rachelmanija (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rachelmanija) wrote2010-01-26 12:05 pm
rachelmanija) wrote2010-01-26 12:05 pm
Cleaving: a story of marriage, meat, and obsession, by Julie Powell
A memoir on butchery and, alas, an extra-marital affair, by the author of Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously
. (Loved the original blog. Did not love the book adaptation, which lost all the charm and humor of the blog’s food-writing in a morass of uninteresting memoir.
Met Julie herself at a book event several years ago, and learned via the horse’s mouth that she has double-D breasts (“Damn hard to find a good bra when you have tits like mine.”) She was very drunk. As was I. As were all the writers present. We were at a promotional dinner with very bad food but fairly good wine. Two of the guys escorted her to her hotel room to pour her into bed. One returned with a dollar bill crammed down the front of his pants, and the other one informed us that Julie had felt up his cell phone.)
So, Cleaving! I did not get very far into this book, so I’m only giving my impressions of what I did manage to read before giving up. Julie gets interested in butchery and becomes a butcher’s apprentice. Meanwhile, she’s having an affair, and her husband is also having an affair, and she knows and he knows but this is not an open marriage so they are unhappy, and everything reminds her of sex and sausages are like penises and rib racks are like vaginas and gloves are like condoms and joints split like marriages and blah de blah blah blah. Guys, it is all so TMI! Here is a representative quote (she is getting text messages):
Two messages, two men.
The first: How’s the meat?
The second: Mhm.
Does everyone talk like this, in these codes? I decipher both perfectly. One pulls at me with a thousand strands of anxiety and obligation and love and solicitude and guilt; the other with a single knowing yank, the guttural syllable that brings me to heel.
To both my answer is the same: I’m on my way.
It’s not merely the thought of how turned off I would be by a lover texting me a Neanderthal grunt. (“Ayla! UNH!”) It’s that this isn’t sordid TMI alchemized into art. It’s just sordid TMI.
Too much boyfriend, not enoughroller derby butchery.
Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession
. (Loved the original blog. Did not love the book adaptation, which lost all the charm and humor of the blog’s food-writing in a morass of uninteresting memoir. Met Julie herself at a book event several years ago, and learned via the horse’s mouth that she has double-D breasts (“Damn hard to find a good bra when you have tits like mine.”) She was very drunk. As was I. As were all the writers present. We were at a promotional dinner with very bad food but fairly good wine. Two of the guys escorted her to her hotel room to pour her into bed. One returned with a dollar bill crammed down the front of his pants, and the other one informed us that Julie had felt up his cell phone.)
So, Cleaving! I did not get very far into this book, so I’m only giving my impressions of what I did manage to read before giving up. Julie gets interested in butchery and becomes a butcher’s apprentice. Meanwhile, she’s having an affair, and her husband is also having an affair, and she knows and he knows but this is not an open marriage so they are unhappy, and everything reminds her of sex and sausages are like penises and rib racks are like vaginas and gloves are like condoms and joints split like marriages and blah de blah blah blah. Guys, it is all so TMI! Here is a representative quote (she is getting text messages):
Two messages, two men.
The first: How’s the meat?
The second: Mhm.
Does everyone talk like this, in these codes? I decipher both perfectly. One pulls at me with a thousand strands of anxiety and obligation and love and solicitude and guilt; the other with a single knowing yank, the guttural syllable that brings me to heel.
To both my answer is the same: I’m on my way.
It’s not merely the thought of how turned off I would be by a lover texting me a Neanderthal grunt. (“Ayla! UNH!”) It’s that this isn’t sordid TMI alchemized into art. It’s just sordid TMI.
Too much boyfriend, not enough
Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession
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So I flipped to the end to see how it resolved.
Answer: it doesn't! Status quo is exactly the same at the beginning and the end, except that she knows more about butchering!
Which leads me to think of the whole thing as even more of a colossal waste of time.
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