Most people know Alexandre Dumas for his classics (usually assigned as required reading for class) The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, but fewer people are aware of what he considered his masterwork: Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine. This giant tome was part memoir, part encyclopedia, part cookbook. Rohini Chaki at Atlas Obscura describes the project as “more than a cookbook. Dumas meant it to be a formidable inquiry into both gustation and gastronomy, utilized by enthusiasts and culinary professionals alike.”
Alexandre Dumas in the Kitchen
Bulgaria Week
It’s “Bulgaria Week” at Granta, and you can celebrate by reading two of Ivan Landzhev‘s poems, a short story by Rayko Baychev, a piece by Georgi Tenev, and many more. In case that isn’t enough, however, FiveChapters has posted Miroslav Penkov‘s “Makedonija,” and he has a short essay on the FSG Work in Progress site.
She was the shadow of the waxwork lain
A waxwork being billed as “the most accurate likeness of author Jane Austen” ever created has been unveiled at her museum in Bath, England.
●
●
“Made Twilight look like War and Peace”
Herewith, an amazing takedown of Fifty Shades of Grey, spoken by none other than a horrified Salman Rushdie. If a quote like this isn’t a good reason to go to The New Yorker Festival, we don’t know what is.
●
●
I Will Remember
Recommended Reading: this moving piece from Andrew Higgins at The Rumpus on admissions of guilt.
●
●
A Bit Woody
Perhaps the best mashup of highbrow and lowbrow to grace the cultural ether in recent years is this innovative scratch-and-sniff guide to becoming a wine expert. The book, which is exactly what you think it is, declares that “not all oaks are created equal” and includes a diagram of “all the smells in the world.” (Related: literary tourism at Suttree’s High Gravity Beer Tavern.)
●
●
Celebrating America’s Birthday
It was America’s birthday this week. Celebrate with quintessential American fiction, according to the rest of the world (via LitHub). More of a poetry person? We search for the great American epic.
●
●