How do you solve a problem like “Julie and Julia?”

I am currently reading (rather belatedly) “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman off my cousin Ate Mildred’s bookshelf.  This comes in the heels of plodding through “Julie and Julia” by Julie Powell, a book of memoirs based on her blog “The Julie/Julia Project” in which she cooks her way through “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” by Julia Child.

Those who have seen “Julie and Julia” and fell in love (yet once again) by Nora Ephron and how she transforms any script or story into delightful snowballs of magic and comfort food will thus wonder why the book feels like an endless train wreck.  In the language of ”American Beauty,” it plodded on like that breathless white plastic bag caught on by a mini-wind whorl.  You are transfixed by the very gumption of an ordinary office worker taking on Julia Child’s cookbook, only to realize towards the middle of it that it has reached its apex. Then you scratch that thought and revise the assessment – it’ll only reach this much.

And this, my friends, is the difference between a blog and a memoir based on a blog.  The blog stays where it is – in the digital universe.  The memoir still requires a story arc, capisce?

(Next post, in which Pilar does come around to discussing “The World is Flat,” but has to relegate it to bedside reading because she has to go back to reading that footnote-ridden book “The Promise of the Foreign” by Vince Rafael, a historian who, according to her friend B, seems to pluck forthcoming books from his voluminous footnotes.)

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