Staff Picks: Meta, Menudo, Mandates
Camille Claudel.
Jim Harrison, , was a gourmand with a trencherman’s appetite—food comes up in his several times. Though he evokes an atmosphere of overindulgence, the man was sensible and had rules for his dinner guests, the first being very practical considering: “No one is allowed to use cocaine before the meal when I cook … Cocaine creates a sort of bubblegum nimbus that slaughters the palate and sensuous capacities, in addition to shrinking the wee-wee and tearing holes in the social fabric.” Jane and Michael Stern once described Harrison’s food writing as a “combo plate of Hunter S. Thompson, Ernest Hemingway, Julian Schnabel, and Sam Peckinpah.” The years didn’t change him, evidenced by the new, posthumous , a collection of essays from the 2000s in which Harrison goes on about “left-leaning, spit-dribbling, eco-freak readers” who wouldn’t want to eat freshly killed meats and suggests that Ronald Reagan “eat my menudo in order
