Candy and Me (A Love Story), by Hilary Liftin

[rachelmanija]

I hate to go for the obvious line, but reading Liftin's memoir about how much she loves cheap, sugary candy really is very much like eating cheap, sugary candy: it's fun in small doses, but insubstantial and not nourishing, and will leave you nauseated if you devour too much in one sitting.

Liftin loves candy. Well, actually, I think what she really loves is sugar. She eats pure sugar as a child, then graduates to frosting, marshmallow eggs, circus peanuts, tootsie rolls, and many other forms of candy which I dislike because they mostly taste of sugar. Anyone who has no real preference for Jelly Belly jelly beans over the sugar-tasting generic thick-shelled variety is a person with whom any discussion of candy preferences would be limited to, "Really? That stuff? You really like that stuff? Wow."

Here is the condensed version of Candy and Me: I ate a pound of some type of sugary candy at a sitting. Meanwhile, something happened in my life. Then I got into another type of sugary candy, and ate a pound of that at a sitting. Meanwhile, something else happened. I worried that maybe I was eating too much candy, but since nothing bad ever happened because of it, I went on eating pounds and pounds of candy. Then I met the best guy in the world. Oh my God! I love him so much. He understands that I love eating candy. We got married and lived happily ever after and I still eat a lot of candy, though not as much as I did when I was young. The end.

Like many memoirs, the basic problem with this book is that it has enough content for an amusing feature article. The other problem is that Liftin's relationship with candy has nothing to do with her life in general, though she periodically tries to make it seem like it does by hazarding that perhaps she wants to find the sweetness in life or comfort herself or something. She's not professionally involved with candy, she doesn't have an eating disorder, and she doesn't write about the history of candy or how it relates to pop culture or her own culture. There's candy, and there's her life, and the two don't really have much to do with each other. This makes the book seem thin and gimmicky.

I was thinking about food memoirs or other personal food accounts that I have liked, and the ones that occur to me offhand were written by food critics (Ruth Reichl's Tender to the Bone and Comfort me with Apples and Jonathan Gold's Counter Intelligence), chefs (Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential and A Cook's Tour), amateur chefs (Michael Ruhlman's Soul of a Chef), or by people who see food as being intimately connected to culture, and to personal and cultural identity (oyceter's food posts). All of these can be quite funny, but also (even Gold's book, which is actually a restaurant guide-- and is one of my very favorite books on Los Angeles) make the connection between the food they love and the most essential aspects of their selves, and I think that's what Liftin's book lacks. I know she loves sugar. But even by the end of a book devoted to her love of sugar, I'm not quite sure why she loves it, or what it really means to her.

Comments

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

You're the second person on my flist to discuss this book today.

Rest assured I will only touch Jelly Belly, and even then only certain flavors because some flavors taste only of sugar. And circus peanuts...dear god, who created that particular abomination anyway? I wouldn't eat those again on a dare.

[hokelore.livejournal.com]

And circus peanuts...dear god, who created that particular abomination anyway? I wouldn't eat those again on a dare.

My granny used to give us those. Luckily we had a dog that liked them.

[gfjames.livejournal.com]

Speaking of candy, don't know if you heard Cybele May this past weekend on KCRW but, she's a playwright and fiction writer who also has a couple of blogs. This one is on candy:

http://www.typetive.com/candyblog/

Also, a couple of writers who use food as a mainstay in their fiction:

Laurie Colwin - Home Cooking (and more books)

and

Banana Yoshimoto - Kitchen (and other work as well)

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the pointer to the candy blog-- that's great.

I love Kitchen, and I enjoyed one of Colwin's books, though I forget if it was the one you mention or another.

[gfjames.livejournal.com]

The interview that Cybele May gave on KCRW was pretty cool--you can tell she's a serious candy freak. And she does wax poetic on that blog about candy.

Everyone one of Colwin's books uses food as a backdrop, but a couple are non-fiction and deal strictly with recipes and entertaining.

I should probably ask my wife about the best food books, she's a trained chef (CAC in San Pablo, ACI in Flagstaff, Ecole de Savignac in Paris) and keeps pushing books at people.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I guess Steve Almond's Candyfreak didn't give me much sense of the meaning of candy in his life, but it was a lot of fun to read. It's less a memoir than an investigation of small candy companies in America, and I think it's worth reading just for the descriptions of the candy-factory assembly lines.

[sdn.livejournal.com]

i didn't like this book much (and you know how much i love candy) -- i am always a little unnerved by a book in which the great climax is MEETING A HUSBAND.

also, i have the exact opposite taste in candy.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I love your icon.

Yeah, my taste in candy is completely the opposite too, except that I also prefer milk to dark chocolate. But generally, I prefer desserts (pie, ice cream, cake, etc) to candy, and prefer vividly flavored, not too sweet candy to sugary candy. Also, I like candy that crunches and nuts in chocolate, both of which she dislikes.

[oyceter]

She doesn't like crunchy candy?? Or nuts in chocolate? Travesty!

Hee, obviously I do like those too.

[canandagirl.livejournal.com]

You prefer milk chocolate to dark? I can't believe I'm your friend. However, I do agree with you that I prefer desserts over candy. I have to say that I've outgrown the urge to consume copious amounts of Skittles.

You know, although I have a strange attraction to unnaturally colored sweets (blue icing roses on cakes comes to mind), I draw a serious line at those liquid cinnamon drops. That's just wrong on so many levels.

[canandagirl.livejournal.com]

I was half-expecting you to say that she married a box of candy. Talk about a relationship that wouldn't last. I have to admit to a love-affair of chocolate. However, I can't really be that serious, since I left a bag of good Swiss chocolate in the trunk of my car for months. I found the melted goo this morning. I kinda feel like I've just lost a good friend in a freak train accident.

My thoughts about the book? It gives me hope that my story will be published someday.

[oyceter]

I was thinking about food memoirs or other personal food accounts that I have liked, and the ones that occur to me offhand were written by food critics (Ruth Reichl's Tender to the Bone and Comfort me with Apples and Jonathan Gold's Counter Intelligence), chefs (Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential and A Cook's Tour), amateur chefs (Michael Ruhlman's Soul of a Chef), or by people who see food as being intimately connected to culture, and to personal and cultural identity ([info]oyceter's food posts).

Aww, thank you!

Coincidentally, I just finished reading Reichl's Comfort Me With Apples today! I like reading about food... combines two of my favorites things (books and food, of course).