|
Amanda
Hesser
Robert
Birnbaum talks with the New York Times food writer
about her new book, Cooking For Mr. Latte
 Posted:
May 14, 2003
© 2003 Robert Birnbaum
Images by Red Diaz/Duende Publishing
Print
this interview
New York Times writer Amanda Hesser has
published two books, The Cook and the Gardener and
most recently Cooking For Mr. Latte: A Food Lover's Courtship,
with Recipes. She was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania
and attended Bentley College as an Economics and Finance major.
While in Boston, she began working (volunteering) in various
kitchens and studying culinary history at Radcliffe with Barbara
Wheaton. She applied for and received a scholarship from Les
Dames d' Escoffier that took her on a cook's tour of Europe,
and she continued her culinary studies at Ecole de Cuisine
La Burgundy and later at Chateau du Feo. Amanda Hesser joined
the New York Times in 1997 and in 2001 introduced
the Food Diary in the New York Times Magazine. She
lives in Brooklyn Heights with her husband, New Yorker
staff writer Tad Friend.
Cooking for Mr. Latte is based on Hesser's
Food Diary column, where she tracked her budding relationship
with Mr. Latte, aka Tad Friend, and the dinner parties and
dining experiences and cooking that comprised the backdrop
and context. The text includes over a hundred recipes and
is skillfully interwoven with honest and personal commentary
about affairs of the heart and the palate.
Robert Birnbaum: Are you a super-taster?
Amanda Hesser: I don't know. I have never
been tested. I don't think I am. From what I understand, it's
not all that desirable. Because you experience such extremes
in tastes.
RB: You would know it if you were?
AH: I think I would know it. That's why I think I'm not.
RB: Know any super-tasters?
AH: I don't. I don't. Maybe they won't admit it.
RB: I know one. Barbara
Haber over at the Schlesinger Library.
AH: Is it unpleasant for her?
RB: I don't think so. Cooking for Mr. Latte is an
odd kind of a book.
AH: [chuckles]
RB: In addition to your own observations and experiences
with food and cooking, which is the basis of your authority
in the modern world, you have exposed a part of your personal
life to the world.
AH: Yeah?
RB: Do you have the same feelings about writing the columns
that are the basis for this book as when you first began?
What were your reservations when you first started?
AH: I was worried my life might be too boring. That it wouldn't
be able to carry—I wouldn't be able to find or gather
fully formed stories that really said something. Because I
didn't know what was going to happen in the future. I didn't
know this relationship was going to work out. I didn't know
if I was going to have experiences that really made me—that
inspired me to write, to connect the dots in a way that you
really need to when you are writing a diary. I didn't want
it to be just self-involved blather about my life. But to
really tell stories that people could relate to. In retrospect,
I don't have any regrets because the most gratifying part
of it has been making that connection with people. I have
written for the newspaper for six years, and I have probably
gotten ten times the amount of mail over the year I wrote
the column than I did the previous five years. When you are
writing personally, people, negatively and positively, make
these connections and relate, because they have experienced
these things in their own lives and feel strongly about them.
And they want to talk about it, and that's been great. In
food writing there have been great food memoirs and increasingly
good food journalism, and there is also this wonderful odd
genre that maybe doesn't exist in other forms of culture,
like dance or music—which is this fantasy aspect. You
know, how I'd really like to cook or entertain. How I wish
it would be, that sort of perfection that we are all striving
for but never or rarely attain. I was trying to capture that
real life slice of how we live and how we really eat, how
we really cook, with all the flaws and sort of satisfaction
bundled into one.
RB: This didn't necessarily have to become a book?
In the past
decade, a lot of lifestyle subjects from home design
to food have been put up on this pedestal, and there
is a lot of social pressure that goes along with that
now. |
AH: Right.
RB: Had the relationship failed or floundered
or come to a flat line there wouldn't have been a book, I
guess?
