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Christmas Spirit

Jeff Guinn is a man who created a world around Santa Claus. Where most of us see a mythical gift-giving saint (or, for the more cynical, a way-overdone marketing scheme), Guinn saw an amazing story as well as a career path.

First, there was Guinn’s book The Autobiography of Santa Claus, which traces the reality of Saint Nicholas (born 280 AD) and the development of the legend surrounding him. Next up was How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas, which fictionalizes actual events of 17th-century England, when peasants marched to save Christmas from the Puritans, who had deemed it sinfully pagan. In that tome, Guinn turns a great literary trick, combining the origins of the candy cane and Oliver Cromwell in the same book.

And finally there was The Great Santa Search, in which Saint Nick descends from the North Pole to defend Christmas from the tide of commercialism.

Guinn, a native of Fort Worth, Texas, and author of several non-Christmas books, says that since food was always part of Christmas, his books always included some fabulous feasts — and readers wanted the recipes. This led Guinn on another research trip.

“It became obvious that to really understand Christmas history all over the world, you should look at the traditional foods people use to celebrate,” he says. The result is Santa’s North Pole Cookbook (Tacher), which Guinn will be touring to publicize this month. He’ll be at Davis-Kidd on Tuesday, December 11th.

Guinn confesses he had no idea what he was getting into with a cookbook.

“I started out wondering if I could find two dozen Christmas recipes from around the world,” he says. “I wound up with just under 400 of them. We had some huge tasting parties over the last two years.”

He settled on 75 recipes, and he’s brought the formula from his “Christmas Chronicles” into the kitchen: do the research then lay out stories and facts to expand your knowledge of Christmas. He says 85 percent of the recipes are taken straight from traditions of specific countries, while a chef friend, who appears as Santa’s private chef Lars, has created some “North Pole specialties.”

“I don’t claim to be in any sense a gourmet chef,” Guinn says, “but I am one of those people who enjoys getting into kitchen and trying to make things. We have a good mix of recipes to challenge world-class chefs and also to be fun for families to prepare together. I wanted to make sure everything in the book could be done at home.”

Among the five breakfasts, six breads, nine appetizers, 16 entrées, nine sides, six drinks, and over a dozen desserts, you’ll find little historical notes like where the word “Christmas” comes from and how turkeys get their name.

Some recipes didn’t make it. “Some things, after four or five tries, we finally decided that’s just the way it tastes,” Guinn admits.

Much of what made it won’t strike you as traditional Christmas fare, unless you’ve done Christmas in, say, Italy.

“In Italy, a lot of people were poor and seafood was readily available, so a lot of Christmas dishes feature some kind of seafood,” Guinn says. He’s given us a recipe for capitone fritto, or fried eel.

Can’t find eel in town? There’s also doro wat, an Ehtiopian chicken stew with cardamom, nutmeg, and ginger root. And there’s the Greek christopsomo (Christ’s bread), a raisin-walnut concoction that kids decorate. From Egypt, there are sweet cookies also enjoyed by Muslims.

There is — gasp! — a fruitcake recipe, as well as the story of fruitcake.

“Fruitcake was originally a road food for armies that would could keep forever,” Guinn explains. “Egyptian pharaohs loved it so much that for a while it was illegal for common people to eat it.”

His book has a recipe for “Black Christmas Fruitcake” from Trinidad and Tobago, whose complicated preparation is part of the festivities.

You’ll also find out that there are no plums in plum pudding; rather, the name comes from putting all the ingredients in a bag and boiling them until they expanded to “plum fill” the bag. Guinn’s recipe has 14 ingredients.

And you’ll learn that “palascinta,” or lemony Hungarian pancakes, were thought to be flown in by Jesus and a band of angels.

“I want to expand your Christmas knowledge while expanding your waistline,” Guinn jokes. “The most wonderful thing for me is realizing Christmas really is global. The means by which Saint Nick delivers his presents change, but everybody at some point sits down to the table and has a big feast.”

