I've been reading Mark Helprin's new short story collection: The Pacific and Other Stories, and when I've finished and thought about it for a while, I'll post a review.
In the meantime, and along the lines of food and truth, which are two pretty good subjects, I give you the following short excerpt from one of the stories (Jacob Bayer and the Telephone) wherein an itinerate monk named Jacob Bayer wanders into a new and prosperous White Russian town in 1913:
In stalls on the streets of Koidanyev and in well-ordered stores lit with electric lamps were every type of fruit he had ever known or imagined, and fruit of which he had never heard: all those of a temperate climate, of course; citrus of every variety, half of which he never knew existed; dates; currants; mangoes; papayas; bananas; kiwis; star fruit; breadfruit; passion fruit; and a hundred obscurities such as, for example, Chilean cat pears, which were the color of mourning doves and tasted like marzipan.
Do you smile as you read this? Do you wonder if this really has anything to do with truth, or for that matter, food?They came fresh, dried, canned, jarred, candied, compoted, diced, doused, soused, and sugared. It was not enough to be a date. A date had to be a medjool date. And even that was not enough. There were "huge," "giant," "premium," and "extrastupendous" medjool dates. To further assuage the need for money to change hands, some of these competing dates came in magnificent containers of crystal, bristol, sterling, and gold, and if that were not enough they accomplished their final conquest simply by being expensive beyond any reason or justification, which made them, somehow, and to some, infinitely desirable. And that was just fruit.
Of bagels the people of Koidanyev were so knowledgeable and libertine that they made them with things that had no connection to bagels, such as pineapple, tomatoes, mushrooms, cheese, and saffron. Of saffron they had so much that they sold it by the kilo, as they did truffles, caviar, and shrimp. "Shrimp? What is that?" Jacob Bayer asked a fishmonger in a silk suit with a perfectly snowy white shirt and gold buttons.
The fishmonger looked over his Scottish smoked salmon, his bluefish, his tuna, and his herring in calvados. "Shrimp," he said. "If you wait until tomorrow we'll have the ones that are the size of chickens. They make a meal in themselves served on a bed of wilted arugula with a good champagne."
The story can be found at ForbesASAP.com via this link: Jacob Bayer and the Telephone, or it can be found along with fifteen other marvelous tales in The Pacific And Other Stories by Mark Helprin.
Mark's book and yr. hmbl. srvnt. will be back in a later post.
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