Reading Frank Bruni's "Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater"
How a man with a lifelong battle of the bulge landed the most influential job in the food world is only half the story (more like a third, really) in Frank Bruni's brave, brutally honest, often hilarious, and truly endearing memoir, Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater.
Bruni, who will step down from his current post as restaurant critic for the New York Times when his book is published next month, struggled with over-eating since he was a little kid growing up in a food-focused family in White Plains, NY. From adolescence through adulthood, Bruni was on the losing side of maintaining a healthy relationship with food, and eventually his inability to control his hunger--manifested in Bulimia, convenience store binges, and bouts of sleep eating--defined his life. There aren't many books out there dealing with what it's like to be a man with an eating disorder, and even though his story is peppered with humor, Bruni's disgust at himself as he yo-yo's up to size 42 khakis at the Gap and endures years-long patches of celibacy, leaves the reader aching in empathy.
Self-doubt about his appearance causes him to sabotage any chances at happines as he makes lame excuses to postpone dates in the hopes that he'll drop those few extra pounds before he might have to reveal himself. And throughout the book he's banking on being slimmer in the future--whether it's a few days, weeks, or months--and sacrifices truly appreciating the present, even when he's holding prestigious jobs at Newsweek and the New York Times.
"I was in retreat, my weight a reason not to reach out or take risks. I'd deal with my love life once I got thinner.... Fatness simplified life and lessened the stakes. It put life on hiatus, making the present a larded limbo between a past normalcy and a future one. It argued against bold initiatives.... But while I wasn't trying to make things happen, they nonetheless happened to me."
There's a very funny account of how he worked with a photographer friend to digitally manipulate his author photo for Ambling Into History in an attempt "to transform the round into the oblong, chubby into chiseled, gone-to-seed to come-to-Papa." When he saw the results of the final photo (the one that would be taped behind the reservation stand of many New York restaurants) his friend wondered: "When was the last time anyone at the publishing house saw you?"
And when he gets the tap to become restaurant critic and leaves his gig as the Times' Rome bureau chief (and the strange, unwritten rules of working out in Italian gyms), he begins a preparatory world-tour of eating research before entering an exhausting career of eating out seven nights a week, juggling multiple dining identities (with matching AmEx cards), and becoming one of "the most loved and hated tastemakers in New York."
Recommended for fans of Heat, Between Bites: Memoirs of a Hungry Hedonist, and Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise.
--BTP
KitchenMaus on July 09, 2009 at 09:27 AM
This sounds interesting! Thanks for the preview! I'm hoping it will be available on the Kindle when it's released. Definitely on my list!
jeux voiture on September 26, 2009 at 04:01 AM
I've always enjoyed reading Frank Bruni's down-to-earth restaurant reviews in the New York Times and his memoir, Born Round is written in the same easy-going and engaging style. Bruni writes about his food-centered Italian-American upbringing and his lifelong struggle to keep his weight under control. As a female reader, it was interesting to read about weight control from a male perspective. But what I really enjoyed most about the book were the portraits of his mother and Italian grandmother. He obviously loved them dearly and his portrayal of them is, to me, the heart of the book. Bruni is an open-hearted and accessible writer. Highly recommended!