment. Thank you! Linda M.

Hi Beverly, thank you for reminding me of the story about the asparagus painting(s) of Edouard Manet.
I had seen both years ago at the De Young (I think) in San Francisco and was so enchanted I never forgot the story, but who the artist was. Thanks for filling that gap. Ursula, Berlin

Me again. I am hungry. I think I will have roast chicken for dinner tomorrow! Deedee, Baltimore & Naples, FL