It's that sad-happy time of year when I take down my cottage garden - all in all, a little more complicated than folding up a beach umbrella, but the idea is the same. Summer is over, and Life is about to get Real again. I know there's a lot of that going around now and you, Gentle Reader, can relate.
I've always liked flowers. I grew up in the 'burbs, and my father grew roses, espaliered against the backyard fence. Most were the standard crimson, but the ones by the house were fancier - I recall one bush that yielded a bright, egg-yolk yellow bloom, and another, my favorite, was called "Tropicana" - deep orange, with the barest hint of cream staining the petals at their base. A magnificent wisteria grew up one entire side of the house - I could lean out my second-floor window and pick its flowers, if I so fancied.
The neighbors had an immense lilac that spilled over into our yard, and, feeling like a thief, I used to cut sprays of the pale purple flowers, dripping like grapes, and perfume my bedroom with my spoils. I would put them on the nightstand, next to whatever book I was currently reading under the covers by flashlight and by the side of the glass of ice water I never went to bed without, and I recall that I was as happy as a little girl with a good book and a bunch of heady, redolent blossoms to refresh her nose with from time to time could be - a latter-day edition of Francie Nolan on her fire escape in Chapter One of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.
When I was in college, I became one of the founding members of the Friends of Moningside Park, which, at the time (early 1980's) was in dire need of friends. It had been badly neglected for decades at that point, and I was told during Freshman Orientation to stay out of Morningside Park if I didn't want to be murdered. They weren't kidding. But since I never do what I'm told, and since I had a chainsaw and an ax to chop down the underbrush that had taken over the sinuous lines of this Olmsted gem, I wasn't too worried, and I went in anyway. Nowadays, like everyplace else in New York that was grungy and kind of dangerous when I was young, it's prime real estate and you can't get an affordable apartment within two dozen blocks of it.
But I had wonderful times grubbing away there, and as I worked, I would hum and sing to myself, and think of the words of Mary Lennox that I'd read under the covers on that glorious occasion when I first happened upon The Secret Garden (and I have to say, anybody who is reading that book for the first time has my envy):
"It's a secret garden, and I'm the only one in the world who wants it to be alive. . . It's the best fun I ever had in my life--shut in here and wakening up a garden."
Then I graduated, moved into an apartment, and didn't even have a window box for a very long time.
But about nine years ago, I began to spend my summers in a small Adirondack cottage that has a yard behind the house. That first year, John Wirenius and his wife Catherine came to visit. I had quite forgotten about gardening as a pastime or a pleasure by then, but my guests were living on the first floor of a house in Queens at the time - and they had a backyard. Catherine had caught the gardening bug, and she'd caught it bad. Before I knew it, there was a small patch of turned-up dirt edging the tiny patio that I'd never thought of using for anything but putting the grill and a couple of Adirondack chairs on. An unbelievably large pile of rocks and pebbles she'd dug out of the dirt was heaped on the patio itself, and Catherine, sitting on the back steps of the cottage, her hair tied back in a whale-spout, a smudge of dirt on her nose, pounding together a witch's brew of cow manure and rich black dirt that she'd bought in a bag, was explaining, "Your soil is very poor, and I've never seen so many rocks in one place, so we're going to have to put down some decent dirt or nothing's gonna grow here. By the way, I'm putting in a raised bed over there."
I was dubious, but interested.
Never one to do things by halves, Catherine spent much of the visit hollering for us to "Pull over - I see a plant nursery!" I quickly discovered that it's more fun to buy plants than jewels. Plants are bigger, the colors are brighter, and their sheer variety puts Tiffany's to shame. Pretty soon I, too, was squinting judiciously at the astilbes and muttering, "Well, yes - these will do for the shaded area next to the woods, but what about that sunny patch by the patio? Astilbes don't like too much sun . . . what about some black-eyed Susans?"
We drove our husbands crazy. Mine was waiting impatiently for us to get back in the car so we could go have some real shopping fun at the Organic Food Co-op, and hers was rolling his eyes and wondering whether there would be enough room in the car for all the books he was planning to sneak past Catherine as soon as we spotted a secondhand bookstore.
Over the years, the garden expanded, which is the way these things go. My husband has grown somewhat resigned to the fact that there is always dirt in the trunk of the car, and refers sardonically to our Saab as the Rolling Greenhouse. Pretty soon I discovered that the bright hues of the garden were attracting hummingbirds, so then of course we had to put up a hummingbird feeder. A romantic trip to the Gaspé Peninsula turned into a quest for the Perfect Birdbath, which I discovered in a shop in North Conway, NH on the way home. (It has a little mermaid perched on the edge, and the finches like to sit on her head.)
In short - I was obsessed.
Since the backyard is small-ish, I very soon found that, like Alexander the Great before me, I was grieving that there were no new worlds to conquer. Fortunately, there is a wooded area just past the lawn, impenetrably overgrown with scrub pine, maple saplings, and crappy-looking underbrush that I refer to collectively as the "Nobody-Invited-You's." Majestic pines and lissome birches are barely discernible through the thickets of junk that had sprung up over decades of neglect.
Do I have to tell you that I bought myself a present, and that it was a pair of loppers?
So I have been having a grand old time clearing out all the Nobody-Invited-You's, and every day I totter in happily after a morning of lopping, all covered in scratches and with twigs in my hair, but supremely joyful that I can now see blue sky and dappled sunlight when I look up the hill.
If there is any truth to the theory of reincarnation, then in a past life I was Pa Ingalls.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Saturday, August 16, 2014
His In-Finn-ite Variety
The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of . . . Phineas at Bay.
My copy arrived in the mail a week after publication, just as Amazon promised it would, and I unwrapped it with whoops of delight. When the cardboard had fallen away, I gazed reverentially upon the novel by my good friend John Wirenius - a novel that I'd had a hand in midwifing . . . er, I mean, editing.
It sure was pretty. Green wraps, which by coincidence happen to be in precisely the shade of the sign that used to be above my late, lamented used bookshop, The Last Word (1993-2005, corner of 118th & Amsterdam in NYC). My partner and I had dickered endlessly about the shade of green to use on the sign, and decided at last that the green on the Poland Springs bottles was it. Here was John's book, and at very first glance it recalled many happy hours of breathing in that particular brand of old-book fragrance that, were it ever bottled and distributed at the Macy's perfume counter, would swiftly reveal which of us seemingly mild-mannered citizens are, in fact, ravening beasts consumed by book-lust. It was a good omen.
