Whenever I am feeling restless or I have anxiety or I am in need of some form of hope, I go to grocery stores. Typically, I go to Whole Foods where I do the bulk of my food shopping. But my other trips to the grocery store seldom have to do with needing more food to eat. I buy a lot of food normally. I also go to the local Indian, Asian, Mexican, or Middle Eastern stores scattered throughout Lexington, Kentucky, whether I need food or not. Usually, I do not need to purchase any food. For someone who lives half the week by himself and half the week with two kids whose interest in my cooking revolves mostly around pizza, homemade tacos, hamburgers, or roasted chicken, my pantry and freezer are full of food still not eaten. And yet, I buy more. I don’t go to these groceries for food when that Herman Melville Ishmael like restlessness takes over my soul (knocking off people’s hats for no reason). Instead, for some reason, I find comfort in these short day trips in the aisles of non-American products, the frozen breads and fish packed into freezers, the jars of fermented items, the piles of corn husks, the peppers no one else in town carries, the boxes of live blue crabs, the cheeses found nowhere else in town, the spices, the condiments, the snacks. I buy them. I buy them all. I put them in my pantry or my freezer with no expectation that they will be eaten soon. Among these items, I find diversion. Diversion is a survival tool these days, it seems.
I am not the first to observe that food, or the prospect of food, alleviates anxiety or creates diversion from everyday life. Life can be overwhelming. People binge eat when they are anxious. Or they drink heavily. Or they shop. Or they turn to comfort foods. Food author James Beard, too, discovered in food a diversion. A 300 pound, 6 foot 3 inch gay man in a culture that made being gay a crime (or labeled it as degenerate), Beard allowed food to divert him from the pain of hiding his sexuality and the loneliness that often followed. Beard’s biographer, John Birdsall, makes that point clear in the recent publication of The Man Who Ate Too Much. Birdsall’s narrative begins by telling us that Beard was depressed and lonely most of his life, marked by anxiety and lacking self-worth. No matter how popular he became, no matter how much he advanced food writing or the country’s recognition of food as more than sustenance, Beard suffered. He needed diversions. In that sense, Beard was no different from the rest of us, whether we write or cook or simply need to shift our focus in what likely has been the most anxious time of most of our lives, from a pandemic to an election to quarantines to…to many depressing things.
Pandemics beg for diversion. Making sourdough at home. Baking. Being online too much. Doom scrolling. During this pandemic, I’ve been thinking about James Beard, a food writer I’ve long admired, as I, too, shift between various diversions. I’ve been thinking a lot about Beard. I’ve been identifying with Beard. I’m not exactly sure why. I look nothing like Beard. I am 5 foot 7 inches, not gay, and closer to 170 pounds. I don’t feel alienated in American culture the way Beard did. I’ve never published a cookbook or appeared on television to talk about cooking or taught cooking classes, all things Beard did during his life. I like to cook, but that hardly makes me think about this particular food writer as opposed to Anthony Bourdain or Jonathan Gold or any other food writer whose work I read. Why am I, during this pandemic, suddenly relating to James Beard? Has COVID, divorce, the recognition of global deaths, massive unemployment, boredom, and other related items pushed me to make a bizarre identification with Beard? Do I suddenly think I’m Beard because I need a new type of diversion?
Relating is another diversion tactic. It’s not uncommon to relate to a cook book author during or after a crisis. I think about the movie Julie and Julia, the story of a woman replicating the recipes of Julia Child after being disillusioned when she witnessed 9–11 victims mistreated. In the process of dealing with this “trauma,” she forms an identification with the celebrated cook book author and TV host. In this way, Julia Child, not the real person but the image of a person, stands in for one’s own self. One deals with life by transforming one’s self into the image of someone else. The narrative asks: if I cook as if I am Julia Child, do I become Julia Child? Does her persona become mine? Do I absorb the myth into my daily life? I am not positive I want to become James Beard or even cook James Beard’s recipes, though I own several of his books. But can James Beard’s prospective presence persuade me to be less anxious during a highly anxious moment in time? Am I merely looking to absorb a myth into my version of this pandemic?
Myths don’t need details. They only need narrative. I am not a James Beard biographer. I am not a James Beard expert. The most I know about James Beard comes from Birdsall’s biography, a recent Sporkful show about Beard, his cookbooks I’ve read, the lore associated with his name, references to Beard in various writings or social media posts. When I write down these points, I think of Roland Barthes, called out by a student for lecturing wrongly on Buddhism during a seminar. “Who said I was an expert on Buddhism?” Barthes responded. When I identify with Beard, I don’t identify because I know so much about him or because I am an expert. I know very little. I have, though, a narrative. That narrative speaks to me in ways a direct representation, like a biography, cannot. I am seldom interested in direct representation (i.e., X must accurately stand for Y). I seldom care for representation (James Beard was X) or the work one might do to uncover faulty representation (i.e., “Yeah but what about when he said this offensive thing…or did this offensive thing…”). Ours is a global culture of fuck ups. Every representation is faulty. I don’t need to uncover in search of a truth. Often, when I am interested in someone or something, I identify for reasons unknown to me. I resist explanation. I build or absorb myths and their narratives I imagine or fabricate. I, like most of us, identify with myth.
