Recipes

From The Journey Home, by Olaf Olafsson:

…I think there is a certain arrogance in precise recipes and I’m uncomfortable with laying down the law about how people should prepare their food.

The day before yesterday, for instance, I sneaked a few figs into the chicken I was about to roast. I did it at the last moment because I had a sudden intuition that Anthony would appreciate the flavor of figs when he tasted the bird. Somehow I sensed it in his expression when he came trailing back from the tennis court. Sometimes I’m moved to cook snails in honey for the simple reason that I’ve seen bees buzzing in the sunshine; sometimes a bird singing on a branch will give me the idea of putting blackberries or currants in the sauce I’m preparing; sometimes the breeze billows the curtain over the little window in the corner and I think perhaps I’ll serve baked cinnamon pears with the veal I have in my hands. Why? Did the breeze waft me the scent of spices from distant lands? Did it bring me a message from someone who was thinking kind thoughts about me?

How could I possibly put these feelings on paper without running the risk of spoiling the pleasure or revealing what should be discovered in peace.

A Great Technology

I just started reading a collection of short stories by Olaf Olafsson called Valentines: stories. Each of the dozen stories is named for a month of the year. I came across the story, "On the Lake," in the Winter 2006 issue of Zoetrope: All Story and was fascinated by its precision and understatement. The reader's eye is directed to the surface of the action allowing the palpable tensions and emotional undercurrents to bubble up on their own. I read it three times like a kid in a magic shop trying to uncover the secret. The trick seems to be a combination of great care, faith in the reader, rigorous restraint, and the ruthless removal of extraneous details. The story was retitled "April" for the collection.

Olafsson was born in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1962 and has a degree in physics from Brandeis University. In addition to writing short stories, novels and plays, he was the founder and former president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Inc. where he "was involved in developing the CD and...the PlayStation computer."

"[His novel] Fyrirgefning syndanna (Absolution) was nominated for the Icelandic Literature Prize in 1991 and the short story collection Aldingarðurinn (Valentines) won the same award in 2006...His novel, The Journey Home, will be filmed in 2007, directed by Liv Ullman."

In a 2003 discussion of his dual career as writer and Vice President of Time Warner with CNET, he said, "One form of media still in my mind is best served by traditional methods, and that's storytelling. Books provide a great way for people to tell stories. Movies are the same. Paper is actually a great technology, when it comes to a novel."