The cover art - a vintage Vanity Fair caricature of the Duke of St. Albans, purchased by the novel's author a quarter-century ago from an Upper West Side street vendor . . . another propitious provenance, or so it seems to me - depicts a casually natty late-Victorian gent with his hands in his pockets, a gold watch chain bisecting his middle, just as the author's own watch chain invariably does. I have known John Wirenius since he was attending Columbia University's School of Law, and our friendship, rooted as it is in the love of literature and all things throwback, has ripened over time. I believe the only time I have seen him without his pocket watch was when he was in swimming trunks.
The curious thing about my friendship with John is that we don't always like the same books. We can agree on Saki, but his urgings of C.P. Snow and John Galsworthy as "must reads" leave me politely evasive. He, for his part, can drive me to frantic sputtering with a well-placed jibe at some of my own favorites. I did, some years ago, at his behest, undertake to read Anthony Trollope's Palliser Novels - six books that follow the fortunes and follies of a series of interconnected characters, and two of which, Phineas Finn and Phineas Redux, share the eponymous protagonist John chose to center his own novel upon in Phineas at Bay.
A confession: I did not become a rabid Anthony Trollope fan. The sorrowful fact is, I petered out after The Eustace Diamonds - a book I rather enjoyed, as it had that delightful creature known to fans of East of Eden, Gone With the Wind, Forever Amber, and Vanity Fair as "a good bitch." Lizzie Eustace, pilferer of the diamonds of the book's title, is one of those monumentally selfish, unlawfully charismatic, and entirely mendacious women of fiction who seem to have gotten in line twice for Seductive Charm and not at all for Moral Rectitude or Sensitivity of Conscience, thus making them an enormous pleasure to read about, if not actually to be in the same book with. (I'd hate to be Suellen O'Hara and have my unattractive middle-aged beau stolen for the sake of his paltry bank account by my older sister,wouldn't you?) The problem with Trollope, I decided, was that there were not enough Lizzie Eustaces, and since leavening the story about the Good People with a generous sprinkling of gargoyle-like grotesqueries à la Dickens is not in the Trollopian style . . . well, like Paolo and Francesca, I read no further. There was the additional problem that Trollope has a way of writing labyrinthine sentences that meander on for much of the page - and so, in short, I quit.
Luckily, John Wirenius has taken into account that not all of us have read the entire Trollope oeuvre. If you have been fearfully contemplating the sextet of nineteenth century tomes you think you must plow through in order to tackle Phineas at Bay - fear not, I didn't read them all, either, and I had no trouble whatsoever figuring out what was going on. Fortunately for the reader, John is gifted at weaving exposition into his tale without making it glaringly obvious that he is weaving in exposition. If you need to know what happened in earlier books for purposes of understanding the actions and character motivations in this one, he will let you know, and he will do it far more subtly than J.K. Rowling, who, by Volume Seven, was clearly getting tired of telling people just how Harry Potter got that scar.
Furthermore (and the Trollope Society will probably descend upon me with pandybats and howls of execration for this) I happen to think that Phineas at Bay, while scrupulous in its adherence to its progenitors in terms of the integrity of its characters and its overall tone, is a better read than the other six. A certain sly literary wit that I associate with this contemporary author threads sinuously through the book, like the violin solo of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. And, like that fabled storyteller to the Sultan, John Wirenius is a spellbinder, a Pied Piper of the Pallisers, hypnotically leading us along from page to page, until, like the Sultan, we realize that dawn has broken and we've spent the entire night immersed in the tale, because we simply had to find out what happened next.
Having read through the book three times already, with gun and magnifying glass in hand to search for typos and root them out, I was already familiar with its contents. Another confession: There are still typos, and I am both mortified and mystified. In some cases, I am ready to swear in open court that I took them out and the nasty Bot-Gremlins put them back! (In others, I simply screwed up.) Feel free to hunt them down yourself and to berate me for them (privately) so that we can take them out of the second printing.
So I wondered, as I opened the book, whether it would pass the test I apply to any work of fiction that aspires to take a permanent place on my bookshelves. Do I still read it with pleasure, after the first time around? Or have I already read all the juice out of it? And - the real acid test, which even fewer books pass - do I get more enjoyment, as well as more food for thought and a keener artistic appreciation of its structural beauties, out of it with each subsequent re-read, rather than less? Most of us read for plot the first time around. At least, I do. It's on the later read-throughs that I begin to appreciate subtlety and nuance. I begin to note literary references that may have escaped me the first time around. I start to notice themes. I am startled into a bark of astonished delight at an audacious risk on the author's part. (What other author, for example, have I seen depicting a certain Irish-born playwright - under a pseudonymn, of course - at a Christmas party, acting out scenes from his forthcoming drawing-room comedy that involve a harridan and a handbag?)
For this is another of the delectable departures from Strict Trollopian Form that John Wirenius has chosen to utilize - the cameo appearances of sundry real-life historical personages, some under their own names, some not. The fun, of course, lies in spotting the Nots. (I'll give you a hint - one of them, who has more than a cameo role, will grow up to become a Prime Minister who looks remarkably like a bulldog. His enchanting American-born socialite mother is recognizably the subject of a best-selling two-volume biography, as well as of a television miniseries. )
But John Wirenius doesn't stop there. Having gone this far, he adds an assortment of fictional characters, as well - only not, necessarily, out of the fiction of Anthony Trollope. An admirer of G.B. Shaw, he coolly appropriates several of the dramatis personae of Candida, adroitly endowing the love-addled secretary with a more prominent part to play than he gives the pontificating pastor. The nonexistent Barchester Cathedral that lends its name to another Trollope opus is back - and so is a sinister trio of statuettes that aficionados of Victorian ghost stories will recognize, with a start, as having crept in from M.R. James' classic tale about that imaginary Cathedral and its stalls.
As for the dramatis personae drawn from the source material - it should come as no surprise that I hailed the return of Lady Eustace - a.k.a Lizzie the Liar - with enthusiasm. If anything, she's better than before. Without giving away too much, I will merely state that, should Masterpiece Theatre have the good sense to option this novel, they would be well-advised to approach Nina Arianda on bended knee and beseech her to reprise her recent Broadway triumph, this time in the character of Lady Eustace. Let's put it this way - in a slantindicular (a word that I first encountered in Phineas at Bay, and that I have adopted with relish) nod to dear Charles Dickens and his giddily evocative nomenclature, Lady Eustace's law firm of choice is known as Rushforth & Bindtheboy. Need I say more?
