• The Artists And Writers Cookbook James Franco
• The Artists And Writers Cookbook
• The Artists And Writers Cookbook James Franco

On the cover of The Artists’ and Writers’ Cookbook, a pile of chocolate chip cookies, a spaghetti plate, and an oversized eggplant peak out from a bed of leaves that frame a lush, purple background. The richly illustrated cookbook is an updated version of a book released in 1961 that featured contributions from Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Harper Lee, with an introduction written by Alice B Toklas.

Collection of dozens/hundreds of recipes from artists and writers (photographs of contents pages available upon request), with intro by Alice B Toklas. Printed in purple ink and avocado green ink on cream-colored pages--cover is cream with purple and avocado-ink names, as pictured on Amazon.

For the modern edition, the artist and writer Natalie Eve Garrett sourced stories (and actual recipes) from Marina Abramović, James Franco and a set of literary celebrities. Original illustrations by Amy Jean Porter animate vignettes about heartbreak, political violence and loss, and bring unusual recipes laden with offbeat ingredients (breast milk, a camel, a wooden toboggan) to life.

“I’m a huge fan of fabulism and fairytales and surrealism,” Garrett explains. In selecting contributors, she was drawn to recipes that “cultivate whimsy”, carry specific memories, and suggest “imaginary foods”, as she put it.

Abramović’s recipes for “essence drink”, “fire food” and “pain” have a surreal, otherworldly charm. Abramović challenges the reader to “keep a small meteorite stone in your mouth”, “wait until your tongue becomes a flame”, and perhaps most amusingly, “mix fresh breast milk with fresh sperm milk”. She also instructs the reader to drink the concoction on the night of an earthquake.

Obviously, these commands are conceptual, not practical. In a similar vein to Yoko Ono’s book of poems and drawings titled Grapefruit, Abramović treats the recipe like a literary form to inject with creative ruminations and existential quandaries. The corresponding illustration refers to The Artist is Present, a performance Abramović did at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2010 in which she stared at museum visitors who took turns sitting at an empty chair positioned across from her. Porter’s drawing shows two clunky wooden chairs facing each other; in place of people, though, she positions two floating balls of cabbage. Below the illustration, it reads: “13 leaves of uncut green cabbage … to be consumed on a solar eclipse.”

The Artists And Writers Cookbook James Franco

Conceptual or whimsical though its recipes may be, the book is, as Garrett put it to me, “anchored in the everyday physicality of cooking and eating”. James Franco’s approach to making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, for instance, is simple and utilitarian. Franco salts this “recipe” with personal information (for instance, in elementary school, Franco ate PB&Js, not Sloppy Joes; he prefers ginger ale to Diet Coke) that feels pertinent to understanding his inner life in some inexplicable way.

“A PB&J is the perfect thing to hold while you’re doing other things,” he writes, and Franco is well known for, if nothing else, being a multitasker. Calling a PB&J “an artist’s best friend”, he then shares his mother’s philosophy about food: “It’s about the work, so don’t let your food take time away from your writing or acting or film-making or whatever.”

The artist Jessica Stoller’s recipe for “male gaze macarons” infuses a simple dessert with a sass-riddled call-back response to street harassment. Pert, appealing, and highly evocative, the treat is supposed to symbolize sexual desire. To make the dessert, Stoller instructs us to combine three egg whites, a quarter cup refined sugar and one cup finely ground almonds with “your best catcall” and “a pinch of straight porn”. She instructs: “With rapt eyes, beat in refined sugar and continue mixing aggressively until egg whites are glossy, fluffy, and hold soft peaks for all to see.” To drive home the point, she gives examples of true-to-life catcalls: “Let me get some of that SUGAR!! Smile for me??”

Personal pronouns take on significant emotional heft in passages of Joyce Carol Oates’s “Recipe in Defiance of Grief”. Slowly, the reader realizes that this is a reflection on the last meal her husband prepared for her before he passed away. Making scrambled eggs, according to Oates, is “one of those gestures thrilling in poetry but unrealizable in life because in life we are often not strong enough to execute the wishes we have set for ourselves though these are laudable wishes”. Oates’s recipe involves chopped onion, minimal butter, and small pieces of smoked salmon. Two candles – one lit, one unlit – illustrate the page.

In her recipe for Soup Joumou, the author Edwidge Danticat stirs in the topics of slavery, family history, and the import of Haitian Independence Day. Forced into slavery, and surviving despite horrific conditions, her ancestors “dreamed of shelter [and] food”. She continues: “They dreamed what they left behind, but they also imagined us, who lay ahead. They envisioned us into existence. They loved us.” Danticat provides detailed instructions for combining macaroni, garlic, pumpkin, cabbage, carrots, celery, potatoes, turnips, lime, onion and herbs.

These recipes, and others included in this collection, are insightful and surprising – with stories that mix art-making, writing, and cooking. Each ingredient in a soup, color used in an illustration, and word modifying a sentence provides a trace of deep-seeded emotional experience. Ultimately this cookbook is about what Garrett called a “trail of mistakes” that reveals the “little indignities” of being human: “Eggshells in the batter, laying down the wrong color in a painting, beginning a draft with a lonely ‘Hello my name is …’”

• The Artists’ and Writers’ Cookbook is published by powerHouse books in the US. To order a copy for $30 go to powerhousearena.com.
  

The Tall Book of Nursery Tales

Published by Harper & Row, New York/Evanston(1944)

ISBN 10: 0060250658ISBN 13: 9780060250652

Quantity Available: 1

From: Gargoyle Books, IOBA(La Mesa, CA, U.S.A.)

The Artists And Writers Cookbook

About this Item: Harper & Row, New York/Evanston, 1944. Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. No Jacket. Rojankovsky, Feodor (illustrator). First Edition Later Printing. Exquisite condition on this very collectible collection of 24 nursery tales, each enhance by the strange but beautiful color illustrations of renowned Russian artist Feodor Rojankovsky. 120 pages. A First Edition from 1944, but a much later printing (post-1970 due to presence of ISBN on rear board). NOT the modern reprint! Very tall, slim hardcover is in Near Fine condition: very clean, binding secure & straight, pages white, colors bright. Old gift inscription on verso of ffep in pen; NO other writing/underlining/highlighting/coloring; NOT ugly ex-lib. Only flaws are slightly bumped corners, heaviest at both ends of spine, which have actually torn through the colored paper to underlying boards (sounds worse than it looks). A truly beautiful copy, but sadly, missing its DJ! Please see our 5 photos! Description & photos copyright Gargoyle Books 2016. Same Day Shipping on all orders received by 2 pm Weekdays (Pacific time); Weekends & holidays, next business day. Seller Inventory # 013669

The Artists And Writers Cookbook James Franco

More information about this seller | Contact this seller4.