August 8, 2007
Golden tomatoes and blue potatoes
Now rereading Carol Shields’s Unless, her masterpiece. I reread this book every summer, an amazing experience that allows one to, for example, pause and ponder the first paragraph for about ten minutes straight. It’s also sad and heartening to be reading this book after having read her book of letters with Blanche Howard in June. I also still maintain that this book is a treatise on novel-writing, which is very exciting seeing as I am returning to my own novel in just a few weeks after this summer of short stories. Anyway, I am enjoying this much the same way I always do, but also differently, of course.
I liked Michael Holroyd’s exasperation with author acknowledgements, as much as acknowledgements are the first part of any book I read. I also enjoyed Holroyd’s sister in law AS Byatt’s treatment of Middlemarch, which you might recall I read for the first time and fell in love with earlier this year. Byatt’s Possession is being “twinned” with Middlemarch for the Vintage Classic Twins Editions, which were brilliantly introduced to me here at dovergreyreader scribbles.
And it’s been nearly a week since I mentioned the garden last– you all must be on the edge of your seats! For your information my husband is now reading Animal Vegetable Miracle and is more obsessed than I was. We revisited the brilliant Trinity Bellwoods Farmers Market and brought home tons of wonderful stuff, including blue potatoes and blackberries. We did a harvest of our garden tonight, and brought in two enormous bowls of tomatoes of all kinds– the window sill is crowded. Tomorrow night I am going to attempt a golden tomato sauce.
I’m sorry, I come from a small town–what is a golden tomato?????
All the people I know back home have tomatoes and share tomatoes and talk a lot about them and when I go to the fair (yes) I look at the tomato exhibit and *we don’t have those there*.
Explique-moi, s’il te plait.
The little tag in the dirt says “Carolina Golden” but they’re also called yellow tomatoes when I look for more info on-line. To be honest they taste a lot like tomatoes, albeit good ones, but I love that they’re yellow. I don’t know why we ended up with them in the garden (I am a tender, not a planter) but I am very glad we did.
How wonderful that you’re writing a novel. Short stories are a challenge of a different sort.
Both require such ambition and perseverance.
And they’d make such a pretty contrast in the salad.