Lizzie the Liar has a worthy foil in her former husband, the Right Reverend Joseph Emilius, returned from a sojourn in the American West to win her back. A charming and entirely amoral scoundrel, Joseph is Rhett to her Scarlett. Joseph Emilius knows Lizzie Eustace through and through, exactly for what she is. And frankly, my dears, he doesn't give a damn . . . he wants her back at his bed and his board, and is willing to go to any lengths to get her, including putting in a midnight appearance in a certain Irish barrister's office that had me exclaiming, "Good Lord - Amadeus!" ("Oh, you noticed that, did you?" the author said offhandedly, when I excitedly called him up to report my discovery.)
The orphaned Finn niece, Clarissa Riley, is a spirited variation on the dewey-eyed ingenue so beloved of nineteenth century fiction, profiting as she does from her close association with Marie Finn (formerly Madame Max Goesler), the enigmatic Continental cosmopolite who married Clarissa's beloved Uncle Phineas. Marie is a heroine worthy both of Clarissa's admiration and emulation - she is her husband's partner as well as his closest friend and companion, Penelope to his Odysseus, fully his equal in both cunning and kindness. One of the book's great assets lies in its wealth of formidable female characters, all of them different, and each of them endowed with a peculiar fascination all her own. Among the many pleasures of this novel is the fact that each of the various characters is so distinctively drawn, and that the point-of-view shifts so seamlessly from one character to another, whether we are seeing events through the keen eyes of Phineas Finn, or the luminous blue orbs of his wife Marie, or through the bloodshot eyes of Sir Felix Carbury, dissipated sot and one of the novel's most delicious sketches in drawling, languorous villainy.
True, as well, to the conventions of the Victorian novel as a microcosm of the world of Society and its mores, John Wirenius has deftly woven a tapestry of plot and sub-plot, in which one event leads inevitably - if, at times, surprisingly - to another, and nothing is either wasted or left dangling in midair. His invented personae behave as they must behave, given the rich and complex psychologies with which they have been endowed. Never once do they step out of character in service of the exigencies of the plot - the action is propelled by the force and energy of the people with whom the author has populated his imaginary world.
Which is not to imply that this is a novel that touts the haut monde to the utter neglect of the less fiscally fortunate members of Victorian Society. One key plot line follows Phineas' attempts to obtain justice for Ifor Powlett-Jones, a young Welsh miner being railroaded into prison for the so-called crime of having rescued a dozen fellow miners from certain death during a cave-in, thereby disobeying orders from his foreman and inadvertently damaging company property in the course of the rescue. Ably assisting Phineas at every turn is his stern, yet withal warmhearted, majordomo, the German butler Meier - Marie's mainstay, Phineas's impromptu fencing master, and Clarissa's horticultural docent (the author is a fan of Nero Wolfe, and Meier raises prizewinning orchids in the Finns' conservatory.)
But why should I go on? Surely by now you are aware that, for the lover of Victorian fiction who has read everything on the library's shelves and despaired of ever finding another book "as good as the ones they used to write," this novel has the tonic effect of a long, newsy letter from home to an expatriate who has vainly longed for the beloved homeland. If you, like myself, are sorry that nobody seems to write a book anymore that doesn't teem with incest, rape, dismemberment, and casual violence . . . if you have been yearning for the happy days of yore, when novelists assumed that they had an intelligent, well-informed readership to whom they need not condescend with tiresome explanations of what they were up to with a literary reference . . . if you have sharp wits, a discerning critical faculty, and a taste for political intrigue, discreetly dangerous liaisons, philosophical and theological cogitations, and House of Worth couture, then waste no more time on this blog post, but go immediately to
http://www.amazon.com/Phineas-at-Bay-John-Wirenius-ebook/dp/B00M4M3L1C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408213820&sr=8-1&keywords=phineas+at+Bay
and order your copy at once!
My copy arrived in the mail a week after publication, just as Amazon promised it would, and I unwrapped it with whoops of delight. When the cardboard had fallen away, I gazed reverentially upon the novel by my good friend John Wirenius - a novel that I'd had a hand in midwifing . . . er, I mean, editing.
It sure was pretty. Green wraps, which by coincidence happen to be in precisely the shade of the sign that used to be above my late, lamented used bookshop, The Last Word (1993-2005, corner of 118th & Amsterdam in NYC). My partner and I had dickered endlessly about the shade of green to use on the sign, and decided at last that the green on the Poland Springs bottles was it. Here was John's book, and at very first glance it recalled many happy hours of breathing in that particular brand of old-book fragrance that, were it ever bottled and distributed at the Macy's perfume counter, would swiftly reveal which of us seemingly mild-mannered citizens are, in fact, ravening beasts consumed by book-lust. It was a good omen.
The cover art - a vintage Vanity Fair caricature of the Duke of St. Albans, purchased by the novel's author a quarter-century ago from an Upper West Side street vendor . . . another propitious provenance, or so it seems to me - depicts a casually natty late-Victorian gent with his hands in his pockets, a gold watch chain bisecting his middle, just as the author's own watch chain invariably does. I have known John Wirenius since he was attending Columbia University's School of Law, and our friendship, rooted as it is in the love of literature and all things throwback, has ripened over time. I believe the only time I have seen him without his pocket watch was when he was in swimming trunks.
The curious thing about my friendship with John is that we don't always like the same books. We can agree on Saki, but his urgings of C.P. Snow and John Galsworthy as "must reads" leave me politely evasive. He, for his part, can drive me to frantic sputtering with a well-placed jibe at some of my own favorites. I did, some years ago, at his behest, undertake to read Anthony Trollope's Palliser Novels - six books that follow the fortunes and follies of a series of interconnected characters, and two of which, Phineas Finn and Phineas Redux, share the eponymous protagonist John chose to center his own novel upon in Phineas at Bay.
A confession: I did not become a rabid Anthony Trollope fan. The sorrowful fact is, I petered out after The Eustace Diamonds - a book I rather enjoyed, as it had that delightful creature known to fans of East of Eden, Gone With the Wind, Forever Amber, and Vanity Fair as "a good bitch." Lizzie Eustace, pilferer of the diamonds of the book's title, is one of those monumentally selfish, unlawfully charismatic, and entirely mendacious women of fiction who seem to have gotten in line twice for Seductive Charm and not at all for Moral Rectitude or Sensitivity of Conscience, thus making them an enormous pleasure to read about, if not actually to be in the same book with. (I'd hate to be Suellen O'Hara and have my unattractive middle-aged beau stolen for the sake of his paltry bank account by my older sister,wouldn't you?) The problem with Trollope, I decided, was that there were not enough Lizzie Eustaces, and since leavening the story about the Good People with a generous sprinkling of gargoyle-like grotesqueries à la Dickens is not in the Trollopian style . . . well, like Paolo and Francesca, I read no further. There was the additional problem that Trollope has a way of writing labyrinthine sentences that meander on for much of the page - and so, in short, I quit.
