I see that Dwight Garner of the New York Times got himself
into some tepid (as opposed to hot) water with his review of Marja Mills's The Mocking Bird
Next Door, about Harper Lee. The
book sounds pretty ropey, but our man got in trouble (or at least became the
object of bogus internet outrage) with this para:
‘"The Mockingbird Next Door" conjured mostly sad
images in my mind. Ms. Lee has a regular booth at McDonald's, where she goes
for coffee. She eats takeout salads from Burger King on movie night. When she
fishes, she uses wieners for bait. She feeds the town ducks daily, with seed
corn from a plastic Cool Whip Free container, calling "Woo-hoo-HOO!
Woo-hoo-HOO!" Somehow learning all this is worse than it would be to learn
that she steals money from a local orphanage.’
This
has caused Garner to be denounced in some quarters as an elitist, snob, and fast-food hater. Full disclosure, I have
eaten and drunk (modestly) with Dwight Garner a few times, though none of them
at all recently, and in any case he certainly doesn’t need me to defend him,
but come on, there genuinely IS something sad about having a regular booth at
MacDonald’s. And eating Burger King
takeout salads is deeply, unbearably sad in any circumstance, even more so on
movie night. Isn’t it? To Kill a Mocking Bird, as I recall is
full of foodie stuff about lane cake and crackling bread and molasses.
In
any case, how much of a food snob can Garner be when he revealed in a Times
article in 2012, that he considers the peanut butter and pickle sandwich, “the work-at-home writer’s friend”?
He writes, “The peanut butter and pickle sandwich is one of those
unlikely pairings that shouldn’t work, but does … I’ve been happily eating
these distinctive little sandwiches for years. The vinegary snap of chilled
pickle cuts, like a dash of irony, against the stoic unctuousness of peanut
butter. The sandwich is a thrifty and unacknowledged American classic.”
OK,
I don’t think he should have been allowed to get away with irony and stoic
unctuousness, but he goes on to tell us, “There’s a consistent but low-level
Internet buzz about the combination, just as there is about the other unlikely
things people like to marry with peanut butter and place between bread slices:
mayonnaise, olives, thick onion slices (this was Hemingway’s favorite
sandwich), horseradish, bacon, Marmite (in England) and Vegemite (in
Australia), to name but a few.”
You’ll
get no sandwich elitism from me; but hell, peanut butter and onion? Peanut butter and Marmite? They sounds just vile. But then again, no doubt some people (my own wife
for instance) feel the same way about my own “work-at-home
writer’s friend” – the peanut butter and cheese sandwich. Works great as part
of your high fat diet! The cheese in
the pictures below is “golden Cheshire” but something a bit pokier is probably
better.
I’m not interested in
converting anybody here, but what I think Hemingway, Garner and Nicholson have
in common, is that we consider peanut butter to be a savory food – in which case other savory ingredients go with it
just fine. But there are members of another
tribe who consider it a sweet food
(and cheapo peanut butter actually contains added sugar) so having it in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is the way to go, because it’s just
more of the same.
And I’ve been I wonder how many other foods are like
this, and can go either way; sweet or savory.
Quite a few I’m sure – rice, pancakes, for instance – but the one that
came first to my mind was the crumpet.
A crumpet obviously needs butter but then it’s much
improved (it seems to me), by the addition of melted cheese, or Marmite, or
Gentleman’s relish, or whatever: savory flavors. Some people however take a sweeter view.
I was once at a wedding when several of the guests
became outraged because they were served crumpets that had been pre-spread with
butter and jam, “Bloody fools!” some old buffer, growled. “Everybody knows
crumpets are a savory not a dessert!” I
agreed completely, but probably it would have been safer to agree in any
case. Fights have been known to break
out at weddings over much smaller matters.
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