Adam Gopnik: Rare Romance, Well-Done Marriage

Summary

Summary of "Adam Gopnik: Rare Romance, Well-Done Marriage" – The Moth Podcast

Episode Information:

• Podcast Title: The Moth
• Host/Author: The Moth
• Episode Title: Adam Gopnik: Rare Romance, Well-Done Marriage
• Release Date: October 24, 2011
• Transcript Focus: [04:11] to [18:31]

Introduction: In this captivating story, Adam Gopnik, a staff writer for The New Yorker and author of several books, delves into the intricate relationship between food and marriage. Recorded live at The Moth in September, under the theme "Mothy Food Adventures of Epic Portions," Gopnik intertwines personal anecdotes with broader reflections on how culinary preferences can mirror and influence marital dynamics.

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The Universality of Food and Morality

Gopnik begins by exploring the profound role food plays in human life, asserting that food is far from frivolous—it becomes a moral compass almost instantaneously.

• Notable Quote:
  "Mouth tastes become moral tastes very, very quickly." [04:45]

He illustrates this by comparing children's immediate reactions to food with moral judgments, suggesting that our preferences are deeply tied to our ethical and emotional frameworks.

Family Arguments Over Food

Gopnik recounts longstanding food-related disputes within his family, highlighting how these seemingly trivial disagreements often signify deeper underlying tensions.

• Uncle Ron and Aunt Rose's Debate:
  They perpetually argued over the implications of large restaurant portions—whether they were a tactic to overcharge customers or simply a standard practice.

• Grandparents' Language of Food:
  His grandfather, an immigrant who ran a butcher shop, struggled with English food idioms, leading to a memorable conflict over the meaning of "You can't have your cake and eat it too."

Gopnik's Marriage and Culinary Conflict

Transitioning to his own marriage, Gopnik shares the central conflict: his wife's preference for well-done food versus his inclination for rare preparations.

• Impact on Marriage:
  • Gopnik’s wife, Martha, insisting on well-done dishes symbolizes a clash of culinary philosophies that extend to their parenting and household dynamics.
  • Notable Quote:
    "You're depriving them of their fundamental connection to nature." [13:50]

This disagreement becomes a metaphor for differing worldviews and approaches to life, causing significant strain in their relationship.

The Pivotal Moment

A turning point occurs when Gopnik prepares tuna au poivre—cooked to his preferred rare state—for his family. Their negative reactions lead to an intense confrontation, forcing both partners to reassess their relationship.

• Notable Quote:
  "It's about sex. It's about sex. Pink is pink." [16:30]

This realization connects their culinary preferences to deeper aspects of identity and intimacy, showcasing how food can reflect personal and emotional connections.

Resolution and Renewal

To mend their relationship, Gopnik and Martha adopt compromises in their cooking and communication, symbolizing a broader strategy for marital harmony.

• Introduction of 'Medium':

  • Martha begins to use the term "medium" ambiguously, allowing flexibility in food preparation.

• Gopnik’s Shift to Braising:
  He transitions to braising techniques, eliminating the rare vs. well-done debate by focusing on tenderness.

• Notable Quote:
  "We renew our vows. And the good thing about it is, as Tolstoy knew, all happy marriages are alike, and all unhappy marriages are different." [17:50]

This approach fosters a balance between their preferences, emphasizing cooperation and mutual respect.

Reflections on Marriage and Food

Gopnik concludes by reflecting on the nature of marital disputes, suggesting that having a singular, recurring argument can be more sustainable than constantly introducing new conflicts.

• Philosophical Insight:
  "In every happy marriage you argue about the same thing over and over and over. And in every unhappy marriage, you find a new thing to argue about every night." [18:20]

He underscores the importance of finding foundational compromises that allow for enduring relationships despite differences.

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Conclusion: Adam Gopnik's story eloquently illustrates how everyday elements like food can encapsulate and influence the dynamics of marriage. Through personal anecdotes and insightful reflections, he demonstrates that resolving fundamental disagreements requires empathy, compromise, and a willingness to understand the deeper meanings behind our preferences.

Final Notable Quote:
"All happy marriages are alike, and all unhappy marriages are different." [17:50]

This profound statement encapsulates the essence of Gopnik's narrative, emphasizing the universal truths that underpin successful relationships.