Luckily, John Wirenius has taken into account that not all of us have read the entire Trollope oeuvre. If you have been fearfully contemplating the sextet of nineteenth century tomes you think you must plow through in order to tackle Phineas at Bay - fear not, I didn't read them all, either, and I had no trouble whatsoever figuring out what was going on. Fortunately for the reader, John is gifted at weaving exposition into his tale without making it glaringly obvious that he is weaving in exposition. If you need to know what happened in earlier books for purposes of understanding the actions and character motivations in this one, he will let you know, and he will do it far more subtly than J.K. Rowling, who, by Volume Seven, was clearly getting tired of telling people just how Harry Potter got that scar.
Furthermore (and the Trollope Society will probably descend upon me with pandybats and howls of execration for this) I happen to think that Phineas at Bay, while scrupulous in its adherence to its progenitors in terms of the integrity of its characters and its overall tone, is a better read than the other six. A certain sly literary wit that I associate with this contemporary author threads sinuously through the book, like the violin solo of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. And, like that fabled storyteller to the Sultan, John Wirenius is a spellbinder, a Pied Piper of the Pallisers, hypnotically leading us along from page to page, until, like the Sultan, we realize that dawn has broken and we've spent the entire night immersed in the tale, because we simply had to find out what happened next.
Having read through the book three times already, with gun and magnifying glass in hand to search for typos and root them out, I was already familiar with its contents. Another confession: There are still typos, and I am both mortified and mystified. In some cases, I am ready to swear in open court that I took them out and the nasty Bot-Gremlins put them back! (In others, I simply screwed up.) Feel free to hunt them down yourself and to berate me for them (privately) so that we can take them out of the second printing.
So I wondered, as I opened the book, whether it would pass the test I apply to any work of fiction that aspires to take a permanent place on my bookshelves. Do I still read it with pleasure, after the first time around? Or have I already read all the juice out of it? And - the real acid test, which even fewer books pass - do I get more enjoyment, as well as more food for thought and a keener artistic appreciation of its structural beauties, out of it with each subsequent re-read, rather than less? Most of us read for plot the first time around. At least, I do. It's on the later read-throughs that I begin to appreciate subtlety and nuance. I begin to note literary references that may have escaped me the first time around. I start to notice themes. I am startled into a bark of astonished delight at an audacious risk on the author's part. (What other author, for example, have I seen depicting a certain Irish-born playwright - under a pseudonymn, of course - at a Christmas party, acting out scenes from his forthcoming drawing-room comedy that involve a harridan and a handbag?)
For this is another of the delectable departures from Strict Trollopian Form that John Wirenius has chosen to utilize - the cameo appearances of sundry real-life historical personages, some under their own names, some not. The fun, of course, lies in spotting the Nots. (I'll give you a hint - one of them, who has more than a cameo role, will grow up to become a Prime Minister who looks remarkably like a bulldog. His enchanting American-born socialite mother is recognizably the subject of a best-selling two-volume biography, as well as of a television miniseries. )
But John Wirenius doesn't stop there. Having gone this far, he adds an assortment of fictional characters, as well - only not, necessarily, out of the fiction of Anthony Trollope. An admirer of G.B. Shaw, he coolly appropriates several of the dramatis personae of Candida, adroitly endowing the love-addled secretary with a more prominent part to play than he gives the pontificating pastor. The nonexistent Barchester Cathedral that lends its name to another Trollope opus is back - and so is a sinister trio of statuettes that aficionados of Victorian ghost stories will recognize, with a start, as having crept in from M.R. James' classic tale about that imaginary Cathedral and its stalls.
As for the dramatis personae drawn from the source material - it should come as no surprise that I hailed the return of Lady Eustace - a.k.a Lizzie the Liar - with enthusiasm. If anything, she's better than before. Without giving away too much, I will merely state that, should Masterpiece Theatre have the good sense to option this novel, they would be well-advised to approach Nina Arianda on bended knee and beseech her to reprise her recent Broadway triumph, this time in the character of Lady Eustace. Let's put it this way - in a slantindicular (a word that I first encountered in Phineas at Bay, and that I have adopted with relish) nod to dear Charles Dickens and his giddily evocative nomenclature, Lady Eustace's law firm of choice is known as Rushforth & Bindtheboy. Need I say more?
Lizzie the Liar has a worthy foil in her former husband, the Right Reverend Joseph Emilius, returned from a sojourn in the American West to win her back. A charming and entirely amoral scoundrel, Joseph is Rhett to her Scarlett. Joseph Emilius knows Lizzie Eustace through and through, exactly for what she is. And frankly, my dears, he doesn't give a damn . . . he wants her back at his bed and his board, and is willing to go to any lengths to get her, including putting in a midnight appearance in a certain Irish barrister's office that had me exclaiming, "Good Lord - Amadeus!" ("Oh, you noticed that, did you?" the author said offhandedly, when I excitedly called him up to report my discovery.)
The orphaned Finn niece, Clarissa Riley, is a spirited variation on the dewey-eyed ingenue so beloved of nineteenth century fiction, profiting as she does from her close association with Marie Finn (formerly Madame Max Goesler), the enigmatic Continental cosmopolite who married Clarissa's beloved Uncle Phineas. Marie is a heroine worthy both of Clarissa's admiration and emulation - she is her husband's partner as well as his closest friend and companion, Penelope to his Odysseus, fully his equal in both cunning and kindness. One of the book's great assets lies in its wealth of formidable female characters, all of them different, and each of them endowed with a peculiar fascination all her own. Among the many pleasures of this novel is the fact that each of the various characters is so distinctively drawn, and that the point-of-view shifts so seamlessly from one character to another, whether we are seeing events through the keen eyes of Phineas Finn, or the luminous blue orbs of his wife Marie, or through the bloodshot eyes of Sir Felix Carbury, dissipated sot and one of the novel's most delicious sketches in drawling, languorous villainy.
True, as well, to the conventions of the Victorian novel as a microcosm of the world of Society and its mores, John Wirenius has deftly woven a tapestry of plot and sub-plot, in which one event leads inevitably - if, at times, surprisingly - to another, and nothing is either wasted or left dangling in midair. His invented personae behave as they must behave, given the rich and complex psychologies with which they have been endowed. Never once do they step out of character in service of the exigencies of the plot - the action is propelled by the force and energy of the people with whom the author has populated his imaginary world.
