An Oyster the size of Manhattan

Franklin Roosevelt at Antoines, 1937

I remember being a disappointed the first time I had Oysters Rockefeller. I wasn't a big fan of spinach so the fancy dish was lost on me. I associated it with New York, but apparently it was the invention of Antoine's Restaurant in New Orleans back in 1901 in honor of John D. Rockefeller. The original green puree had no spinach, but rather was a mixture of parsley, watercress and other herbs, which lends itself better to seafood.

A few years back, Mark Kurlansky chose to tell the history of New York from the perspective of the oyster, which has an underlying midden of shells discarded by native Americans centuries ago. On the surface, it seems like a great idea for a book, but Kathryn Hughes questions his thesis in this review. In her mind, Kurlansky has taken the single commodity history genre one book too far in trying to tell a complex history through oyster anecdotes. Maybe so, but at a pence on amazon.co.uk it is hard to resist.

I grew up in Northwest Florida, where just about every driveway was paved with oyster shells. The oysters came from Apalachicola, the marshes of Louisiana and other Gulf water habitats. It's a little smaller oyster than you get in New York, but tastier in my opinion. You don't need to put anything on it except a little bit of Tobasco sauce to enjoy it.

Kurlansky tells us that when you eat an oyster raw you are eating a living being, replete with still-functioning brain, liver and sensory organs. Maybe the oyster squeals when you bite into, but I think the bed of ice it has been sitting on numbs the pain.

Britons were long familiar with the shellfish, and I imagine the Dutch were too. Cultivation of oyster beds off the coast of England dated back to Roman times. The church tried to contain the passion for shellfish by proscribing days when they were not to be eaten, but I don't imagine well-heeled Britons followed these church laws anymore than local fishermen did.

America's oldest oyster bar is in Boston. Not to say there weren't others before Union Oyster House in Faneuil Hall, but they are lost in history. What amazed me was how expensive oysters were in the Northeast. A plate of oysters on the half shell would cost you as much as a bushel from Apalachicola or Cedar Key, Florida. Of course, you have to shuck them yourself, which I was quite good at one point.

Pacific oysters took root in Japan and have now been introduced throughout the world, and used to regenerate oyster beds in England. They have become the most popular oysters in the world.

Maybe it would have been more interesting to follow oysters around the world, as Kurlansky did Cod and Salt, rather than confining himself to one particular region.

O Pioneers!

It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer. Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions. I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters. Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs. Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77. I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not. Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Colonel

Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud. -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!

Dispatches from Vilnius

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