AH: No, I guess not. Before I started doing the column, I
had talked to my editors, and we discussed the goals for the
column, and it really was to have a beginning, middle and
an end. We had the beginning; it was a strong beginning. It
wasn't a bad date, it was just this date at a bad restaurant,
and we had to see where it went. We joked around that it would
be a great if we end up with a wedding. The relationship was
on solid ground, but we certainly weren't engaged. So, yeah,
it didn't have to be, but when I actually went to make the
book, I thought, "This is going to be easy. I will just
slap these columns together and add a few recipes that got
cut from the magazine and there you go." I realized that
doesn't make a book. So I actually combined chapters and cut
chapters and really tried to make a cohesive story.
RB: How was your column edited along the way? This is a different
kind of narrative for a newspaper, were you to follow newspaper
conventions, a strong nut graf [the short summary paragraph
at the top of a newspaper story] and such?
AH: [chuckles] No, thankfully. A lot of the appeal to me
was that I had been writing with nut grafs for six years and
it was a chance to break from that style and try something
new. Because it was experimental for the Times, definitely,
to deal with a personal column, and they were very supportive.
It was great because we were figuring it out as we went along,
but it gave me a good amount of freedom. Because it was so
personal it ended up being a really fun project because they
wanted me to be involved in all aspects. On the second page
there was always a photograph of the food.
RB: So you styled the photo?
AH: We did this at my house. They were my plates, I cooked
it. We had this team of photographers…
RB: Who ate it?
AH: We all did. After the shot we all dug in. (laughs)
RB: So you became popular with the photo staff.
AH: Exactly. It was really this nice…sometimes when
you are writing, particularly newspaper stories, you are one
piece of the puzzle and this was nice to be involved in all
aspects and feel like when it came out, "I did this."
RB: I didn't want to say this before [and risk alienating
you so quickly], but I have some familiarity with the restaurant
world over the last boom, and I have found it increasingly
unattractive and unsatisfying. Something has happened, at
least for me, that has taken the joy out of it. I wonder what
happens to someone like you who really has to live a professional
life attached to the overripe food world. Ever get tired of
it?
AH: Oh sure. It's definitely an issue I face professionally
because the natural path that people try to follow at the
Times is they become a reporter and eventually a
critic. I never wanted to be a critic. I love eating and love
dining, but I love cooking at home and being at home. I find
that I have done stories where I have to go out four nights
a week or to two or three restaurants a night. It's kind of
grueling and unpleasant. You get jaded. You find yourself
being super critical about what really is just a meal. [chuckles]
RB: In Manhattan it must be a very brittle experience?
AH: There is definitely a foodie culture
that's very competitive, and there are people who really just
love going out every night. You know, good for them. [laughs]
I don't want to do it myself.
RB: How many times a year can you eat with Jeffrey Steingartener
[Vogue food writer]?
AH: I’d say a handful. [laughs]
RB: Why is he the only person in the book who is mentioned
with a surname? In the food world isn't he like a super model?
AH: Probably, maybe in future editions I should think about
that. I felt that if people knew whom I was talking about
they would have read his work. He is well read and he is truly
a special character. I just love his whole name. Part of it
is, I love saying, "Jeffrey Steingartner." It has
a kind of…
RB: Forcefulness to it?
 AH:
Yeah.
RB: The
Morning News has a department called "People
We Like," and in that you mentioned him as your only
hero.
AH: He definitely is.
RB: Do you care to expand the list?
AH: You mean in the food world?
RB: The whole wide world.
AH: The whole wide world. Ahhh...[long pause] It's not something
I think about much, but Jeffrey just leaps to mind. He is
a fabulous writer, and he is an excellent reporter, which
he doesn't always get credit for. He is a tireless reporter.
And he is just funny. He is larger than life. And I wish there
were more people like that. Like in old-style food writing,
AJ Liebling, people like that. You read them now and you can't
believe it.
RB: Liebling was a master. He was great writer, about boxing,
politics.
AH: There is something about boxing and food, too, which
is really odd. There is a writer at Food & Wine,
a woman who has written about boxing and she writes about
food. And Alan Richman has written a fair amount about boxing.