Which is not to imply that this is a novel that touts the haut monde to the utter neglect of the less fiscally fortunate members of Victorian Society. One key plot line follows Phineas' attempts to obtain justice for Ifor Powlett-Jones, a young Welsh miner being railroaded into prison for the so-called crime of having rescued a dozen fellow miners from certain death during a cave-in, thereby disobeying orders from his foreman and inadvertently damaging company property in the course of the rescue. Ably assisting Phineas at every turn is his stern, yet withal warmhearted, majordomo, the German butler Meier - Marie's mainstay, Phineas's impromptu fencing master, and Clarissa's horticultural docent (the author is a fan of Nero Wolfe, and Meier raises prizewinning orchids in the Finns' conservatory.)
But why should I go on? Surely by now you are aware that, for the lover of Victorian fiction who has read everything on the library's shelves and despaired of ever finding another book "as good as the ones they used to write," this novel has the tonic effect of a long, newsy letter from home to an expatriate who has vainly longed for the beloved homeland. If you, like myself, are sorry that nobody seems to write a book anymore that doesn't teem with incest, rape, dismemberment, and casual violence . . . if you have been yearning for the happy days of yore, when novelists assumed that they had an intelligent, well-informed readership to whom they need not condescend with tiresome explanations of what they were up to with a literary reference . . . if you have sharp wits, a discerning critical faculty, and a taste for political intrigue, discreetly dangerous liaisons, philosophical and theological cogitations, and House of Worth couture, then waste no more time on this blog post, but go immediately to
http://www.amazon.com/Phineas-at-Bay-John-Wirenius-ebook/dp/B00M4M3L1C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408213820&sr=8-1&keywords=phineas+at+Bay
and order your copy at once!
Monday, August 4, 2014
The Best-Laid Plans
A confession; I am, and always have been, a reluctant driver. As a teenager, I was a passenger in a car that came so near to being in a fatal accident (Autobahn, driver fell asleep, and a resultant 2"-deep dent was carved down the entire driver's side of the rental car, after it struck the highway divider with a screech of metal that still resounds in my ears whenever a truck swerves too close to us on a highway) that I addressed the subsequent phobia of driving that I (weirdly) developed (because you'd think I'd be afraid of being the passenger, after that, but phobias are tricksy things) by spending my entire adult life in the city of New York, where nobody who doesn't want to ever has to drive. Since I had already obtained my driver's license, I simply kept renewing it whenever the time rolled around; it's the best form of I.D. you can show them at the bank, after all.
And I had a sterling record, with no points on my license, because I never drove anywhere. If I couldn't get there by public transportation, I took a cab, or else passengered in somebody else's car. Somehow, I wasn't worried that anybody else was going crash the car - only that I was going to kill myself, or, even worse, someone else, if I were to drive. So for almost 35 years, I serenely maneuvered out of any and all driving situations, which was quite awkward at times, and certainly rather trying to my husband on long road trips when he would have liked to give somebody else a turn at the wheel.
This, of course, does not work once you move to the far end of a long private road in the suburbs.
Fortunately, I had, at my husband's (mostly) gentle insistence, been doing some very, ve-ry laid-back driving during our summer Adirondack sojourns by the time we moved to Rockland County. I had progressed from terrified squeaks of "No! I can't! You do it!" when he urged me to drive the 800 yards to the laundry hut at the requisite 5 mph of our summer community's compound, to driving the quarter mile to the grocery store at 20 mph, thus aggravating all the locals crawling along behind me in the 30 mph zone, because they were used to clipping along at 40 (unless they spotted a police cruiser), to the hideous moment when he coached me up the ramp to the Northway ("Floor it, honey! You need to hit the highway doing 60 - don't worry, it's a nice, long on-ramp, you'll have plenty of room to merge!") I was convinced he had a death wish for us both, but I closed my eyes, panicked as soon as I realized that I had my eyes closed, opened them, prepared for death and merged onto the nearly-empty highway, feeling like General Eisenhower invading Normandy.
My greatest fear was always that I would make a terrible, irrevocable mistake, and somebody, or something, would be killed. When I was small, I was one of those children who would burst into tears at the sight of a squashed skunk on the highway, wailing loudly for Daddy to turn the car around, go back, and take it to the doctor so the "poor little skunkie" could be fixed.
I moved to an area that abounds in wildlife previously unencountered by me outside of the confines of a zoo. In my first week of Rockland residency, I saw:
- A flock of wild turkeys - at least fifteen of them - all looking at me with the supercilious "You? Who are you?" sneer that the Caterpillar gave Alice
- Half a dozen deer, of various sizes and ages, serenely cropping at the grass and anything else they could get their teeth into in my backyard ( thus dooming forever my ambitious plans for a really spectacular flower garden)
- A fox (which was pretty cool, and I excitedly called up my husband at the office, interrupting him at the conference table in order to describe it in detail)
- A groundhog - which happened to have the poor judgement to be in the yard when I was letting the dog out to pee. Since both the groundhog and the dog are quite fat and slow, what ensued was a chase scene right out of the Keystone Kops, with both parties waddling about excitedly until the groundhog, swearing horribly about Those Fucking City People, dove into its hole and ended the matter. The dog, of course, was enchanted by this delightful new game, and now makes a beeline for the groundhog's lair every time I let her out the door.
- A coyote. Twice. Again, in my yard. Makes me wonder whether letting the dog out to pee, even under strict supervision, really is such a good idea. This one also warranted an excited call to my husband's office; he, after calmly saying, "A coyote? Are you sure it wasn't a deer?" aggravated me nearly to death by remarking that coyotes are scavengers, so the dog is perfectly safe and I shouldn't get so nervous. I responded with 10 minutes of violent Googling and a follow-up call detailing every instance of coyote attacks on Man and Dog I had found in my online research. To which he retorted that anything you read online in the N.Y. Post doesn't count, and that he had to get going because it was almost time for his business lunch in the charming little Manhattan bistro a block from his office, where I used to meet him for lunch back when I was still a Girlfriend and not just a Wife. So I hung up, ate some leftover supermarket potato salad, and sulked.
- Assorted squirrels, chipmunks, and (according to the man who built the stairs to the deck behind our kitchen - for the previous homeowners apparently had been willing to live without stairs for over 30 years) a snake of indeterminate species that lives in some sort of cement cistern near the base of the new stairs. Now that the Stairs Man told me that, I do not feel safe stepping off the stairs and into the yard, unless I am wearing heavy boots that cover me to the knee, and not even then, really. (Did I mention, I also have this phobia of snakes?)
- All kinds of birds. In point of fact, my house is in a protected bird sanctuary area, so - no surprises there.
- Hornets. And mosquitoes. Lots and lots and lots of mosquitoes. I wish the birds would eat them.
