Twain's Feast

April 26, 2010
In his first book, Beahrs uses the palate of America’s great humorist and satirist to celebrate and explore native foodstuffs and even make the case for him as a passionate locavore. Though the author follows Twain’s life and literary works along loosely chronological lines, he ranges deep into a personal and journalistic agenda. The book intersperses Beahrs’s firsthand experiences, such as observing Illinois prairie chickens in mating season and attending an Arkansas raccoon supper, with Twain’s gastronomical record. The sheer breadth of Twain’s travels and jobs permit discussion of such 21st-century topics as the far west’s Great Basin water reclamation and cranberry bog expansion with historical developments like the invention of “modern” farm machinery and its impact. The author’s upbeat tone doesn’t dodge the darker side of his hero, entertainingly entwining more commonly known biographical facts with the surprising (who knew the author of Tom Sawyer once sought cocaine?). Beahrs frequently interrupts the narrative with historical culinary asides about dishes like oyster ice cream, but his passion and scope of detail are bracing.

May 1, 2010
It is not easy to determine who would be the best audience for novelist and food writer Beahrs's ("The Sin Eaters") new book. Twain enthusiasts, for example, might prefer one of his novels as a starting point over a complaining letter from a European sojourn. Foodies, meanwhile, will find the digressive recounting of and speculation on Twain's life distracting. Some of Beahrs's modern-day expeditions are engrossing, especially his trip to Arkansas for an annual raccoon feast. However, the narrative focus shifts too much within chapters, and the seemingly random scattering of old recipes throughout further hampers the flow. Beahrs is at his best when he writes about how the food tastes. VERDICT Readers with a passing interest in food, Mark Twain, or American cultural history may most appreciate this hodgepodge, but the balance among the three themes is precarious, making for a sometimes confusing read.Peter Hepburn, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago Lib.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2010
At the end of a grand tour of Europe, Mark Twain professed himself thoroughly bored with local fare and composed a wish list of American foods his palate most missed. A few of these more than six dozen dishes, such as steak, turkey, and corn on the cob, continue to appeal to contemporary palates, but others on the listcanvasback duck, possum, frogs, and turtlesshock todays sensibilities. Moreover, in the Starbucks era, Twains yen for American coffee simply mystifies. Twains inventory sets Beahrs on a quest to rediscover American cuisine. He prepares grass-fed steak for breakfast. In New Orleans he discovers how much human taming of the Mississippi has changed local agriculture and foodways. He culls recipes from nineteenth-century cookbooks to determine what manner of American victuals Twain might have actually consumed. Beahrs laments recent years industrialization of agriculture, yet his survey is equally an indictment of the timorous vapidity of present-day taste.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)