Weekend Reading: Marilynne Robinson, the History of Bagels and Lox

Jeff Sharlet, known for his articles in Harpers about the Christian-fundamentalist cabal called the Family, returns to the subject in “Ditto Boys,” in the online religion magazine he co-founded, Killing the Buddha. (Notable among the Harpers pieces: “Straight Man’s Burden,” the most haunting article I’ve read about Uganda’s anti-gay persecutions, in which the Family has been involved.) Having examined the group of political and business leaders at large—from its National Prayer Breakfast, attended by congressmen and the President, to its dealings with South American and African strongmen—he now zooms in on California’s Westmont College, an alleged “feeder school.” Roaming its grounds and interviewing its staff, Sharlet offers an in-depth look at a cult-like culture of extreme belief—one that more mainstream Christians might dismiss as heresy.

A different kind of apostate is on display in “The Spy Who Loved Frogs,” by Brendan Borrell, in the current issue of Nature. The subhead is nearly as good as the title: “To track the fate of threatened species, a young scientist must follow the jungle path of a herpetologist who led a secret double life.” The herpetologist is the maligned Edward Taylor, who, in addition to serving in the Office of Strategic Services during the Second World War, claimed to have discovered dozens of new reptile and amphibian species in the Philippines—but the taxonomical accuracy of many of his claims is now being scrutinized. Rafe Brown, a successor of sorts, is set on vindicating him, making for a narrative that both entertains and informs, a parable of academia’s over-all oddity.

When it comes to literary Q. & A.s, the staff of The Paris Review are the preëminent inquisitors—so it is unsurprising that an alumna of that publication (and this one), Thessaly La Force, has conducted such a good interview with the novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson. (What’s surprising is where it appears—in the 2013 Fiction Issue of Vice, whose articles, Lizzie Widdicombe has written, “combine investigative reporting with a sensibility that is adolescent, male, and proudly boorish.”) La Force also has the advantage of having studied with Robinson at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The result, from the warmth of her introduction to the transcendent thoughtfulness of her subject, would have made Plimpton proud.

If you haven’t already read “How Chris McCandless Died,” Jon Krakauer’s conclusive forensic investigation of what killed the young man at the center of his book “Into the Wild,” you might want to; if you have, it’s as good a time as any to return to the January, 1993, article on which the book was based, Outside Magazines “Death of an Innocent.” (No longer available on the Outside Web site, it’s downloadable as a pdf.) In addition to serving as a reminder of the prose that made Krakauer famous, it’s a miniature master class in writerly craft, beginning with a skillful intro—in media res to the point that the date doesn’t appear until the seventh paragraph—and deviating from strict chronology more than one might anticipate.

Last, a pure joy, is an archival piece from Meatpaper, the flesh-centric Bay Area indie magazine, which recently announced that its next and twentieth issue, “the Future of Meat,” will be its final feast. Here’s the beginning of “A Fish and Bread Journey: The Natural and Social History of Bagels and Lox,” by Heather Smith:

The salmon traveled the farthest. Its oldest known ancestor in the genus Salmonidae swam through the waters of the Eocene, back when Australia was still a part of Antarctica, North America was still a part of Europe, and India was just beginning its long and persistent attempt to hump its way over China, smashing itself into the Himalayan mountains in the process.

It’s historical food writing of a sort that we taste too rarely—packed with knowledge, humor, and even wisdom—and required reading for New Yorkers, and everyone else for whom bagels have been tokens of Americanness and love. “Other signs,” Smith writes, “that the bagel was becoming assimilated: the wedding. In 1984, the Lenders brothers, already selling $65 million of bagels a year in supermarkets across America, marched an eight-foot bagel down the aisle and gave its hand to a tub of Philadelphia cream cheese.”

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