RB: There's a connection to explore. They are both sensual
and direct.
AH: Visceral. [laughs] Yeah, for myself, maybe that's a flaw
for me, I am not a big boxing fan.
RB: Does it strike you that food had become very much more
significant than it ought to be in the world, in life and
lifestyles?
AH: I guess so. In the past decade a lot of lifestyle subjects
from home design to food have been put up on this pedestal,
and there is a lot of social pressure that goes along with
that now. It's not just about being able to make the perfect
tarlatan but having the Viking stove to bake it in.
RB: [laughs] Right.
AH: I'm sure that it has to do with the economy in the '90s.
People had more disposable income and…
RB: Thus Sub Zero and Viking became must haves.
AH: In the magazine business, there was a lot more advertising
budgeted, so there was a lot of writing about these things.
There were magazines starting, lots of television shows starting
and just as this kind of…
RB: Has all this been good for the world?
AH: In the long term it's been very good. I just did this
story for the Dining section of the paper about college
students. It was fascinating to me. That is definitely a product
of this [food boom]. In the past two decades America's awareness
of good food has really altered, and now this generation that
was raised with parents that were hyper alert about good food
are now becoming adults, and it's a regular part of their
lives to go out to restaurants or to cook or to watch cooking
shows.
RB: I like the quote in that story from The University of
Alabama where someone said about sushi that in the past they
would have thought it was fishing bait. [both laugh] And in
the short term one goes to restaurants and sees the entree
prices rising to the where you could feed a Central American
village for a week for the cost of one. What are you paying
for? Debt service for all the extras that go into the comic
opera of fine dining: an expensive build out, a public relations
firm, designer waitstaff uniforms and on and on. Doesn't all
that change the dynamic and the attitude involved?
AH: It's so rare that a restaurant can really pull that off.
Have this high design and high concept and really do it well
because when comes down to it they are hiring waiters who
have other professions and things like that. It's a thing
as a diner that bugs me to go into a restaurant where you
feel like when the word 'concept' comes to mind you, walk
in and you think, "That's what they have been working
with, the concept." At the same time, in terms of design,
if you are into architecture and interior design, they have
made great strides--in the past decade, there has been a lot
of money channeled into restaurants. That's one of the things
I both like and like to make fun of in New York. It’s
great, but it is taken a little bit too seriously at times.
Yes, it is frustrating when you know what good food is all
you need is a simple room and a good cook in the kitchen that
you see all this fluff surrounding and you know that you are
paying for it.
RB: The last time I went out to dine was with some friends
visiting, and they were on their expense account. So we went
to an expensive place and though I could have ordered any
entrÈe and not been concerned about my scribbler's
finances, I ordered the cous cous which was the least expensive
entrÈe on the menu. The waiter exclaimed, "Really?"
AH: [laughs] My favorite line from waiters is, "I really
like the…" [laughs]
RB: What are you doing these days at the Times?
AH: I'm a generalist reporter. I have been writing more about
wine. I will continue in that direction. It's something I've
been wanting to write about for a couple of years now and
I really love and am interested in. It is a beat that takes
a while to get up to speed.
…this
generation that was raised with parents that were hyper
alert about good food are now becoming adults, and it's
a regular part of their lives to go out to restaurants
or to cook or to watch cooking shows. |
RB: You have to drink a lot?
AH: You have to drink a lot. Also, it’s
international. It's enormous. California alone has 2000 wineries.
To keep up, on top of everything is a lot of work.
RB: Is that a macho world?
AH: Ah, yeah. It has definitely been dominated by men. Jancis
Robinson is a well-respected female wine writer and critic.
But there are fewer women. It's changing but it's slow. Interestingly,
in Spain some of the best wine makers are women. Also, in
California. So they are making strides. But I am coming from
restaurants to wine; it's still a man's world in restaurants.
There are very few top female chefs. There are a growing number,
but it’s still dominated by men.
RB: Odd.
AH: It is odd. It's very strange. I don't really know why
it is.