Transcript

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[Adam Gopnik]

Thank you. I'm going to tell the same story that Lincoln told when he was standing here. The great thing about food, which is our subject tonight, food, is that food so quickly becomes everything else. Padma just said that every fucking thing on the planet eats. And the interesting thing is that every eating thing on the planet fucks as well. So it's kind of limitlessly transitive. The relationships of food and all of our other activities. It's an amazing thing. You know, we have. You think food would be the most frivolous thing that we experience as people, but it's the most serious thing, isn't it? Because if you think about it, every mouth taste that we ever have becomes a moral taste very quickly. You taste something, you think you like it, and instantly it becomes a moral principle. Children, if you have them, are like that, they taste something and say, ew, that's yucky. And you say, well, I really like it. Ew, you're yucky, you're gross. God reasons in exactly the same way somebody gave God a pork chop once to taste and he said, ooh, this is terrible. Anyone who ever eats a pork chop again is a horrible sinner and has violated every rule that I've made. Mouth tastes become moral tastes very, very quickly. In our experience, food becomes everything else. And I come from a long line of people who really, since the diaspora, have been arguing about food, long marriages Long, mostly contented, happy marriages. But at the heart of every one of these marriages in my family, there's some argument, some fracture where the moment where a mouth taste has become a moral taste and where people break apart. You think about my Uncle Ron and my Aunt Rose, for instance. The. They spent most of their life through about 60 years of marriage having the same argument about food. That is, my uncle Ron insisted that the reason they give you large portions at restaurants is in order to charge you more. And my Aunt Rose insisted that the reason that they charged you more at restaurants was because they had given you such large portions. And they carried this on argument along like a Beckett play from Philadelphia to Florida and then into the hospital where my Uncle Ron had his vocal cords removed and would say, the reason they charge you more is because they want to and they trick you with a large portion. She said, no, Ron, that's not the reason at all. People carry these arguments on. My grandparents had a. Now, there's a weird thing about my grandparents I have to explain in order to explain their argument, and that is that I introduced my grandparents when I was about 2 years old, and I only have one pair of them because when I was about two, my father's father. Now follow this. My father's father met my mother's mother and they divorced the other spouses and they married each other. That's a true story. They did. So I only had one set of grandparents. And as a consequence, because my father's father was just like my father, only a kind of old immigrant guy, and my mother's mother, just like my mother, I had a kind of tuned version of my parents who lived in another neighborhood. And they. To give you some idea, my grandfather ran a little grocery store. He cared about nothing but food. He was a butcher. He managed to chop off all of his fingers in his lifetime. And his name was Al. His name was Al, but he called his store Benny's Market because he thought it sounded much classier than Al's Market. He and my grandmother had one fight, the way my uncle and my aunt did throughout their lives, and that was about the language of food. Because my grandfather came late to this country and my grandmother earlier, and she would never explain to him what important food expressions actually meant. When he was 88 and I was visiting him in Florida, he took me aside and said, there's something no one will explain to me. And I've been waiting for someone to explain to me for 70 years. What do people mean when they say, you can't have your Cake and eat it too. What else are you supposed to do with your cake? And this had been troubling him for 70 years. Finally had a grandson with a PhD in English, and he wanted to know what it meant. My parents argue about food. My parents have the same argument about food. My mother's a wonderful cook, and every time they argue, my father says, every night, myrna, please don't serve me another dessert. Please don't serve me. And she does, and he eats it. Once again, mouth taste becomes a moral taste. But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to talk to you about my marriage and the fight that we have. My wife Martha and I here, we've been married a pretty long time now, and we have had one fight, one moment when mouth taste becomes moral taste through all of that period. And it is that she. And I say this with some shame. Likes everything well done. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful girl. Young girl. Met her when she was a teenager. And when you meet somebody for the first time in that way, you don't really believe it. When they say well done, you think that it's a kind of sophisticated joke. You know, it's like when somebody tells you that they were a Donny Osmond fan. You think that they're. It's complex kind of irony that they're talking about, not an actual taste. And she would say, well done. When we would go out to a restaurant in Montreal, she'd say, well done. And they'd bring it to her, well done. And I smiled and I thought, we'll get past this. Because when you're young and you're in love, everything is rare anyway. Just as when you come to New York, everyone is Jewish in love, everything is rare. Well done is rare. Long cooked is rare. You can't have something that's not kind of wonderfully bloody inside. I came from a family where rare was a very important moral category because it marked your readiness for adventure, your taste for exploration, your appetite for experiment. And she came from a family where it was just the opposite. Well done was the significant moral category. And I didn't really believe that she believed in this until I went for a cookout at her parents place and her father was doing hamburgers. And I said, oh, that looks good. And he flipped the hamburger over and a minute went by in 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 45 minutes. Months and years went by before he was ready to serve this thing. We got married anyway, and I continued to order these things. And then it became a little more severe when we had children. I should explain that we have a kind of somewhat inside out marriage because, though hardly a masculine person, she does all the masculine things. She keeps the books and she drives the car. I don't drive and I do all the cooking. And I'm the one who sits in the front seat and works the radio and the CD player and tells the kids that we'll be there soon, don't bother your mother while she's driving. And I do all the cooking. And so I would prepare things, make things for her, and she would sort of COVID it up and move it around. And then I realized that she was propagandizing our children to like things well done. