What I Ate on Book Tour
by Laurie Woolever
I wrote a book about food (and drinking, and sex, and marriage, and celebrity, and death) that came out in March, and for which my publisher sent me on a book tour that kicked off in New York. Before that event, I had dinner with my editor and publicist at Henry Public, which is done up to look like (or maybe fixed up to preserve?) a pre–Civil War Brooklyn waterfront pub. The self-conscious menu language made my eye twitch a bit, with its references to a “hamburger sandwich” and “french-fried potatoes,” though both dishes were fantastic. The New York Times’s most recent write-up of the place dates to 2009, when the Tea Party movement was quietly gathering steam, Henry Public’s [ham]burger [sandwich] cost just $13 (it’s now $22, or $24 if you want cheese), and Covid was maybe a typo relating to the crow family.
Two days later, on a train to D.C., I ate a huge slice of white cake with tooth-shatteringly sweet pink buttercream icing from the Magnolia Bakery kiosk in Moynihan Station. That night’s reading was sparsely attended, and those who were there seemed rather subdued.
“People in D.C. are really depressed,” said a bookstore employee. Chuck Schumer was slated to appear in the store a few days after me, to promote his new book, I noticed. But then he canceled his whole tour to, I guess, focus on writing strongly-worded letters to his authoritarian/fascist-curious colleagues.
In the green room at the Philly Free Library’s main branch, I ate a bag of Cheetos, then scrambled to find a place to wash my hands of that beautiful sticky orange dust that will soon go the way of the dodo.
Keep us breathing fire!
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