RB: Alice Waters… Is Lydia Shire in that weight division?
AH: Sure, she is extremely well known and successful. There
is a handful in New York. When you think of the four-star
restaurants in New York, they are all run by men. There are
plenty of women in the kitchens, but in terms of being the
chef, it's at a slower pace than other professions, the shift
to equality.
RB: I read a piece on you, and you were sitting on a panel,
and the piece ended with you asking a question, and it was
an interesting question, and I wished the answers were included.
You asked, "What was the maximum work load that chefs
would take on?" What I thought you were getting at was
how many new restaurants were they comfortable opening and
running?
AH: Yes, exactly. At what point do you determine that you
have to compromise on integrity for financial success? Is
it one restaurant? Is it one restaurant and a cafe, is it
three restaurants?
RB: And a chicken farm?
AH: I didn't get a clear answer. I think it's something a
lot of chefs struggle with. As a diner it's frustrating when
you go into a restaurant and you feel like it's been franchised,
and you are not really getting that chef's clear vision and
that he or she is in the back overseeing things. But then
again, even at a restaurant run by a chef who only has one,
they are not there all the time. But you just feel like they
can have more control.
RB: There was piece ["Brigade de Cuisine"] that
John McPhee wrote in Giving Good Weight about a place,
a wonderful restaurant that he refused to name and the chef
didn't want to be famous.
AH: Hmmm. That's unheard of. [laughs]
RB: A very improbable integrity suggested in his piece.
AH: You do see a little bit more of that now. You are getting
cooks who have worked for chefs like that and they see what
it's like or they can't identify with it [fame and the limelight]
in their own personality. Of course, after I say this she
is going to go and franchise herself, but there is Gabrielle
Hamilton at Prune. She is an excellent cook, but the food
at her restaurant is extremely simple, and it's a tiny sliver
of a restaurant, and she's gotten tons of press, and I don't
think she is planning on going anywhere with it.
RB: The pressures must be incredible. I wouldn't blame anyone
for the taking the big-money path…
AH: Kitchen life is tough. It's really difficult to have
a social life outside of it. The hours are grueling. It's
hot. It’s physically tiring. If you have done it for
a decade and someone is telling you…it must be really
seductive. Also, even top chefs don't make that much money.
And if you can expand —if you are living in New York
City and living on a typical chef's salary and you can open
three more restaurants, and then actually have bedrooms for
your children or send them to a decent school. It definitely
makes a lot of sense.
RB: Easy for me to say, but it may be a mistake to live in
NYC to begin with…
AH: [laughs]
RB: Living there does raise the ante.
AH: For everyone.
RB: Yeah. I have had the opportunity to see a number of different
models in the so-called hospitality business, and I most admire
someone like Chris Schlesinger [East Coast Grill, Back Eddy].
He seems to know his own limits or something like that.
AH: I always felt like he does what he knows. And instead
of writing about a billion different things, he has written
in this narrow circle, but he is literally an expert who has
great things to tell people, and maybe that's the secret—understanding
yourself before you go and…
RB: Well, now that's a deeper subject and big issue. But
it would seem to take a long time for some people and some
people never get to that. In your writing you are pretty Eurocentric.
You are not concerned with regional cooking, or with Latin
American or Asian.
AH: Yeah, I write what I know. [laughs] I worked in Europe.
Yeah, people think of New York as truly being the melting
pot, but the restaurant culture is definitely European oriented,
the high end. You would think by now that there would be fancy
Chinese restaurants.
RB: There are some in Boston, and even some
forays into so-called fusion menus… Is the word 'cuisine'
reserved for European menus?
 AH:
No, definitely not. Interesting diner food that you find in
the Midwest. I think that's cuisine too.
RB: Like macaroni and cheese?
AH: That kind of thing. Fried bologna sandwiches. Little
regional
specialties.
RB: Where does bologna come from?
AH: I don't know. You would think it was Italian, but for
some reason I think it comes from the German culture and settlers
in Pennsylvania. But I'm not sure.