As you can see, I am a keen observer of Nature (albeit preferably through a really sturdy double-glassed window) and a friend to all creatures great and small. One of my strongest and (I thought) most achievable resolves upon moving to Safariland was that no hapless bird or mammal should lose its life due to my carelessness at the wheel. (The snakes, I'll grant you, were on their own.)
You already know where this is going, don't you?
Exactly. Last week, on Thursday, to be precise, at about 11:15 a.m. on a nice, sunny day, I turned left on a road leading toward our home. I was not speeding. In fact, I was slightly under the speed limit. The sun was not in my eyes, I was focused on the road. I was not fiddling with the air conditioning, or with the radio. To my left was a series of identical houses with identical manicured lawns; to my right, a marshy, wild area that was just the sort of place an animal might pop out of, so I was going slowly and keeping an eye on the marshy part to the right.
And just at that moment, a groundhog came barreling downhill off one of the manicured lawns to my left, and hurtled between the front and back wheels of my car.
I hit the brakes, but of course it was too late.
I made a U-turn, circled, and went back immediately, with the confused idea that I had to make sure that it was really dead, because I could not leave it there to suffer if it was not. What I would have done if it had not been dead, I have no idea, as I had nothing in the trunk with which to pick up an injured wild animal that easily weighed about 10 lbs. I was spared the dilemma. It lay there, eyes closed, its mouth a trifle open as if in surprise, with only a tiny dark trickle of blood to show what had happened. The little creature's life, indubitably, had fled.
I pulled over, and I cursed, and I cried, and I pounded on the steering wheel.
I can't tell you how rotten I felt. I had been so sure that this was never going to happen, if only I was careful enough. And I'd been careful. Hadn't I?
I did not like to leave it lying in the road, but had no choice, as I had nothing to pick it up with. I took a long last look at it, noticing the beauty of its fur; the elegant structure of the right foreleg, crooked as if about to run; the delicacy of the small but powerful paws. I said I was sorry, and that I hadn't meant to do it. That I wished I could make it un-happen. I wondered whether the little creature had had any premonition that this was going to be its last day . . . I hoped that, up until the moment it ran under my car, it had been having a happy day, full of tasty grubs and lazy sunbathing, and I took a little comfort in the knowledge that its death had been instantaneous.
I kept feeling bad, on and off, all day long. When I woke up in the middle of the night, I thought about the groundhog, and was sorry all over again.
The next day, I steeled myself to drive the same route, dreading the sight that lay ahead, but the groundhog was gone. Someone had gotten it out of the road.
I slowly drove home, relieved that I had not had to look upon graphic evidence that all my good resolutions, so seemingly achievable in theory, had come to nothing in the fact of the fact that I had absolutely no control over Nature and wildlife, however much I might flatter myself that I did.
Musing on this, I turned onto our road - and stopped short. There in front of me, not fifty yards from my car, was a group of deer straight out of Disney. Two antlered bucks, a doe, and a fawn. The doe flicked an ear in my direction, then unhurriedly led the fawn into the copse, while the bucks stood their ground, regarding me with a sort of friendly curiosity. I gazed in absolute wonder, astounded at their nearness, and at their utter lack of fear. At last, they broke eye contact and gracefully threaded their way through the woods, following in the steps of the doe and the fawn.
In that moment, an ineffable sense of forgiveness come over me, and I whispered once more, "Thank you.. I am so very sorry," and drove home very carefully, because my eyes were still a little blurry from the tears.
And I had a sterling record, with no points on my license, because I never drove anywhere. If I couldn't get there by public transportation, I took a cab, or else passengered in somebody else's car. Somehow, I wasn't worried that anybody else was going crash the car - only that I was going to kill myself, or, even worse, someone else, if I were to drive. So for almost 35 years, I serenely maneuvered out of any and all driving situations, which was quite awkward at times, and certainly rather trying to my husband on long road trips when he would have liked to give somebody else a turn at the wheel.
This, of course, does not work once you move to the far end of a long private road in the suburbs.
Fortunately, I had, at my husband's (mostly) gentle insistence, been doing some very, ve-ry laid-back driving during our summer Adirondack sojourns by the time we moved to Rockland County. I had progressed from terrified squeaks of "No! I can't! You do it!" when he urged me to drive the 800 yards to the laundry hut at the requisite 5 mph of our summer community's compound, to driving the quarter mile to the grocery store at 20 mph, thus aggravating all the locals crawling along behind me in the 30 mph zone, because they were used to clipping along at 40 (unless they spotted a police cruiser), to the hideous moment when he coached me up the ramp to the Northway ("Floor it, honey! You need to hit the highway doing 60 - don't worry, it's a nice, long on-ramp, you'll have plenty of room to merge!") I was convinced he had a death wish for us both, but I closed my eyes, panicked as soon as I realized that I had my eyes closed, opened them, prepared for death and merged onto the nearly-empty highway, feeling like General Eisenhower invading Normandy.
My greatest fear was always that I would make a terrible, irrevocable mistake, and somebody, or something, would be killed. When I was small, I was one of those children who would burst into tears at the sight of a squashed skunk on the highway, wailing loudly for Daddy to turn the car around, go back, and take it to the doctor so the "poor little skunkie" could be fixed.
I moved to an area that abounds in wildlife previously unencountered by me outside of the confines of a zoo. In my first week of Rockland residency, I saw:
- A flock of wild turkeys - at least fifteen of them - all looking at me with the supercilious "You? Who are you?" sneer that the Caterpillar gave Alice
- Half a dozen deer, of various sizes and ages, serenely cropping at the grass and anything else they could get their teeth into in my backyard ( thus dooming forever my ambitious plans for a really spectacular flower garden)
- A fox (which was pretty cool, and I excitedly called up my husband at the office, interrupting him at the conference table in order to describe it in detail)
- A groundhog - which happened to have the poor judgement to be in the yard when I was letting the dog out to pee. Since both the groundhog and the dog are quite fat and slow, what ensued was a chase scene right out of the Keystone Kops, with both parties waddling about excitedly until the groundhog, swearing horribly about Those Fucking City People, dove into its hole and ended the matter. The dog, of course, was enchanted by this delightful new game, and now makes a beeline for the groundhog's lair every time I let her out the door.
- A coyote. Twice. Again, in my yard. Makes me wonder whether letting the dog out to pee, even under strict supervision, really is such a good idea. This one also warranted an excited call to my husband's office; he, after calmly saying, "A coyote? Are you sure it wasn't a deer?" aggravated me nearly to death by remarking that coyotes are scavengers, so the dog is perfectly safe and I shouldn't get so nervous. I responded with 10 minutes of violent Googling and a follow-up call detailing every instance of coyote attacks on Man and Dog I had found in my online research. To which he retorted that anything you read online in the N.Y. Post doesn't count, and that he had to get going because it was almost time for his business lunch in the charming little Manhattan bistro a block from his office, where I used to meet him for lunch back when I was still a Girlfriend and not just a Wife. So I hung up, ate some leftover supermarket potato salad, and sulked.
