PUTNEY — Those familiar with humor website Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency (www.mcsweeneys.net/tendency) might recognize the familiar “list” theme of Rebecca Coffey's new book, Nietzsche's Angel Food Cake … and Other “Recipes” For the Intellectually Famished.
“Dorothy's Parker House Rolls: A Jazz Age Recipe” builds up to ask, “What is worse than a Pahkah House Roll?"
“Sigmund Freud's 10 Steps to Great Fish” pairs the Oedipus complex with a preparation of trout.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Creature features in re-animated meatloaf.
And the titular Nietzsche kills two angels to make his dessert, and gives rise to über-batter for good measure.
Coffey, of Putney, flows well here and is delightfully witty, especially if you get her literary references. Should you not, don't feel badly: They're plentiful and pointed enough that you can hardly miss enjoying seeing Coffey hit her target.
As an award-winning science writer and a humorist, Coffey says she found the writers contributing to McSweeney's inspiring enough that she tried her hand at a piece for the site too - and wound up with a book.
“I've always been charmed by their list section. One day, to clear my head of journalism, I decided to try writing a list. I'd been thinking about Nietzsche, and I wrote the Nietzsche's Angel Food Cake recipe. It was that simple,” she says.
Coffey explains that she “has never not written professionally.”
“In my 20s and early 30s, I was a writer, producer and director in New York. Once I moved to Vermont, I became just a writer. I limited myself to writing since 1989.”
Indeed, she is now the author of three books, and contributes to Scientific American and Discover magazines, as well as to McSweeney's, The Rumpus, and other literary journals.
She also contributes news desk commentaries to Vermont Public Radio and is a columnist at PsychologyToday.com.
She is currently researching absinthe for a new nonfiction book, Louche, which she describes as being about the myth and reality of the storied alcoholic beverage.
“It's partly history, but also about the chemistry and mythology of absinthe. I did a lot of distillery research and I ended up in France talking to distillery workers. It addresses questions people have about absinthe: Where did it come from? Is it safe? Is it fun?”
Asked what sort of writer she considers herself, Coffey says she tries to focus on more than one kind of writing:
“Balance is important in any life. If you only pull from one spot in your brain, you're not living as fully as you might. Some of the journalism I do is pretty depressing, and I couldn't just do that.”
Like 'skiing downhill very, very fast'
Coffey tells The Commons that the most enjoyable part of writing Nietzsche's Angel Food Cake was how she was able to make mistakes about her subjects to comic effect.
“I approached writing this book the same way I approached science journalism: you research intensively and read everything you can about the topic. With science journalism, I write and then fact-check. Here, I would read everything I could about Hemingway, say, and then not fact-check.”
Moreover, mistakes are funny, she says. “You get to be wrong, and it was a really wonderful process.”
The start of any of Coffey's stories, she explains, is the title: “If the title doesn't make me howl, there's nothing there to write. If it doesn't come from a core idea, it's not going to come. If a recipe doesn't write itself, it's going to feel forced. Humor cannot feel forced.”
Coffey says she intended to write recipes for Anaïs Nin and Ernest Hemingway, but soon realized that the length of their respective narratives would mean having to write shorter, more palatable pieces for the rest of the book.
“The ones I wanted to write were longer ones, more about brainiac literature. You can't have a whole book [of that]. I started looking for cheap shots, like with Ian Fleming. It was like making a song list if you're a musician; you're looking for something for everyone. Make it as short as possible.”
Coffey takes a page from Freud, who said (of humor), “Shorter is better.”
“If you can reduce Hemingway to 14 steps, that's funny,” Coffey explains.
Coffey illustrated the book, too, as she couldn't find an illustrator who thought the way she did.
“My daughter encouraged me and said, 'Your doodles are just fine.' I doodled to my heart's content and put them in the book.”
She compares writing Nietzsche's Angel Food Cake to “skiing downhill very, very fast” in terms of her experience, and describes how it differs from novel-writing:
“I've never had so much fun. Writing a novel takes over your life for years, and you have to become all the major characters. The research is more intense, and the changes it writes on your soul are deeper.”