RB: Back in this conversation you said something about a
heightened food awareness as a benefit of this food boom.
I don't know which comes first…but the recent flap in
which the sugar grower's association was lobbying against
the World Health Organization because their guidelines suggested
that there should be a reduction in sugar intake as part of
a healthy diet and that sugar intake contributed to obesity.
I thought of that when I read one of the more charming chapters
in your book where you were shepherding an Indian tourist
around New York and he took note that there were many fat
people. On the one hand, you have the heightened consciousness
of better foods and diets, and on the other hand lots of obese
people who are not eating right.
AH: Yeah, I don't know how to explain it. Sadly, I think
it's largely socio-economic. There was a study done that was
published in the New York Times, about a study on
weight in NYC. It was fascinating that basically the lower-income
boroughs people's weights increased, the average weight increased
by a fair amount. Whereas on the Upper East Side was where
the lowest average weight was...I don't know how to explain
it. It's not something I study myself. Is it something you
have observed?
RB: Years ago I taught in urban public schools, and the kids
would eat the funkiest snack foods, bacon rinds being a popular
item.
AH: I don't know if it's the choice or it's also comfort,
you know when everything else in your life is not so stable.
RB: Like that sad kid in Monster's Ball.
AH: Exactly, really devastating, and if you couple that with
bad choices of food, it's a really a bad situation. I think
Americans have made great strides, but really, I'd like to
see it hit the mainstream. Which I don't think it has.
RB: It is promising that McDonald's and some of the other
fast-food chains have suffered their first losses ever in
the last few years.
AH: Excellent.
RB: The foodie world is a world inhabited by a relatively
small and exclusive group of people.
AH: Definitely.
RB: What's the criterion for a fine restaurant in New York,
Zagat's?
AH: The New York Times has a four-star system.
RB: How many restaurants in New York have three or more stars?
AH: Ah, hmm, just a couple of dozen, maybe. Not even, maybe
a dozen or so. There are four four-star restaurants now. And
one recently closed because of the economy.
RB: Really? A four-star restaurant closes because of the
bad economy?
AH: Everyone is struggling. Even good restaurants are opening
for breakfast, Sunday brunch. They are using all ways to make
a few extra dollars. The period before this downturn saw unprecedented
growth in the restaurant industry in New York. You just could
not keep up with the number of restaurants opening, every
time you turned around.
RB: I had acquaintances in the business who told me stories
of impromptu parties thrown by young financial services hotshots
and the bill would come to thirty-thousand dollars plus.
AH: Yeah, it was pretty incredible. There was sort of this
heat in the restaurant business, and it was fun while it lasted
[laughs] but it got a little tiresome towards the end.
RB: Do you have a long-term plan of what you intend for your
career?
As
a diner it's frustrating when you go into a restaurant
and you feel like it's been franchised and you are not
really getting that chef's clear vision and that he
or she isn't in the back overseeing things. |
AH: I don't. I realized shortly after I
arrived at the Times that I would like to eventually
write about wine. Although, I still love writing about food.
I knew that I didn't want to become a restaurant reviewer
and so I don't know. This book just happened and it made sense
at the time. My last book was a much different book. Sure,
sometimes I wish I had a plan.
RB: What's it like living with another writer?
AH: It's great.
RB: [laughs]
AH: He's a much better writer, and so when he reads my stuff
he is very helpful. [both laugh]
RB: It's great for you. [laughs]
AH: Yeah, it's great for me, but not great for him. [laughs]
Whenever he writes something I say, "Oh, its great."
[laughs] Actually, it's fabulous. We are on the same schedule.
We work a half a block apart. We go to work together. It's
very sweet. We have lunch together sometimes.
RB: One of the ultimate New York writing couples…
AH: There are lots, Frank Rich and Alex Witchel, and my friend
Jennifer who is a reporter at the paper who set us up, her
husband is a writer.
RB: May be there is a book there?
AH: There are lots of writing couples. [giggles]
RB: What informs your life beyond the foodie culture? You
like old movies, right?
