Not long ago, I attempted to mimic some cooking as it is done in a number of relatively recent novels. I began, foolishly, with several recipes from Günter Grass’s Nobel Prize-provoking “The Flounder,” the epic allegory of German history told through the endlessly repeated parable of an evil fish, a gullible man, a virtuous woman, and a lot of potatoes. The talking Flounder, being both the evil daemon and the central consciousness of the piece, has a natural class interest in flounder’s not being eaten, so there is a shortage of fish recipes in “The Flounder.” (I was tempted by a detailed description of how to make stewed tripe, but who in my gang would eat stewed tripe?)
The whole thing is positively Thurber-esque.
