IN THE good old days, when a man went through his midlife crisis, he bought a big noisy motorcycle or found a 24-year-old yoga instructor who really understood him. Nowadays, it seems, he learns to cook. And then he writes a book about it.
Bob Spitz's "The Saucier's Apprentice" is just the latest example of this trend. Bill Buford's wonderful "Heat," which was recently published in paperback, became a national bestseller last year, telling his tale of dropping a high-falutin' job as fiction editor of the New Yorker magazine to become a galley slave at Mario Batali's Babbo and then following his ever-increasing passion to Italy.
Spitz's conversion wasn't as extreme as Buford's and perhaps for that reason neither is the resulting book as accomplished. But it is a lot of fun and told in mostly high spirits. Think of it as a really good culinary beach book -- a combination of confessional, cookbook and travelogue.
In fact, I raced through it in a day and found it very enjoyable, which is quite a credit to Spitz the writer considering how irritating I found Spitz the main character.
It's a curious book, starting with the title. A funny pun, for sure, but not at all original. In fact, it's borrowed from a very good, quite well known book by Raymond Sokolov. Granted, that version of "Saucier's Apprentice" was published in the '70s, but it is still very much in print. Choosing to take somebody else's title, and one so widely known, is a strange beginning.
Though ostensibly similar -- two middle-aged, successful, male writers discover cooking -- the differences between "Saucier" and "Heat" are interesting. In the first place, while Buford never really deals with his motivations for the quest (it appears like some kind of fever that strikes without warning), Spitz explores his reasons in quite a lot of depth, which, as it turns out, is a mixed blessing.
Midlife crisis time
"THE SAUCIER'S Apprentice" begins with the author deep in the dumps. He's just turned 50. His long-awaited project, a book on the Beatles, has just been published (and, though he doesn't make much of it, to very good reviews). His marriage has just ended. And his girlfriend seems like a real piece of work (of course, with all his whining, who wouldn't be cranky back?).
In short, he's betwixt and between and the only thing that gives him pleasure, he decides, is cooking lavish dinner parties for his friends.