AH: Well, I like both, I all movies. My husband, he is kind
of a movie buff, so we do go to the movies a lot. We are not
theater people, but also I love to read fiction, and we both
love to travel. He is much more well-traveled than I am. One
thing we have discussed is that one day, we would like to
take some time off and travel around the world. Get one of
those around-the-world tickets.
RB: That's a beautiful thing.
AH: He's done it, so he knows how wonderful it is.
RB: And what about life in New York? It's the current hot
word, kind of snarky, isn't it?
AH: The Observer reviewed
my book—they took three books, and they assigned
a plant to each one. I am so bad at math that at first I thought
I lost, but my husband told me that actually mine did grow
the most. But anyway, it was so Observer style. Thank
god. It was funny.
RB: You would never see that in Boston periodicals.
AH: Why is that? Are they afraid of losing advertising?
RB: So it would seem.
AH: Oh really. That's too bad.
RB: Craig Unger, an ex-Observer editor, was at Boston
magazine for a few years, and occasionally he would roil the
waters with cover stories like "Henry Louis Gates: Head-Negro-in-charge"
or "Where are the Good Restaurants? They're in New York."
It was very calculated to get attention, not to inform anyone…
Have you thought of another book after this one?
AH: No. I have lots of little ideas, but they are not well
formed. Any ideas? Anything you want to read about?
RB: Are you looking to be affiliated with a newspaper for
your whole career? Or are you considering branching off it
to do longer works and other media?
AH: Well, I'm happy at the newspaper. I really love the Times.
RB: I won't tell them if you …
 AH:
No, I am. It’s a really great company to work for. And
the one thing that is nice is that I could change beats entirely
if I became miserable. And that's nice to know. There is a
temptation when you are writing for the soft sections of the
paper to get some experience in some of the other sections
of the paper, so that you are taken seriously. I thought about
that in the past. I am leaning against that. Ultimately I
don't think I'll do it. Maybe it will pop up again in a couple
of years or something that I really should do it for my own
satisfaction. To see if could write about crimes in the Bronx
or whatever.
RB: How many deadlines a week are you dealing with?
AH: It's not like that. You are always working, and it's
more like, can you get it in yesterday? One of the things
I like about the Times is that productivity is definitely
rewarded. It's interesting that I ended up there. I come from
a family that definitely did not encourage going to a liberal
arts college or any kind of career that didn't involve a weekly
paycheck with benefits.
RB: You went to Bentley and studied financial analysis…
AH: Yeah. So I rebelled and went the other way and ended
up becoming a writer, and then I ended up at a place where
I do work for a large corporation and have benefits and am
rewarded for hard work and discipline and things like that.
It's like I'm a writer, but I am doing what I was trained
to do as a child by my family. [laughs] So I feel very comfortable
at the Times. In terms of longer pieces, there aren't
really many places for longer food pieces. Calvin Trillin
has done great things at The New Yorker, but he is
one of a kind.
RB: Do you like to read books on food?
AH: That's one of the things I should be doing in my spare
time. When I have time off I want to read fiction.
RB: Like?
AH: Right now I am reading White Noise by Don DeLillo.
Tad thought I would like it.
RB: Are you liking it?
AH: Yeah. I am liking it. I am fascinated with the way his
brain works. The story is not totally captivating. I recently
read Anna Karenina. I just couldn't put it down.
I felt like I was living in that world. I was fully absorbed.
I don't feel that way [with White Noise]. He is extremely
skillful at capturing home life, that sense of all the little
things that are happening and adding up to the actual emotions
you are feeling. I just finished the part where the toxic
event has taken place and I found that less interesting.
RB: DeLillo and some others seem to take their lumps from
some portion of the reading public. I often wonder if it's
just the shock of the new?
AH: It’s interesting that the food page had been happily
going along for twenty years in kind of a monotonous way,
and we did this little thing, and people freaked out. Because
it was like change, and they don't want that new thing.
