Salon.com > James Norton

Chow down, dude

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 10:32:00 +0000

Web cartoonist Chris Onstad describes the genesis of his comic culinary work, "The Achewood Cookbook," as follows: "I was sitting there looking at that massive "French Laundry Cookbook," which is essentially useless to any home cook, and I thought: Well, fuck this. I think it would be fun, and it would be a great challenge, to take on a project for guys who are just out of college and have one pan and one electric burner."

Praised by Time magazine for its novelistic depth and now clocking around 10,000,000 page views a month, Onstad's Achewood is a rare bird: a Web comic with a massive following. It's also one of the only strips in any medium to tackle the nuances of the culinary world, riffing off of molecular gastronomy and eggless Sardinian pasta the way most strips work with put-upon wives and clumsy oversize dogs.

A history of violence

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 12:02:00 +0000

History can be a truly explosive force when it's connected tightly to contemporary events. The linkage of Islam, terrorism and the war in Iraq has a deep and vivid history, with the potential to hit the American public like a roadside bomb, but it has gone largely untold, emerging only in bits and pieces -- until now. "Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam" digs up the knotty roots of Islamist violence, exhuming the deep, dirty story behind the "war on terror."

Part of the story has been told before, in newspaper and magazine articles that put together some of its many pieces. But with "Devil's Game," author Robert Dreyfuss has written what may be the most clear and engaging history of the deadly, historic partnership between Western powers and political Islam. Dreyfuss, who covers national security for Rolling Stone, delves deep into the explosive mix of shrewd realpolitik and raw, ignorant fervor that helped fuel the worldwide enterprise of radical Islam and create the extremist theocracies that hold sway today in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Tales of the city

Mon, 15 Aug 2005 19:08:00 +0000

Even within street fiction -- a literary genre written by, for and about African-Americans, defined by its blunt honesty, aggression and flamboyance -- author and publisher Teri Woods stands out as a hard case.

On growing up in a tough neighborhood: "I didn't work until I was 25. I lived with a drug dealer. And that was before crack."

On reparations and reservations: "See, the Indians don't pay taxes. The Indians get checks cut to them every month because their land was stolen from them. We don't get diamonds. De Beers doesn't ship everybody a friggin' diamond."

On her role as a publishing pioneer: "There was no one out here doing what I did. Selling books out of my car. Selling on the streets of New York. Standing under the Apollo sign. If I left a blueprint for other people to follow behind me in independent publishing, then I accept that. Bow down to that shit."

While writers like Woods are beginning to taste mainstream success -- their books are filtering into megastores and some are being courted by major publishing houses -- most street fiction is still moved on actual city sidewalks. The scene in downtown Brooklyn's Fulton Mall echoes that of urban centers all over the United States. Two middle-aged black women work a table of books, attracting passersby. Potential buyers browse the table's 70 or 80 titles as though it were a single rogue aisle escaped from a neighborhood bookstore.