The Books: The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town, edited by Lillian Ross; ‘On Display’, by Susan Orlean

Next up on the essays shelf:

The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town (Modern Library Paperbacks), edited by Lillian Ross

The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town (Modern Library Paperbacks) is a collection of “The Talk of the Town” pieces in The New Yorker, grouped by decade, which is a lot of fun because you can see how the “voice” of the magazine developed, and how “The Talk of the Town” has grown and changed over the years.

I have not read Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief (although I love the movie Adaptation), but judging from the “Talk of the Town” pieces she’s written, included in this collection, I think I finally need to check her out. I love people who sniff out the odd weird story, I love people who see something random, or who ask themselves questions, and then set out to find the answers. Of course I care about these things more if the person can write about it in a compelling way. Like Laura Hillenbrand, who wrote Seabiscuit (and I have not read her latest but so many people have told me to read it). She’s a phenomenal writer, but she’s also a person who senses great stories, she is someone who sniffs out major stories that have not been told yet. Once you read Seabiscuit, you cannot believe that someone hadn’t gotten to the story first!! How had this not been told already??

Susan Orlean’s stuff is more delicate than Hillenbrand’s, more ephemeral. That was the joke of Charlie Kaufman’s script Adaptation. He literally went crazy trying to adapt The Orchid Thief (which, if I recall correctly, started as a New Yorker article). He finally just put his own struggles with adapting her work INTO his screenplay. I love that movie.

The following “Talk of the Town” piece, from 1987, displays her gifts. Not just as a writer (and she is a very fine one), but as someone who would look at signs in a grocery market, and wonder: “Who wrote these fabulous signs? There’s a story there.” She observes, she’s like a blood-hound, sniffing around for the unique, the special, the not-yet-told.

So. Fairway Produce Market, here in New York City.

It’s rightly famous, it’s a great grocery store right in the middle of OUTRIGHT CHAOS, with great selections of produce, breads, cheeses, and every other damn thing. Seriously, if you live in New York City then you know what grocery stores are normally like, mid-city, and this one is particularly good.

BUT. Susan Orlean notices that the signs that are placed in the middle of displays of food have a certain … how you say … unique voice. I won’t try to put it into words, the excerpt does a great job with examples. But she wonders: who the heck is writing these fascinating signs at Fairway? She finds out. She talks to the guy. She hears all about his life, his philosophy on food (he’s mainly a Cheese guy), and also his viewpoints on the proper qualities of SIGNS. He’s famous.

It’s a wonderful little piece. Here is an excerpt.

The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town (Modern Library Paperbacks), edited by Lillian Ross; ‘On Display’, by Susan Orlean

Mr. Jenkins’ specialty at Fairway is cheese, but his real passion is writing chatty and enticing signs for all the store’s products. A few of the Fairway signs just do their job – they say something simple, like “NEW CROP YAMS” or “CRISPY WESTERN ICEBERG SOLD AT COST PRICE” – but those are made by the other Fairway partners, who figure that a sign’s a sign, especially when you’re in a hurry and there are crowds stretching from the cash register to the back door. Mr. Jenkins’ signs have become something like required reading among shoppers in the neighborhood – they can be informative, argumentative, comic, autobiographical, or sassy – and whatever time he finds between checking cheese orders he spends making them.

The signs are about five by seven inches and are made of white tagboard. Mr. Jenkins hand-letters them with bright-red or orange or blue or purple laundry markers. One of his signs that day said:

“I’m very opinionated about cheese,” he explained to us, and he pointed out another sign, which said:

His all-time favorite sign is no longer in service, but Mr. Jenkins was so pleased with it that he saved it for display. It’s stapled to the store’s back wall, and says:

Some of Mr. Jenkins’ signs acquaint shoppers with people who supply choice items or who figure in his interest in food. On signs here and there throughout the store are mentions of Ted and Sally (makers of Wieninger cheese), Laura (California chèvre), Jane and Bo (pie bakers), Nana (Mr. Jenkins’ grandmother, who introduced him to kohlrabi), Dr. Scott Severns (his dentist), and Al Grimaldi (bread baker). “I think it’s important to know where food is from – that’s why I name some of the suppliers,” he said. “I wanted to write about my grandmother because she really taught me about the value of fresh foods, and my dentist just asked me to order sorrel for him, so I thought I’d mention him, too.” Some signs have won Mr. Jenkins gratitude from customers. His treatise “NEVER WASH A MUSHROOM!” was very popular, for example. Other signs, however, have been controversial. A sign on some Illinois goat cheese asserting that the cheese was exciting but Illinois was really boring offended so many shoppers that for a while he had to post a note beside it admitting that he was from Missouri and considered it even more boring than Illinois.

Mr. Jenkins, who is late-thirtyish, curly-haired, blue-eyed, and barrel-chested, told us that he moved to New York fourteen years ago to become an actor. His career went well – he played the Dean & DeLuca counterman in “Manhattan” and had a shot at a major role in the soaps – but he soon realized that his day job as a cheese man was making him happier than his acting did. He decided to get serious about food, and he discovered that the thing that made him happiest of all was driving around Europe looking at food and finding the villages that his favorite wines and cheeses were named for. He also liked finding towns famous for their sauces. He more or less gave up acting, and seven years ago he joined Fairway. Today, Mr. Jenkins has credentials in cheese – he is America’s only Master Cheesemonger, which means he’s an elected member of the Guilde des Maitre-Fromagers, Compagnon du Saint-Uguzon – and he manages to satisfy his hunger for an audience by making signs. He recently described this professional odyssey in a sign for cornichons: