Interview

David Chang is best known for delivering perfectly executed, unpretentious comfort food at his wildy popular fleet of Momofuku restaurants in New York City. During a recent book signing at San Francisco's Sur la Table (he was in town to promote his new cookbook Momofuku, co-written with Peter Meehan), Chang flipped through local newspapers in search of escort ads. Armed with a glue stick, he individually pasted the provocative photos on the inside cover of each cookbook, adding a little fun to the usually ho-hum autographing process.  As with his cooking, when Chang meets his fans, he likes to deliver something extra. 

Chang took a few minutes to talk to me about Sichuan hotpots, Kevin Smith, and what he looks for in a woman.


ERIK MORSE: I really like the idea of food tours, where you pick one food, and take one day to visit all the places where a great version of that food can be found.  If you were to do such a food tour, what food would you pick and what culinary destinations would you visit?

DAVID CHANG: I would do Sichuan hot pots and I would go to all the Sichuan restaurants throughout New York. I'd go to Flushing, Chinatown, Brooklyn and Manhattan. Spicy & Tasty and all the Grand Sichuans. There's probably about fifteen restaurants we'd have to check out.

MORSE: Have you ever done such a food tour before?

CHANG: Oh yeah. It's great for groups–and sweating heavily.

MORSE: Favorite vegetable?

CHANG: Daikon

MORSE: You use a lot of eggs in your cooking. Many people say that a great chef can be judged on his ability to perfectly cook an egg.  Would you agree with that, and what's your favorite way to cook an egg?

CHANG: I like eggs. My favorite way of cooking eggs is old school French. I love them soft boiled. I think you can probably make a good judgement call [about the quality of a chef] well before they actually even cook the egg. The process and organization leading up to cooking the egg can tell you a lot about the cook.

MORSE: If you had to pick a genre or period of time in film that embodies your cooking, what would it be?

CHANG: I really don't know. I think most people would probably say we were like fucking Kevin Smith: overrated and terrible. I like Kevin Smith, but it's sort of like anyone can do it.   

MORSE: What do you look for in a woman in terms of what she can do for you with food and cooking?

CHANG: I don't know. I just found out signing today that a girl I dated a couple of years back just got married. I mean, what the fuck? It's always a shock. I don't know.

MORSE: Is food a big part of the courting process for you?

CHANG: I have no idea.  I guess the question is can she deal with a neurotic weirdo like myself.  Not the other way around.

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Possibly the only openly gay author from his native Morocco, the young Abdellah Taïa has chosen a vocation of literary transgressor and cultural paragon. Beginning with his second novel, Le Rouge du Tarbouche [The Red Tarboosh] published by French press Editions Séguier in 2005, the soft-spoken son of a civil servant began openly challenging Moroccan state laws aimed at silencing gay culture. A cover-story in the influential French-Arab journal Tel Quel followed, with the caption reading: "Homosexuel, envers et contre tous" [Homosexual, against all odds]. During the resulting public furor, and, amid calls for the author's indictment for heresy, Taïa composed the very personal L'armee du Salut [Salvation Army], a bildungsroman of his youthful dreams and indiscretions set in Rabat, Tangier, and Geneva. Along the way he introduces and confronts the figures that most affected his formative love-life: an elusive mother, an omnipotent brother, and a Swiss lover. (PHOTO: ABDELLAH TAÏA, COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

Now published in English by academic samizdat Semiotext(e), Salvation Army is a valuable contribution not only to queer fiction but to North African diaspora literature as well.  A resident of Paris over the last decade, Taïa has joined the column of Moroccan expatriates–Tahar Ben Jelloun and Abdelkebir Khatibi, among others–who cast a telescopic eye over the thorny and often violent ideological interchange between postmodern Europe and postcolonial Africa. But Taïa's words are not scrawled with the bellicose politics of a partisan; rather, they are auguries of a familial world imbued with both magic and poverty; lilting and resolute; a prose of stark divinity and apostasy. 

We recently contacted Taïa during his reading tour of the US and asked him to share his thoughts on the state of literature, the sexual politics of the Arab world, and the role of cinema in his writing.


ERIK MORSE: The first chapter of L'armee du Salut painted such a vivid landscape of your childhood, particularly how you first became aware of sex almost through a kind of familial osmosis.  Can you describe a bit more about this house which plays such a fundamental role in the book?

ABDELLAH TAÏA: Hay Salam is the name of the neighborhood where I grew up. It is located in a city called Salé, near the Moroccan capital Rabat. Salé is known in the Moroccan imagination for its 17th and 18th century pirates who used to attack the Christian ships sailing through the Atlantic. I lived there from 1974 until 1998. Everything I have known about the world comes from this city and this neighborhood. Everything I want to put in my book is also coming from this world.  The house where I lived there was very small, only three rooms for eleven people. One room for my father, the second for my older brother, Abdelkebir, who exerted a big influence on me, and the last one for the rest of the family: my mother, my six sisters, my little brother and me. Life for me still revolves around these three rooms. The tastes, the smells, the images, the ideas of fear and transgression are all coming from this house, this poor family that I love and hate at the same time. For many years, we were really poor, we didn't have enough food and we fought with each other a lot.  The power structures within the family were a mirror of  the dictatorship Morocco was living under at that time.

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Experimental director and visual artist Peter Greenaway returns to the Film Forum this week with the third installment in his ambitious "Nine Classical Paintings Revisted" series. The film, Rembrandt's J'accuse, focuses on the Dutch master's most valorized work, "The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch," more commonly known as "The Night Watch (De Nachtwacht)," with an eye toward "deciphering" the multiple characters (thirty-four, according to Greenaway's count), planes, and tableau that populate the canvas. (PHOTO: REMBRANDT'S J'ACCUSE)

Much as in his previous The Draughtsman's Contract (1982) and The Death of Webern (1994), Greenaway exploits the paranoid fantasies of conspiracy theory to aid in a melodramatic tale of corruption, intrigue and murder.  His contention–that Rembrandt's ambitious painting is also a detailed indictment of Banning Cocq, van Ruytenburch and their Kloveniers in the murder of rival militiaman Piers Hasselburg–is a fascinating–and some would say incredible–exercise in curatorial forensics. Although Rembrandt suffered professional decline and a rather ignoble bankruptcy at the end of his career, most critics point to the decline in popularity of his distinct Baroque style as the cause. For his part, Greenaway hypothesizes that Rembrandt was ruined by an oligarchical power structure that he uncovered during the painting's royal commission.

In honor of Greenaway's latest venture into conspiracy theory and secret cults, we've compiled a list of some of our favorite films dedicated to uncovering political machinations, villainous plots, and secret rites of unnamable societies:

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Mazzy Star's 1994 hit radio single "Fade Into You" might very well have been the sexiest song of the of the decade. Taking inspiration from The Cocteau Twins' Liz Fraser and Lynch chanteuse Julee Cruise, Mazzy frontwoman Hope Sandoval would whisper sweet nothings over guitarist David Roback's languid strumming and sparse, chamber-meets-shoegazer production. In the most recent decade, she has teamed up with My Bloody Valentine drummer Colm O'Ciosoig to form Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions, releasing Bavarian Fruit Bread in 2001.  A more minimal combination of voice and multi-instrumental percolations, with guest guitar by the legendary Bert Jansch, the album received a warm critical reception and introduced Sandoval's enigmatic songwriting to a much wider, post-indie audience. (PHOTO COURTESY OF NETTWERK)

After an eight year hiatus–during which time Sandoval collaborated with Air, Massive Attack and the Chemical Brothers–the Warm Inventions returned this summer with a new single, "Blanchard." Tomorrow, a full-length album, Through the Devil Softly, will be released on Nettwerk. "Blanchard" is a bluesy collage of acrylic dribbles and pneumatic atmospheres, quite incomparable to anything but Sandoval's own past work. The whole of Through the Devil Softly takes a similar tack, blending hushed guitar strums and the tintinnabulations of various bric-a-brac–autoharps, music-boxes, vibraphones–to haunting effect. With a voice so dolorous and melodic–only ripening and gaining complexity with age–Sandoval could vie with Morrissey as the most distinctive singer of her generation. Last month, with the sounds of an local folk band floating in the background, I caught up with her via phone from Ireland.

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