The Gallery of Regrettable Food
by James Lileks
|
Our Price: $54.84 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $4.08 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The Gallery of Regrettable Food
Book Review: Humorous descriptions of bland source material
Summary: 3 Stars
I bought this book expecting to find a collection of genuinely bizarre, ill-conceived food creations from our better-forgotten cultural past. While there were definitely a number of such entries in the book, the author too often focused on ascribing sinister motives and paranoid interpretations to perfectly ordinary photographs.In one example, there's a photo with a man throwing a log onto a campfire in the background, accompanied by speculation as to whether the thing in the man's hand was really part of a dismembered body. Similar speculations accompany other innocuous photos. The speculation is well-written and reasonably funny in its own right, but Lileks was definitely reaching when he tried to tie the text back to the source material.
There were definitely a lot of examples of the kind of food the title promises (weird things involving Jell-O and lots of MSG), but I felt much of the book was padded out with things that didn't quite fit, and a good portion of the humor was working a bit too hard to try to stretch whatever laughs the source material was good for.
I definitely think this book was funny, but like most high-concept pieces, it wasn't really satisfying.
Book Review: On the fence
Summary: 2 Stars
I'm on the fence about this one. There is a little bit of humor, but it's the kind of humor which is (as others have pointed out) mean-spirited. I guess that's why comedians who use profane words in every sentence are considered funny. It's easy to look at the fads and fashions of 50 years ago and make fun of them. The same thing will happen 50 years from now, when our future generations will be saying these very same things about how we ourselves lived and ate.
Let's face it, the photographs are scanned from 50 year old books. Technology was obviously inferior to begin with, but taking printed images which have degraded for a half-century make it very difficult to give any kind of context.
A whole generation has grown up viewing plastic food arranged by "food photographers" which have nothing in appearance to what you get on the menu. Ever see those "Serving suggestion" disclaimers printed on packaged food? That's to warn you that the food depicted is model food, and you're unlikely to achieve the same results. Just try to photograph your own very best masterpiece of a recipie and in 50 years, we'll each cast our judgement upon it.
Book Review: I just don't get it
Summary: 1 Stars
This book came up as one I "might be interested in" after I'd added some other humor books to my cart. I checked it out, and after reading so many favorable reviews, purchased it.
And boy, do I regret that purchase! To me, the author seems to be saying the same thing over and over: This looks like nuclear waste, this looks like a swamp, this looks like [fill in the blank]. What were they thinking, blah blah blah. Yeah, his comments are mean-spirited, but I LIKE that kind of humor. Not this time, though.
In addition, the pictures of the foods he's denigrating are often difficult to make out. I understand that the originals were found in old cookbooks and aren't as glitzy and glamorous as those today's food stylists produce, but still . . . it would be nice to be able to actually see the dishes that he's putting down.
Believe it or not, I've fallen asleep more than once while trying to slog my way through this book. (I'm one of those who tries to finish every book she starts, although not always successfully.) I'm going to give up, as I'm sure the rest will just be more of the same.
Huge disappointment.
Book Review: Kitsch'n Kewl
Summary: 5 Stars
Being such a fan of his website, I just had to gobble up James Lileks' book on crazy cookbooks from 50s, 60s, 70s and even earlier. This is the only food-related book I own where I have to steel myself to look at the pictures, and lard god almighty, I'll sure never make any of these hideous concoctions.
Lileks has compiled a wickedly hilarious array of images (and some recipes) that you will hardly believe were suggested as consumables. The book is scrotum-full of gravity-defying (and life-defeating) Jello mold salads, disembodied meat entrees, otherworldly vegetable dishes, and casseroles that look like puke in a pan.
It's all accompanied by his acerbic narrative, which brings out every innuendo related to baby boomer childhoods, frustrated housewives, and boring suburban life. You'll meet some of the personalities behind these so-called cookbooks, such as Aunt Jenny, a sort of goddess of lard.
I bought a copy for a gift--it's a great gift book for a food lover, cook, person who has everything, or as a general housewarming gift. But I kept the first copy because it made me laugh out loud.
Book Review: The pictures speak for themselves.
Summary: 2 Stars
Here's a book where the pictures speak for themselves. Who doesn't love to look at those old cookbook pamphlets from the 50s? They are fascinating looks at what the food industry wanted people to cook back then. And they are often hilarious from the perspective of the PC, health conscious, era we live in today. But I thought the redundant and sometimes crude comments that the author made about each picture merely pointed out the obvious and were usually not very funny. I would have liked to have seen more pictures without the comments. Some pages have excerpts printed from the actual text of the cookbooks and in most cases those were much more funny than the authors comments. This book also presents a simplified picture of the food habits of Americans in the 50s. I don't doubt that many people tried these recipes to save time in the kitchen. But the 50s was also the start of the gourmet revolution in the U.S. (see Jane and Michael Stern's "American Gourmet" for the story). And for the most part, families in the 50s still cooked the way they had been doing for years (from scratch).