- Assorted squirrels, chipmunks, and (according to the man who built the stairs to the deck behind our kitchen - for the previous homeowners apparently had been willing to live without stairs for over 30 years) a snake of indeterminate species that lives in some sort of cement cistern near the base of the new stairs. Now that the Stairs Man told me that, I do not feel safe stepping off the stairs and into the yard, unless I am wearing heavy boots that cover me to the knee, and not even then, really. (Did I mention, I also have this phobia of snakes?)
- All kinds of birds. In point of fact, my house is in a protected bird sanctuary area, so - no surprises there.
- Hornets. And mosquitoes. Lots and lots and lots of mosquitoes. I wish the birds would eat them.
As you can see, I am a keen observer of Nature (albeit preferably through a really sturdy double-glassed window) and a friend to all creatures great and small. One of my strongest and (I thought) most achievable resolves upon moving to Safariland was that no hapless bird or mammal should lose its life due to my carelessness at the wheel. (The snakes, I'll grant you, were on their own.)
You already know where this is going, don't you?
Exactly. Last week, on Thursday, to be precise, at about 11:15 a.m. on a nice, sunny day, I turned left on a road leading toward our home. I was not speeding. In fact, I was slightly under the speed limit. The sun was not in my eyes, I was focused on the road. I was not fiddling with the air conditioning, or with the radio. To my left was a series of identical houses with identical manicured lawns; to my right, a marshy, wild area that was just the sort of place an animal might pop out of, so I was going slowly and keeping an eye on the marshy part to the right.
And just at that moment, a groundhog came barreling downhill off one of the manicured lawns to my left, and hurtled between the front and back wheels of my car.
I hit the brakes, but of course it was too late.
I made a U-turn, circled, and went back immediately, with the confused idea that I had to make sure that it was really dead, because I could not leave it there to suffer if it was not. What I would have done if it had not been dead, I have no idea, as I had nothing in the trunk with which to pick up an injured wild animal that easily weighed about 10 lbs. I was spared the dilemma. It lay there, eyes closed, its mouth a trifle open as if in surprise, with only a tiny dark trickle of blood to show what had happened. The little creature's life, indubitably, had fled.
I pulled over, and I cursed, and I cried, and I pounded on the steering wheel.
I can't tell you how rotten I felt. I had been so sure that this was never going to happen, if only I was careful enough. And I'd been careful. Hadn't I?
I did not like to leave it lying in the road, but had no choice, as I had nothing to pick it up with. I took a long last look at it, noticing the beauty of its fur; the elegant structure of the right foreleg, crooked as if about to run; the delicacy of the small but powerful paws. I said I was sorry, and that I hadn't meant to do it. That I wished I could make it un-happen. I wondered whether the little creature had had any premonition that this was going to be its last day . . . I hoped that, up until the moment it ran under my car, it had been having a happy day, full of tasty grubs and lazy sunbathing, and I took a little comfort in the knowledge that its death had been instantaneous.
I kept feeling bad, on and off, all day long. When I woke up in the middle of the night, I thought about the groundhog, and was sorry all over again.
The next day, I steeled myself to drive the same route, dreading the sight that lay ahead, but the groundhog was gone. Someone had gotten it out of the road.
I slowly drove home, relieved that I had not had to look upon graphic evidence that all my good resolutions, so seemingly achievable in theory, had come to nothing in the fact of the fact that I had absolutely no control over Nature and wildlife, however much I might flatter myself that I did.
Musing on this, I turned onto our road - and stopped short. There in front of me, not fifty yards from my car, was a group of deer straight out of Disney. Two antlered bucks, a doe, and a fawn. The doe flicked an ear in my direction, then unhurriedly led the fawn into the copse, while the bucks stood their ground, regarding me with a sort of friendly curiosity. I gazed in absolute wonder, astounded at their nearness, and at their utter lack of fear. At last, they broke eye contact and gracefully threaded their way through the woods, following in the steps of the doe and the fawn.
In that moment, an ineffable sense of forgiveness come over me, and I whispered once more, "Thank you.. I am so very sorry," and drove home very carefully, because my eyes were still a little blurry from the tears.
Friday, August 1, 2014
I Lose the Ability to Fasten My Waistband: El Pastor Restaurant, Haverstraw NY
I have eaten in a lot of Mexican restaurants in our decades of city-dwelling. As it turns out, I had to cross the Hudson and move 27 miles to the north to find the most delicious Mexican food I have ever tasted.It was not until eating at El Pastor, a small, unpretentious neighborhood restaurant in Rockland County's Haverstraw, that I realized I have never actually had authentic Mexican cuisine. I've had Tex-Mex and Cal-Mex, and a lot of it was very good. This restaurant blew every variant I've ever tasted out of the water.
There were six of us, and the owner-chef, Pepe, made us feel like honored guests immediately. I think this restaurant does a great deal of take-out, and not as much sit-down trade (as yet, that is - wait till the word gets out about this gem.) So he looked a little astonished at all these people who wanted to plunk down in seats and start ordering everything on the menu, but he rallied swiftly. Tables were quickly pushed together, and then the kitchen got busy showing us what it could do.
We started with the tacos - ten for $15, which was that night's special. I had the shrimp tacos, my friend Carrie had tongue (!) and the less adventurous teenagers stuck to beef, chicken and pork. These were small, appetizer-sized tacos, somewhat larger than a blini, but much smaller than the tacos I've come to expect. My Husband the Foodie, happily chugging down his tamarind soda with an, "Ahh - just right!", explained that these were the real thing - it's the Americanized tacos that are super-sized They were exquisite, with plenty of cilantro and a garnish of roasted spring onions and roast cactus. Has any other Mexican restaurant ever offered me roast cactus? Indeed, it has not - and it turned out that cactus is superb.
Carrie flatly refused to share any of her tongue tacos with the teens, who got curious after noting the look of ecstasy that crossed her face when she bit into one. She said they were much too good for anybody under twenty. The kids would have liked to argue, but they were too busy washing down their own tacos with swigs of imported Mexican Coca Cola - "See, Mom? It's like the Cokes we had when we were down there. Not too sweet."
