Toward My Own Theory of Description: Boogie Time

Paul Cézanne, Pines and Rocks (c.1897)

For me, description is the life-blood of writing. I can’t imagine how writing would work without it. It would certainly be a poor, lifeless thing. Zhang seems to think it takes a backseat to narrative. I can’t see it taking a backseat to anything. To me, narrative is just another way of saying description of action. That’s what we’re focusing on today – textual kinesis. My example is from Anthony Bourdain’s riveting “Hell’s Kitchen” (The New Yorker, April 17, 2000):

It’s noon, and already customers are pouring in. Immediately, I get an order for pork mignon, two boudins, one calf’s liver, and one pheasant, all for one table. The boudins—blood sausages—take the longest, so they have to go in the oven instantly. First, I prick their skins with a cocktail fork so that they don’t explode; then I grab a fistful of caramelized apple sections and throw them into a sauté pan with some butter. I heat butter and oil for the pork in another sauté pan, throw a slab of liver into a pan of flour after salting and peppering it, and in another pan heat some more butter and oil. I take half a pheasant off the bone and place it on a sizzle platter for the oven, then spin around to pour currant sauce into a small saucepan to reduce. Pans ready, I sear the pork, sauté the liver, and slide the pork straight into the oven on another sizzler. I deglaze the pork pan with wine and stock, add sauce and some garlic confit, then put the pan aside; I’ll finish the reducing later. The liver, half-cooked, goes on another sizzler. I sauté some chopped shallots, deglaze the pan with red-wine vinegar, give it a shot of demiglace, season it, and put that aside, too. An order for mussels comes in, followed by one for breast of duck. I heat up a pan for the duck and load up a cold pan with mussels, tomato coulis, garlic, shallots, white wine, and seasoning. It’s getting to be boogie time.

This isn’t Bourdain describing what he’s seeing. This is Bourdain describing what he’s doing – in detail after glorious detail – first person, present tense. Description doesn’t get more immediate or intense than that. Or does it? In my next post, my example comes from war.