I'm a book-reading machine! I read two books this weekend:
Both non-fiction, both full of brilliant & larger-than-life characters, both very funny. Here's a quote from Heat, a New Yorker staff writer's story of training both in Mario Batali's kitchen (at Babbo) and under the tutelage of several artisans in Italy. This is Dario Cecchini, the greatest butcher in the world, who works in the 900-person town of Panzano, twenty miles from Florence, describing to a potential customer why his beef comes from Spanish cows, rather than the local legendary white cow, the chianina:
"The chianina is now not good because it is fundamentally banal. It is a name. Prada is a name. Versace is a name. Armani is a name. Chianina is a name. If I sold it, which I do not, I would be selling a name. Would I make money selling a name? Certainly. Would it be good for bizzness? Certainly. But bizzness does not interest me. Names do not interest me. Meat interests me. That's why I sell meat, not names. Besides," Dario adds, in a final flourish, "I don't believe in the purity of races. You, evidently, believe in the purity of races. So did Hitler. But Hitler, in my view, was wrong."
So it would appear that Godwin's Law has made the leap even to small hill towns in Tuscany!
That was a delightful post. Thanks, Ben!
Posted by: Dinah | July 04, 2006 at 05:56 PM