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, well, what's wrong with that? Why make a fuss about something so trivial? But you're not married to someone who likes things well done. And you don't understand the depth of pain and dismay, this feeling that you're violating everything that should be happening when you have a piece of protein on your plate. That piece of protein should still have some of the tang, the residuum of where it came from. It shouldn't be turned into a hockey puck of plainness. And when you're teaching your children that, you're teaching them to be afraid of life, you're teaching them to live and eat like old immigrant people. You're depriving them of their fundamental connection to nature. That's what those two words, well done, does to your children's soul when you insist on it time after time. So how could you help but be angry and you're trying to stop it? I love this woman, she's wonderful. And she likes things well done. And it makes you furious. One day I went to the fishmongers and. And I brought home tuna, beautiful sushi quality tuna. And I did it the way the tuna should be done. I did a kind of tuna au poivre where you put a lot of peppers on top and you saute it and you make a little cognac and creme fraiche sauce. Wonderful way. Much better than steak au poivre, tuna au poivre. And I served it to the three members of my family. My wife, my son, my daughter. And it was just properly pink inside. Just, just properly pink inside. And, you know, I realized as I did it, what it was really about. It wasn't just about the immigrant experience. Why do we like things rare? It's about sex. It's about sex. Pink is pink. There's simply no way of denying the association. Pink. Red inside is. Red inside it is. And it simply is. And that when you're offering somebody something rare, you're offering them your sexuality, and when they reject it, they're rejecting you. They are. I put the plate of tuna down and they all three cut into it, and they all three did that horrible kind of rear back thing. Oh, this is undercooked. And I snapped. I rose from my chair and I did this terrible, terrible thing that happens in American sitcoms from the 60s. I grabbed my coat and I went towards the door. I never had done anything like that before. But there was my fish, my manhood being turned away by my entire family. My wife intercepted me. Martha intercepted me at the door. And she said, with a kind of vehemence that I had never known her to possess, even in childbirth, she said, you are going back and you are finishing that fish. And recognizing that I had no choice, I put my apron back on and I finished sauteing the fish until it was indistinguishable from the kind of tuna you get in a can, which is exactly what they wanted. But we both recognized that that moment about five years ago was a pivot moment, a hinge moment. If you're married, you know those moments, you back away from those moments and you say, we can't go there. If we go any farther in that direction, we'll end up apart. And I noticed that from that night on, when we went to a restaurant, Martha began to use an extraordinary word that she had never used before that's essential to the continuity of a marriage. That word was medium. And the beautiful thing about the word medium is that it's a double voiced word. You say, the waiter comes in that perky way and says, and how will you have that man? And you look your husband in the eyes and you say dreamily, medium. And then you say, the waiter. Well, medium well, Right. Or you can say medium air. There's always a pivot that you can do to get where you want. It's an inherently ambivalent expression because there's no such thing as medium well. And she could say it. And I made an adjustment too, that was just as deep. I decided that I would just stop sauteing things. I would remove this whole rare, well done issue from our marriage. And I started to braise everything. Seven hours in a pot in a 200 degree oven. Because. Because when you braise everything, the issue of rare and well done evaporates from your world and it's replaced by another issue. And that is tough or tender. It's either tough or it's tender, and if it's tender, it's good. And in those two words, medium tender, we found the renewal of our relationship because that's what every marriage seeks to be. We start off in the wonderful, blazing, raw intensity of sauteing and boiling and work our way to the beautiful tenderness of the braise and the stew, and that's in those juices. We renew our vows. And the good thing about it is, as I wish I could go back and say to my Uncle Ron and Aunt Rose, is that the secret is that, as Tolstoy knew, all happy marriages are alike, and all unhappy marriages are different. Because in every happy marriage you argue about the same thing over and over and over. And in every unhappy marriage, you find a new thing to argue about every night. That's why it's good to to have the one argument. And you find out as I wish. I told my uncle and my aunt that though there's no free lunch or free dinner in a marriage, there's no way that you can avoid the cost. Though you always pay more if you're married to the right person, the portions always get larger. Thank you so much. Take care.

[Dan Kennedy]

Adam Gopnik is a staff writer for the New Yorker and the author of several books, including Paris to the Moon and Through the Children's Gate. His latest book, the Table Comes First, Family, Friends, and the Meaning of Food, is available this week. This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com the Internet's leading provider of audiobooks with more than 85,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature and featuring audio versions of many New York Times bestselling. To try Audible Free today and get a free audiobook of your choice, go to audible.com themoth Voss is the perfect.

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