Jeff Guinn and “Lars” talk cooking, sign copies of Santa’s North Pole Cookbook, and offer baked goods at Davis-Kidd Booksellers on Tuesday, December 11th, at 5:30 p.m.

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Cover Feature News

Endpapers

You’ve got an A-list of book lovers to give to this Xmas, but you’re already short of ideas? Don’t be. It’s easy as ABC. Here you go: “A” is for art history and astronomy, Abe Lincoln and Alice Waters. “B” is for bacon, Balenciaga, the Bible, and bird songs. “C” is for cartography and craftsmanship.

That family member or friend with an interest in art history? Good chance he or she is familiar with the first two volumes of John Richardson’s biography of Pablo Picasso. Volume three, A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932 (Knopf, $40), is now in stores. Look for it. Stargazers, look up. Starfinder (DK Publishing, $30) is a practical guide to navigating the night sky. Comes complete with maps and a flashlight for viewing the stars; comes with moon maps and a guide to the planets if you’re sticking closer to home: our very own solar system. From DK Publishing too and for that fan of all things Lincoln, see Lincoln: The Presidential Archives ($40) by Chuck Wills. It’s a biography, but it’s also a storehouse of reproduced notes and sketches. Vellum envelopes contain added treasures, including a facsimile of Lincoln’s handwritten Emancipation Proclamation. Go back about a hundred years, and you reach 1776. So reach for 1776: The Illustrated Edition (Simon & Schuster, $65), a new edition of David McCullough’s hugely popular history of the American revolution. The book comes with its own set of reproductions, maps, portraits, and what’s more: more vellum envelopes containing facsimiles of primary documents. And speaking of revolutionary … Alice Waters is at it again in The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution (Clarkson Potter, $35).

While you’re at it in the kitchen … fry up a mess of bacon, be it the everyday variety or artisanal. James Villas — a Southerner by birth, an award-winning food writer by trade — knows how to bring home the bacon, a world of bacon, in The Bacon Cookbook (Wiley, $35), a title that Gourmet magazine just named one of the best cookbooks of the year. The years 1947 to 1957? It may have been a lean postwar decade in Europe, but in Paris and London it was a golden age for Balenciaga and Balmain, Dior and Givenchy. Richard Avedon and Cecil Beaton caught it on film. See for yourself in the pages of The Golden Age of Couture: Paris and London 1947-1957 (Victoria and Albert Museum, $45), edited by Claire Wilcox. Then settle down with another book — the good book: the Bible. But have at hand Karen Armstrong’s The Bible: A Biography (Atlantic Monthly Press, $21.95), a scholarly but readable history of who wrote the Bible and when and a history of biblical interpretation, be it by Jew or gentile. The word for Armstrong: brilliant. But that sound you hear … it’s bird song, and it’s coming from Bird Songs From Around the World (Chronicle Books, $45) by Les Beletsky. It comes with its own built-in digital audio player, and it contains a description of the over 200 songbirds sampled. The world’s within earshot.

The world’s at your fingertips in Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations (Little, Brown, $60). Authored by Vincent Virga and drawn from the collection of the Library of Congress, Cartographia offers an outstanding array of 200 of the most beautiful and important maps the world has known, and that includes imaginary territory: a 17th-century map of the “soul” and William Faulkner’s hand-drawn map of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. Two hundred is the number too in Craft in America: Celebrating Two Centuries of Artists and Objects (Clarkson Potter, $60) by Jo Lauria and Steve Fenton — two centuries in 200 images of signature objects in wood, ceramic, glass, fabric, and metal, from Native Americans to African Americans to Shakers to contemporary artists. Make it or any book from you to a loved one this Christmas. — Leonard Gill

Happy Hanukkah?

Let’s face it: The potato is extraordinarily ordinary, even when it’s baked, fried, mashed, or shaped into pancakes called latkes with a little onion and salt. So how did this workhorse of the Jewish kitchen take center stage for the celebration of Hanukkah in The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming (McSweeney Books, $9.95)?

