Harris’ Tome Corner: A 2022 Retrospective Bonus Entry
Wow, 2022 has felt like a really long year, but it also just disappeared. I guess that’s just a side effect of having a baby in the house. Despite the care of a growing newborn demanding so much of my time, I managed to keep my book discussions here from collapsing completely, read some interesting books, and continued to follow my own interests a bit. That’s probably the best a stay-at-home parent can hope for!
Looking back at the earlier entries of 2022, it just feels like such a different world for me as my child grew from a helpless bundle to a curious and energetic eleven-month-old, which makes me wonder how much more time I should devote to this. Still, I read a few more works over the last year that harkened back to a few of my posts this year, so I thought it would be fun to do a little year-in-review retrospective.
It’s hard to believe that it was all the way back in last January that I discussed Single Focus Cookbooks, a variety of culinary nonfiction featuring some of my favorite foods I picked up at the library- it feels so much longer ago than that. A few months ago, I got my partner a waffle maker for her birthday, and we’ve been really enjoying having freshly made waffles at home, courtesy of Dawn Yanagihara’s Waffles: Sweet, Savory, Simple. Straightforward and concise, with clear instructions and illustrative photography, Yanagihara does a lot of justice to a surprisingly versatile pastry, with a good number of savory options in addition to the sweet, breakfasty standards. I’ve had nothing but success with the recipes so far, which, I feel, is a pretty good track record for a cookbook. The only thing missing is a recipe for the Belgian-style Liège waffles my love is craving, so I’ll have to keep on looking for that one!
“It is the time of the water protectors. It has always been. It’s also the time of the Wiindigoo.” Winona LaDuke, To Be a Water Protector: The Rise of the Wiindigoo Slayers, 2020
My discussion of the windigo in Algonquin folklore and popular culture was one of my favorite entries from this year, I think, but I definitely could have expanded on the contemporary indigenous interpretations of the story, and Minnesota Anishibnabe economist and activist Winona LaDuke’s 2020 collection of engaging editorial essays To Be a Water Protector: The Rise of the Wiindigoo Slayers is a great case in point, evoking the windigo story to describe the capitalist interests which continue to threaten indigenous lands and environmental rights. I remembered her most as the vice presidential candidate for the Green Party back in 2000, but her work was surprisingly contemporary here, analyzing a variety of topics related to the indigenous-led opposition to the continued environmental onslaught on indigenous land from the “extreme extraction” deemed necessary to keep profit rising.
Among the numerous essays included, written in a casual and accessible tone, LaDuke has a lot of interesting things to say, though the nature of the book makes it on occasion a little repetitive as she returns to various topics. Her continued use of the windigo story, though, was a compelling lens to couch her reporting on the fights against the Canadian corporations collaborating with US states in pushing through pipelines like Standing Rock in North Dakota and Enbridge Line 3 in Minnesota. Evoking the cultural conception of the “giant murderous monster that used to rampage through the north woods, fueled by an insatiable greed and a relentless desire for human flesh” to, and using the term “Winidiigoo Economics,” that “fossil fuel era capitalism is like the Wiindigoo: a predator economics, the economics of a cannibal.” She makes clear the rapacious nature of these entities as they violate indigenous lands once again in the name of profit, making sure that Alberta tar sands crude keeps flowing, regardless of its environmental effects, putting the well-being of the many at risk for the enrichment of the few. In the end, her discussion of divesting from fossil fuel finance and infrastructure was one of the most interesting points in To Be a Water Protector.
Last summer, in my second culinary post of the year, Quarantine Cocktails, I wrote about some cocktail resources I referenced to help my partner plan my 40th birthday. A book that arrived late to the party, Cocktail Chemistry: The Art and Science of Drinks From Iconic TV Shows and Movies by mixologist Nick Fisher, was a fun and even informative guide. Drawing from his established YouTube channel, along similar lines to Binging with Babish, Fisher recreates various famous pop culture cocktails, from the Dude’s White Russian to the Flaming Homer (some being passible- Don Draper’s Old Fashioned, many being horrible- Archer’s Green Russian, Michael Scott’s One of Everything), and then crafts an improved version, all to explore the various styles and techniques of bartending, from what makes manhattans to flips to fat-washing to rapid infusion. Some of these techniques require perhaps a bit more time and resources than would be useful for beginners, but it is interesting to learn about some cocktail history and see how some of the more elaborate concoctions can be created. I feel this would make a fun gift for a booze loving pop culture aficionado.
“You see, Detective, this symbol is of an evil older than man. In our ancestral memories are planted the seeds of memory about the first rulers of Earth. It is my theory that the ancestry memories of man can sometimes boil to the surface of our minds with visions of this entity. That such a vision, this ancestral memory was what inspired Lovecraft to pen stories about cosmic uncleanliness slumbering in the Pacific ocean.” John Pelan, The Colour Out of Darkness, 2006
Last month, I completed my long delayed discussion of works of fiction that take more than inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft’s stories and use him as a character in their works themselves, published with Fandom Fanatics as Lovecraft Reanimated. Another common trope in a lot of Lovecraftian pastiches is mentioning him as somehow knowing the truth, which I discussed a bit in the post. A great example of this motif is in the boringly edgy 2006 work by John Pelan, The Colour out of Darkness. A fast paced but conceptually empty novella that attempts to dress up its blandness through a heavy dose of “shocking” sex and violence, I didn’t have time to tackle it until later in the year, but really, did I need to bother? Leaden prose and performative misanthropy, though, make it all a flatly unpleasant read. To be honest, what was I expecting?
Pelan brings the Cthulhu cult to the grimy urban wasteland of 21st century Seattle, but aside from the novel setting, does not succeed in building much atmosphere. Amblingly listlessly from scene to scene, the narrative is further broken up by lurid interludes which reveal various historic mass murderers, from Caligula to Jack the Ripper to Pol Pot, as Cthulhu worshippers. This is, frankly, gross, but it’s not like the novella does anything new with any of these tropes anyway, in particular, its assertion that Lovecraft was psychically inspired by “ancestral memories,” again making his virulent racism and fear of difference all based on fact. Compared to the new crop of reimaginings of Lovecraft’s works that have been published recently, examining and critiquing his xenophobia and racism while creating eerie and atmospheric narratives, this one seems, even more, a relic of a creatively bankrupt genre.
Well, glad that’s over!
I’m working on putting down a more fixed schedule for reading themes in 2023, hopefully tackling some long standing goals in my to-read list, and continuing to explore my thoughts here at Harris’ Tome Corner! As much as can be possible hanging out with a growing soon to be toddler, anyway.