Interesting Emendations: Bill Buford's "The Pasta Station"

Mmm. It’ll soon be time for the appearance of my favorite thematic issue of the magazine – The Food Issue. It usually comes out around this time each year. In anticipation, just to whet my appetite, I went back and reread one of the all-time great "Food Issue” pieces: Bill Buford’s "The Pasta Station" (The New Yorker, September 6, 2004). It’s a funny, wonderful account of Buford’s experience working the pasta station at Mario Batali’s Babbo. One passage I really like contains a beautiful parenthesis. It occurs during Buford’s description of his experience making orecchiette for the first time. Buford says orecchiette “is regarded as one of the easiest pastas to make.” He describes rolling it out by hand “until it looks like a white tube.” He continues:

You then chop the tube into bite-size segments and crush each segment on a ridged piece of wood with your thumb, and, like a child’s magic trick, the pasta changes shape under the pressure: when you remove it, it has ridges underneath and, on top, it’s shaped like an ear (unless it was one that I had to peel off my thumb that first day, in which case the ridges looked like a tic-tac-toe board, because I invariably had to do the thing twice, and wasn’t able to line it up correctly the second time, and the ear was all large and distorted, a floppy flap of dough, more like a cartoon elephant’s ear than a normal ear, because my hands had got so clammy from the anxiety of finally making pasta that it wouldn’t come off my thumb).

Just for the heck of it, I compared this passage with the version Buford included in his book Heat (2006). Here’s the book version:

You then chop the tube into bite-size segments and crush each one on a ridged piece of wood with your thumb. Like a child’s magic trick, the pasta changes shape under the pressure and when it’s removed it has ridges underneath and is shaped like an ear (unless it’s like the one I peeled off my thumb that first day, in which case the ridges looked like a tic-tac-toe board, because I invariably had to do the thing twice, and wasn’t able to line it up correctly the second time, and the ear was all large and distorted, a floppy flap of dough, more like a cartoon elephant’s ear than a normal ear, because my hands were so clammy from the excitement of my finally making pasta that the damn thing wouldn’t come off my thumb).

The two versions are similar, but there are some interesting differences. For example, in the magazine version all the action (chopping, crushing), plus the “child’s magic trick” comparison, together with the long parenthesis illustrating how complicated the seemingly simple orecchiette-making process can be in novice hands, flows together in one sentence; whereas in the book version, the chopping and crushing are situated in a sentence of their own, and a new sentence containing the “child’s magic trick” analogy and the breathless parenthesis has been created. Also, note the change from “each segment” (in the magazine version) to “each one” (in the book version). Note also the change from “you” (“when you remove it”), in the magazine, to “it” (“when it’s removed”), in the book. And note also the additional bit of description “on top,” regarding the location of the ear-shape, in the magazine version. Perhaps the most interesting difference is the change from “clammy from anxiety” (in the magazine) to “clammy from excitement” in the book. Are any of the changes made in the book an improvement on what appeared in The New Yorker? I would have to say no. I like the way the “and” works in the magazine version to enact the magic of the process; it’s like “you crush each segment on a ridged piece of wood with your thumb, and voilà, like a child’s magic trick, the pasta changes shape.” I prefer the use of “segment” rather than “one,” even though it’s a repetition; “segment” sounds more precise than the generic “one.” I prefer the second person “you” to the third person “it”; it seems to me “you” more directly engages the reader. Finally, I think clammy hands are more consistent with anxiety than with excitement, and that the whole passage is funnier when you think of someone suffering anxiety as a result of “finally making pasta.” The Heat version of "The Pasta Station" (included in the chapter called “Line Cook”) differs from the magazine piece in numerous other respects. And in every instance, I find the magazine version preferable. The only way to account for the superiority of The New Yorker piece is, in my opinion, to credit the work of the magazine's editorial staff in helping Buford fine-tune what's turned out to be a Food Issue classic.