RB: Didn't Francis Kline do the Metropolitan Diary? That's
the future of newspapers. That's the only thing that will
make newspapers viable for readers, that you have personal
voices. The rest of the news can be gotten elsewhere and quickly…
Anyway, it's been a pleasure.
AH: It's been so nice. Great.
Robert Birnbaum was double promoted
in the 4th grade, was on the swim team in high school and
was a philosophy major at university. He has been a night
club manager, a short order cook, an Earth Shoe salesman,
a secretary in a neurosurgical ward, a public school teacher,
an advertising salesman and, of course, a taxi driver. He
has been an adherent of a certain kind of antediluvian journalism
that eschews publicist's lunches, industrial cocktail parties
or shop openings as either the text or the source of stories.
Most of the time. For the better part of two decades Birnbaum
was the publisher of a now-defunct hip and smart downtown
magazine in Boston. Since the early '90s he has interviewed
over 500 hundred writers — from Martin Amis and Isabel
Allende to Marianne Wiggins and Howard Zinn — and read
over 1000 books. He continues to tilt at windmills while he
tries to be a good father to his son, Cuba Maxwell, and a
congenial companion to his blonde Labrador, Rosie.
Note:
Featured author in November 2000
E-mail: reddiaz@aol.com
Writing interests: Interviews, Photography
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Conniff, Frank
Conroy, Mark
Costello, Elizabeth
Cox, Jim Crace,
Nicholas
Dawidoff, Andre
Dubus III, John
Dufresne, Geoff
Dyer, Tony Earley,
Barbara Ehrenreich,
Gretel Ehrlich, James
Ellroy, Percival
Everett, Richard
Ford, Nick
Fowler, Alan
Furst, Alan
Furst 2002, Anthony
Giardina, James
Gleick, Adam
Gopnik, Allan Gurganus,
Barbara
Haber, David
Hadju, Brian
Hall, Ethan
Hawke, Patricia
Henley, Amanda
Hesser, Christopher
Hitchens #1, Christopher
Hitchens #2, Gabe
Hudson, Siri
Hustvedt, Elizabeth
Inness-Brown, Ben Katchor,
Nora
Okja Keller, Chip
Kidd, Anthony
Lane, Erik
Larson, Don
Lee, Annette
Lemieux, Alan
Lightman, David
Liss, Paul Lussier,
Ruben Martinez, Daniel
Mason, Colum
McCann, Thomas
McGuane, Jenny
& Martha McPhee, Abelardo
Morell, Thisbe Nissen,
Sherwin
Nuland, Tim
O'Brien, Susan
Orlean, Ann
Packer, ZZ
Packer, Tom
Paine, George
Pelecanos, Thomas
Perry, Arthur
Phillips, Samantha
Power, Richard
Price, Christopher
Rice, David
Rieff, Hazel
Rowley, Richard Russo
#1, Richard
Russo #2, John
Sedgwick, Will
Self, David
Shields, Peter
Singer, Ilan
Stavans, Robert
Stone, Darin
Strauss, Manil
Suri, Donna
Tartt, David
Thomson, Nick
Tosches, Brady
Udall, Sarah
Vowell, Kristin
Waterfield Duisberg, Brad
Watson, W.D. Wetherell,
Mark
Winegardner, Howard
Zinn (2001),
Howard
Zinn (2003)
Author portraits: John
Sayles, Howard
Zinn, Robert
Stone, Ana
Castillo, John
Waters, Allen
Ginsberg, Carl
Hiaasen, Carlos
Fuentes, Barbara
Ehrenreich, Eduardo
Galeano, Isabel
Allende, Junot
Diaz, Joan
Didion, James
Ellroy, John
Edgar Wideman, Martin
Amis, Michael
Ondaatje, Richard
Price, Rigoberta
Menchu, Louis
de Bernieres, Studs
Terkel
Photography: "I
am the Son of my Son"
Journal: "A
Reader's Progress"
Links: Review
of Cuba: A Traveler's Literary Companion at Hyde Park
Review of Books | The
Morning News - Robert Birnbaum
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