Having eaten at El Pastor last month with my Husband the Foodie, I knew that the entree portions are gargantuan, so I contented myself with a quesadilla - light, beautifully toasted, and with perfectly melted queso blanco. The French fries were probably overkill, but they came with the dish, and who could resist? They had been dredged in lightly-seasoned flour and each one was a masterpiece of airy crispness.
Carrie, meanwhile, was defending her tilapia from the teenagers, who were making several half-hearted attempts at piracy but were soon so absorbed in crunching into their golden-brown flautas that they had no time for anybody else's plate. My Husband the Foodie had bravely ordered the platter of mixed grill - steak, pork, and I-don't-know-what-else, somehow thinking it would be a manageable portion after all those tacos - and was happily chowing down while explaining how you could tell that these black beans were house-made, not canned, and that this yellow rice was done right.
As if we needed more, our server (the owner's wife, perhaps? We didn't ask) floated over and, with a charming smile, deposited a complimentary basket of house-made corn tortillas on the table. Never have I tasted such tortillas. The edges of the tender little circlets were irregular, hinting at the artisanal nature of the treat, and the fresh corn flavor made me feel like I was standing in a Vermont cornfield. We started piling the food on top of the tortillas, and soon nobody could talk - all we could do was point to the food as we stuffed it into our mouths, bugging out our eyes to indicate how good it was.
Eventually, we gave in and begged for doggie bags, because there was Just. Too. Much. Food.
But Pepe was not through with us yet. We must, he insisted, have a bit of dessert - compliments of the house. We begged for mercy, but there was no mercy to be had. Very soon, we were finding that we did, after all, have a tiny bit of room for the greatest churros that I, or anyone else at the table, had ever tasted. Not too sweet, with the lightest possible dusting for cinnamon sugar, with a superbly moist interior crumb, and of a temperature that demanded to be consumed at once, before they lost their just-made crispy perfection.
The only caution I would extend, to those who would try the delights of El Pastor, is that this is not a fast food restaurant. Everything is freshly cooked to order, and you can see the kitchen staff whirling efficiently about the kitchen making your food, just for you. Perfection takes time. If you get grumpy because physical law requires that certain foods take a certain amount of time to cook to the pinnacle of tastiness... if you have a train you need to catch . . . if you are out with people you can't imagine actually talking to for twenty minutes between the last crumb of the appetizer and the arrival of the entree... then sitting down to dine at El Pastor is not for you. Call ahead, get the take-out, go home, and eat in front of the television.
We have a new favorite restaurant, and it is El Pastor.
El Pastor Restaurant
93 Broadway, Haverstraw, NY 10927
845-271-4671
Open 7 days a week from 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 a.m
http://www.elpastor93.com/contact-us/
There were six of us, and the owner-chef, Pepe, made us feel like honored guests immediately. I think this restaurant does a great deal of take-out, and not as much sit-down trade (as yet, that is - wait till the word gets out about this gem.) So he looked a little astonished at all these people who wanted to plunk down in seats and start ordering everything on the menu, but he rallied swiftly. Tables were quickly pushed together, and then the kitchen got busy showing us what it could do.
We started with the tacos - ten for $15, which was that night's special. I had the shrimp tacos, my friend Carrie had tongue (!) and the less adventurous teenagers stuck to beef, chicken and pork. These were small, appetizer-sized tacos, somewhat larger than a blini, but much smaller than the tacos I've come to expect. My Husband the Foodie, happily chugging down his tamarind soda with an, "Ahh - just right!", explained that these were the real thing - it's the Americanized tacos that are super-sized They were exquisite, with plenty of cilantro and a garnish of roasted spring onions and roast cactus. Has any other Mexican restaurant ever offered me roast cactus? Indeed, it has not - and it turned out that cactus is superb.
Carrie flatly refused to share any of her tongue tacos with the teens, who got curious after noting the look of ecstasy that crossed her face when she bit into one. She said they were much too good for anybody under twenty. The kids would have liked to argue, but they were too busy washing down their own tacos with swigs of imported Mexican Coca Cola - "See, Mom? It's like the Cokes we had when we were down there. Not too sweet."
Having eaten at El Pastor last month with my Husband the Foodie, I knew that the entree portions are gargantuan, so I contented myself with a quesadilla - light, beautifully toasted, and with perfectly melted queso blanco. The French fries were probably overkill, but they came with the dish, and who could resist? They had been dredged in lightly-seasoned flour and each one was a masterpiece of airy crispness.
Carrie, meanwhile, was defending her tilapia from the teenagers, who were making several half-hearted attempts at piracy but were soon so absorbed in crunching into their golden-brown flautas that they had no time for anybody else's plate. My Husband the Foodie had bravely ordered the platter of mixed grill - steak, pork, and I-don't-know-what-else, somehow thinking it would be a manageable portion after all those tacos - and was happily chowing down while explaining how you could tell that these black beans were house-made, not canned, and that this yellow rice was done right.
As if we needed more, our server (the owner's wife, perhaps? We didn't ask) floated over and, with a charming smile, deposited a complimentary basket of house-made corn tortillas on the table. Never have I tasted such tortillas. The edges of the tender little circlets were irregular, hinting at the artisanal nature of the treat, and the fresh corn flavor made me feel like I was standing in a Vermont cornfield. We started piling the food on top of the tortillas, and soon nobody could talk - all we could do was point to the food as we stuffed it into our mouths, bugging out our eyes to indicate how good it was.
Eventually, we gave in and begged for doggie bags, because there was Just. Too. Much. Food.
But Pepe was not through with us yet. We must, he insisted, have a bit of dessert - compliments of the house. We begged for mercy, but there was no mercy to be had. Very soon, we were finding that we did, after all, have a tiny bit of room for the greatest churros that I, or anyone else at the table, had ever tasted. Not too sweet, with the lightest possible dusting for cinnamon sugar, with a superbly moist interior crumb, and of a temperature that demanded to be consumed at once, before they lost their just-made crispy perfection.
The only caution I would extend, to those who would try the delights of El Pastor, is that this is not a fast food restaurant. Everything is freshly cooked to order, and you can see the kitchen staff whirling efficiently about the kitchen making your food, just for you. Perfection takes time. If you get grumpy because physical law requires that certain foods take a certain amount of time to cook to the pinnacle of tastiness... if you have a train you need to catch . . . if you are out with people you can't imagine actually talking to for twenty minutes between the last crumb of the appetizer and the arrival of the entree... then sitting down to dine at El Pastor is not for you. Call ahead, get the take-out, go home, and eat in front of the television.
We have a new favorite restaurant, and it is El Pastor.
El Pastor Restaurant
93 Broadway, Haverstraw, NY 10927
845-271-4671
Open 7 days a week from 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 a.m
http://www.elpastor93.com/contact-us/
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