Kicking and screaming in a pan of hot oil, that’s how, then leaping out a kitchen window into a snowy night for a break beneath a pine tree, too weary to compete with the glitz of Christmas. Happily, this misunderstood latke finds peace and purpose with a family who knows that “different things can often blend together,” much like Lemony Snicket’s holiday storytelling and the infectious illustrations of Lisa Brown. — Pamela Denney

Got a dog- and book-lover on your Xmas list?

Memphian Jack Kenner’s Dogs I’ve Nosed is a collection of Kenner’s photographs of Memphis dogs (all shapes, all sizes), with a few shots thrown in of the owners too, including Cybill Shepherd, proud owner of not one but two German shepherds. For the record (and for the book’s cover): That’s Murphy and Winston (above), Kenner’s own West Highland terriers.

axmen

“Only a Gibson is good enough.”

That was the guitar company’s slogan for years, and for countless musicians around the world, they were right. More than half a century after tinkerers at different companies finally coaxed tunes from an electrified guitar, most performers have still banded together into three fiercely loyal camps: Gibson enthusiasts, Fender fans, and all the rest.

The Gibson Electric Guitar Book (Backbeat Books, $24.95), written by former Gibson Company historian Walter Carter, presents the Gibson side of the “guitar wars,” but it’s not the glowing advertisement you might expect. The author makes that clear from the beginning: “Gibson did not invent the electric guitar and did not invent the solid-body electric guitar (nor did Les Paul).”

Those words might be considered sacrilege coming from anybody else, but Carter presents a detailed — and accurate — history of the development of rock-and-roll’s signature instrument, giving credit where credit is due.

With all its high-tech talk about humbuckers, patent-applied-for pickups, and other gizmos, this book may not appeal to beginners. But it does present an excellent, decade-by-decade overview of Gibson’s classic products, eye-catching designs, and technical contributions. The photos of such classics as a mint-condition 1952 Les Paul or a 1961 “reverse body” Firebird are enough to make any collector drool. — Michael Finger

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We Recommend We Recommend

The Literary Nightlife

Any month is a good month to support your neighborhood branch of the Memphis Public Library. But this November, the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, at 3030 Poplar, is a great place to be.

There’s a performance by Alaskan storyteller and fiddler Ken Waldman on November 13th, a showing of the Scandinavian film Mother of Mine (this month’s offering in the library’s “Wider Angle” film series) on November 14th, and free classes on computer basics for adults throughout the month.

But to start the month, the Central Library is not only the place to be, it’s the place to give. “After Hours,” the Foundation for the Library’s annual fund-raising gala, is Saturday, November 3rd. For $100 per person ($700 for a table of eight), guests will be treated to cocktails and dinner (catered by Another Roadside Attraction), live music (including a performance by the Memphis Men’s Chorale), and a silent auction — so keep your voice down, this here’s a library. Not so silent during “After Hours”: the night’s keynote speaker — political satirist and author Christopher Buckley (pictured).

If you don’t know Buckley’s titles (No Way To Treat a First Lady, Washington Schlepped Here, and, most recently, Boomsday), surely you know the movie Thank You for Smoking starring Aaron Eckhart and Robert Duvall. It was based on Buckley’s book of the same title. And maybe you know another Buckley book: The White House Mess, which was a work of fiction. The current White House mess isn’t fiction, it’s a fact. And surely Christopher Buckley has some words to say on the subject. That’ll be fine. It’s “After Hours.”

“After Hours,” the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, Saturday, November 3rd, 7-11 p.m. For reservations or more information, call 415-2834.

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Book Features Books

C-SPAN’s Book TV Bus Coming to Memphis

C-SPAN’s Book TV Bus, a 45-foot long mobile television production studio, will travel to three Memphis locations on its nationwide tour promoting Book TV’s non-fiction book programming.

The Book TV Bus is traveling the country, stopping at local libraries, bookstores, and book festivals along the way.

The Book TV Bus offers tours of its studio set, participation in an interactive demonstration about Book TV programming, the opportunity to learn how a television show is produced, and a chance to sign up for programming alerts.

Book TV will interview two local authors at Burke’s Books: Phyllis Tickle author of Prayer is a Place, and Molly Crosby, author of American Plague.

Here’s the Memphis schedule:

October 18, 2007 10 AM – 12:30 PM,
Burke’s Books, 936 Cooper Street; 1:30 PM – 3:30 PM, University of Memphis, South Side of Central
between Patterson and Zach Curlin

October 19, 2007, 10 AM – 12 PM,
Borders, 6685 Poplar Ave

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Book Features Books

Outreach

Poetry and prose. Fiction and nonfiction. If you’re interested in the state of the art of writing and if you’re into meeting with and hearing from some authors of note, beginning this week and continuing into November, you’ve got some good pickings. All of them are thanks to the creative-writing department at the University of Memphis, and all of them are free and open to the public.

For starters, what was once River City is now The Pinch, a semiannual literary journal sponsored by the U of M. In its pages, you’ll find fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and photography, and the fall 2007 issue is ready. To celebrate, Burke’s Book Store is hosting a release party on Saturday, October 13th, from 6 to 8 p.m. The event promises readings by visiting authors (as of this writing, Claudia Grinnell and Margaret McMullen, among others), and this issue of The Pinch includes pieces by Lee Gutkind and Dinty Moore, plus an interview with poet Linda Gregerson.

September will also see the announcement of the winners in the journal’s national contest (sponsored by the Hohenberg Foundation) for poetry and fiction. Make that “international” contest. According to assistant managing editor of The Pinch (and MFA student) Matt Pertl, this year’s contest received some 300 submissions worldwide, and that includes authors from the Czech Republic, Denmark, Great Britain, Australia, Columbia, Bolivia, and Japan. Judges Pam Houston (in the short-story category) and Linda Gregerson (in the poetry category) had some reading to do. You’ll have some reading too when The Pinch hits bookstores here and nationwide. Just look for the artful cover by U of M graphic designer Gary Golightly.

For more information on The Pinch, go to http://cas.memphis.edu/english/pinch/home/home.htm.

Care to hear from memoirist Joyce Maynard, novelist Charles Baxter, and poet C.K. Williams? They’re all about to be in town as part of the U of M’s River City Writers Series, now in its 30th year.

Maynard will be reading on October 24th at the Holiday Inn University on Central. Baxter (his The Feast of Love just hit movie theaters, starring Morgan Freeman and Greg Kinnear) will be reading at the Galloway Mansion in Midtown on October 29th. And the Pink Palace will be the setting for a reading by Williams on November 15th. What, no classroom time? Yes, classroom time, when the authors follow up their readings and signings with interviews inside Patterson Hall on the U of M campus.

But according to Rebecca Skloot, who arrived at the U of M this semester to teach creative nonfiction, the idea this year is to get the visiting authors out of class and into the community. “Arts-friendly” venues is what Skloot calls them, and they’re designed to make the writers series more inviting, more accessible — to turn them into a public event.

“When you’re at a reading,” Skloot says, “you want to be in a beautiful place. You want to ‘feel’ the art. You want to have the opportunity to mingle, talk.” She means the readings to be fun.

For more information on this fall’s River City Writers Series, go to http://cas.memphis.edu/english/rcw/season.htm.

What’s more? More poetry — at the very accessible P&H Café when former U of M students read from their work: Burke’s Book Store owner and Flyer contributor Corey Mesler and former Flyer staff member and teacher at the Memphis College of Art Mary Molinary. Onetime professor of English at the U of M and Commercial Appeal columnist Frederic Koeppel will also be reading. So too Matt Cook, a poet from Milwaukee who professes to write poetry for “people who hate poetry.” The reading at the P&H (1532 Madison) is on Thursday, October 11th, at 7 p.m.

Can’t make it to any or all of the above? Doesn’t mean you’re not on the lookout for new writers. See then: Best New American Voices 2008, a collection of short stories just published by Harcourt and drawn from university writing departments, workshops, and conferences. Nationally recognized novelist and short-story writer Richard Bausch is this year’s editor. That’s the same Richard Bausch who teaches creative writing at the — that’s right — University of Memphis.