The News Tribune (Tacoma, Washington)
August 8, 2004, Sunday

Author serves up tasty satire; Fiction: Restaurant critic turns
novelist with savory results

SAM MCMANIS, The News Tribune

If there is anything worse than a restaurant critic gone bad – and,
believe me, we know all about that at The News Tribune – it’s a
restaurant critic gone soft.

In Jay Rayner’s scorching satire about the culture of apologia and
full disclosure in public, “Eating Crow,” the hero is Marc Basset, a
London newspaper restaurant critic who has lost his bite. One of his
excoriating reviews, pitiless in its rude comments about the cuisine
and its chef, has pushed the chef to suicide. Struck by his dormant
conscience, of all things, Basset decides to – gasp – apologize to
the chef’s widow.

This stretches credulity, of course. No one has ever known a
restaurant critic to apologize for anything. But since this is satire
– broad satire, at that – we can suspend our disbelief and go along
with Basset’s purging of his guilt.

A funny thing happens, though: Basset gets off on the way it feels to
say “I’m sorry.” So much so, in fact, that he becomes addicted to
apologizing. It gives him a chemical rush of endorphins and, soon,
Basset is looking up old girlfriends, former co-workers and casual
acquaintances to whom to feed his “sorry” addiction. All react in a
positive manner to his unburdening of himself, shocked that this
formerly callous man would do so. Basset finds an emotional
vulnerability and empathy he didn’t know he had.

If the story were to end there, the reader would be left with a
pretty funny, if forgettable, short story that sends up our Oprahized
compulsion for public confession. But Rayner, who is an award-winning
restaurant critic for The London Observer, expands Basset’s burden to
the global stage and turns “Eating Crow” into a political statement
of style over substance, rhetoric over sincerity, with a side dish of
cynicism.

Through coincidences, as hilarious as they are implausible, Basset
soon leaves his restaurant critic job after he refuses to criticize
restaurants any longer and becomes the chief spokesman for the newly
formed United Nations’ Office of Apology.

As a U.N. headhunter tells Basset when offering him the job – at a
substantial raise, naturally, from his meager newspaper salary – “the
conduct of calm international relations is being stymied by the
enormous weight of emotional baggage that world history has given us.
There are too many countries, too many peoples … with unresolved
grievances. If we could resolve the issues of the past, then the
conduct of world affairs in the present would be that much smoother.”

In other words, if Israel and Palestine could just say, “sorry, my
bad” to each other, then peace in the Middle East is possible. Plus,
the U.N.’s research showed that the amount of financial reparations
countries would have to pay to the oppressed would be less if an
apology first were proffered.

OK, so it’s implausible, but there it is. The reason the U.N. has
tapped Basset is because of his ancestry. It’s essential that the
apologizer have some personal responsibility somewhere in his past to
make the “penitential engagement” seem sincere. It just so happens
that Basset’s ancestors on his mother’s side (the Welton-Smiths,
English aristocrats) had been involved in every act of
oppressiveness, from slavery to colonialism to apartheid, in the
Western world.

So that gives Basset the “plausible apologibility” so needed for the
job.

At the start of his new duties, Basset apologizes for slavery, for
England’s occupation of India, for the Turks’ genocide of the
Armenians. He comes across as sincere, tearing up at every occasion.
He becomes something of an unlikely media celebrity, making the cover
of Time magazine. The reader, however, might miss the old snarky
Basset, the restaurant critic who throws out such bon mots as “the
food would taste better coming back up than it did going down.”

Not to worry, though, eventually Basset loses that earnest, do-gooder
persona as the apologizer-in-chief and starts to get a puffed-up
sense of importance. He appears on stage with Bono and the rest of
U2, making men cheer wildly and women swoon just by uttering, “I’m
sooorrrrryyyy!” He rents high-rent apartments in New York and Geneva
and can bed any woman he wants. He even has a threesome with
groupies/waitresses from Des Moines, Iowa.

The reader knows what’s coming, though, and Basset’s descent off the
pedestal is a delightful free-fall for the reader. Along the way,
Basset becomes an unknowing catalyst for a war in the Balkans and
loses both his job and credibility in the process.

“Eating Crow” is an example of British droll comedy and biting
satire. But there’s an added dimension. Rayner sends something of a
cautionary message that it’s unwise to delve too deeply into the
past, to dredge up long buried hurts for the sake of catharsis.

As Basset’s well-adjusted brother, Luke, tells him early on, “It’s
called personal history. You can’t rewrite that.” Basset replies,
“No, you can’t. But you can reassess it. … Why can’t people revise
their own histories?” Later, his estranged best friend, Stefan, tells
Basset, “I live with my past; you live off it.”

Apology, Rayner seems to be saying, is a form of selfishness. We
might think it’s about making amends with those we have harmed in
some way, but it’s really just to make ourselves feel better. Plus,
spoken too often, an apology loses all impact and is not believable.

Which brings me to the first sentence of “Eating Crow,” wildly funny
but not at all true.

That opening line: “I’m sorry you bought this book.”

No worries. Rayner has nothing to apologize for.

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Sam McManis: 253-274-7380

sam.mcmanis@mail.tribnet.com

– – –

EATING CROW

Jay Rayner

Simon & Schuster;

292 pages; $ 23