For all his fame, for all his writings, for all his recognition, few people talk about James Beard’s food. Was it good? Did it taste good? How did he season food? Did he actually cook the recipes he wrote? Who has ever enjoyed a James Beard meal? This, too, is a myth that could be uncovered. He briefly ran a catering business. He taught cooking to rich women. He cooked. But what did his food taste like? People can remember what Alice Waters or Jeremy Trotter or Emeril Lagasse or Ina Garten, or even Julia Child’s food tastes or tasted like. They either ran restaurants or, as they cooked on TV, shared what they made. Someone tasted their food. Who tasted Beard’s food? Where? When? I don’t know. I don’t need to know. I just want to ask the question. That question helps shape my identification with curiosity and wonder. Curiosity and wonder, for me, are preferable to expertise.
Myth works best when it is accompanied by mystery. Something has to remain unknown for a myth to retain its power. A president can claim election fraud and have others believe him precisely because there is no evidence (the unknown). I can read 23 horoscopes a day and believe that some or all of them predict my future precisely because I have no evidence that stars dictate my life (the unknown). I don’t know if James Beard was actually a good cook. I can believe he was. I can tell myself he was. But was he? Who gives a shit. However I ask the question or answer it, I create what I might call a useless myth. It’s a myth. But it has no value or purpose other than asking or saying or joking or….whatever. It’s useless. Representations are often based on value: need to know; facts; real news; truth, uncovering. I embrace the useless (who gives a shit). I follow the narratives of useless myths, such as: I identify with James Beard during this pandemic. Why? I don’t know. And any reason I have is likely useless.
I don’t want to know the answer to the question regarding the quality or lack of quality in James Beard’s food. I only want the useless myth. Often, my daughter will ask me about a celebrity and my supposed knowledge of her latest crush or discovery. Her questions are something like: Do you know Harry Stiles? Do you know The 1975s? Do you know….and I’ll respond: “Yeah, we used to date,” or “Sure. He owes me $10,” or “We toured France a few years back, but I needed to go solo.” My answers frustrate her. They are not direct representations; they don’t confirm or deny any real knowledge. They are useless myths I throw out off the top of my head. “Daddy, do you know Taylor Swift?” “Yeah, she has a house not too far from here…I told her to stop calling me because I’m not interested. She bought me a teddy bear.” My responses are useless myths. Maybe she laughs. Maybe she decides eventually to stop asking me about her latest fifteen minute pop culture interest. Maybe she ignores me. Maybe she gets a little curious as to what the fuck her dad is talking about. That’s what useless myths are for. They don’t need to continue a conversation or make the other person feel justified, comfortable, confirmed in belief. The useless myth is for me and the narratives I need, or others need, for diversion. 300,000 Americans might be dead in a month or two. A diversion is not a bad thing.
What I identify with, then, is the unknown. Too much of our daily lives is predicated on the idea of the known. Online publications live off of that predication in their endless, recycled headlines that follow an event, tragedy, election, or something else. We know how this happened. Here’s why Biden won. Here’s why Clinton lost. Here’s why America is racist. Here’s why America isn’t racist. Our bellies are full with the known, full to the point of needing to throw up or finally take a shit. At some point, you have to shit out the known. If you don’t, then, also like my daughter, you become incredibly backed up and constipated. She is very constipated. A useless myth is like taking a needed crap. It clears out some of the supposedly known that is stuffed down our throats every fucking minute on social media, in conversation, and throughout our lives, and leaves some space for the unknown. It leaves space for diversion.
Recently, I started to write an academic article about Beard. Part of my research has me ordering some used James Beard books I found on Abebooks for a few dollars apiece. For no reason other than its price, I ordered James Beard’s Salads, a thin 60 page or so work on how to make salad. Do we need to be told how to make a salad? I make salad almost every day for lunch and usually post pictures of my lunch salad to Instagram for no particular reason. Maybe someone among my almost paltry 600 followers has an unknown (“What does that dude eat for lunch?”) and I am providing the known (“salad”). I don’t need James Beard to teach me how to make a salad. I already know how. Maybe I’m an expert at salad making, too. Maybe I’m not. Who gives a shit? I’m not sure anybody needs to be taught to make a salad since its bar for achieving expertise is quite low. Without shipping, the book cost me 98 cents. When the book arrived, I arbitrarily opened it, page 41, and discovered a recipe for “Scandinavian Cucumber Salad.” “The cucumber,” Beard writes, “is about as universal as a vegetable as there is, and is found in salads around the world.” This is a statement of the known. It is not a useless myth. I, too, include cucumbers in many of my salads. Nothing in this statement leaves me with the unknown. Maybe I shouldn’t turn to recipes in my identification. The recipe, as I wrote a year ago in this space about my divorce, is not always the best guide to life. That’s why I own so many cookbooks, but follow so few recipes. So much must remain unknown. So much must remain useless. At that point, like my unneeded shopping, we can obtain some needed diversion.
