Gopnik on Food in Loft Dec 6
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On Tuesday, December 6, at 7pm, The Music Hall’s Writers in the Loft series will welcome the award-winning New Yorker magazine writer Adam Gopnik. The author of Paris to the Moon will join the series with his new nonfiction work, THE TABLE COMES FIRST: Family, France and the Meaning of Food. His appearance will take place at the Music Hall Loft at 131 Congress Street in downtown Portsmouth. (Continued below)

 

“Coming in the season of family feasts and celebrations, both dining in and dining out, Gopnik’s timing with this book is perfect.  Why is food, why is eating such a fascination…and such fun? Gopnik digs right into it and tells all—I can’t wait to hear more from him,” says Patricia Lynch, Executive Producer of The Music Hall’s Writers series.

About the book, THE TABLE COMES FIRST

Never before have we cared so much about food. It preoccupies our popular culture, our fantasies, and even our moralizing. (“You still eat meat?”)  With our top chefs as deities and finest restaurants as places of pilgrimage, we have made food the stuff of secular seeking and transcendence, finding heaven in a mouthful. But have we come any closer to discovering the true meaning of food in our lives?

With inimitable charm and learning, Adam Gopnik takes us on a beguiling journey in search of that meaning as he charts America’s recent and rapid evolution from commendably aware eaters to manic, compulsive gastronomes. It is a journey that begins in eighteenth-century France—the birthplace of our modern tastes (and, by no coincidence, of the restaurant)—and carries us to the kitchens of the White House, the molecular meccas of Barcelona, and beyond. To understand why so many of us apparently live to eat, Gopnik delves into the most burning culinary questions of our time, including: Should a Manhattanite bother to find chicken killed in the Bronx? Is a great vintage really any better than a good bottle of wine? And: Why does dessert matter so much?

Throughout, he reminds us of a time-honored truth often lost amid our newfound gastronomic pieties and certitudes: What goes on the table has never mattered as much to our lives as what goes on around the table—the scene of families, friends, lovers coming together, or breaking apart; conversation across the simplest or grandest board. This, ultimately, is who we are.

Following in the footsteps of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Adam Gopnik gently satirizes the entire human comedy of the comestible as he surveys the wide world of taste that we have lately made our home. The Table Comes First is the delightful beginning of a new conversation about the way we eat now.

About the author, Adam Gopnik

Author of the beloved best seller Paris to the Moon, Adam Gopnik has been writing for The New Yorker since 1986. He is a three-time winner of the National Magazine Award for Essays and for Reviews and Criticism and of the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting.

About the Writers in the Loft

Writers in the Loft is akin to The Music Hall’s anchor author series, Writers on a New England Stage, featuring well-known authors but in a smaller, more intimate space.  It is produced as a partnership between The Music Hall and RiverRun Bookstore with Series Sponsor Citizens Bank. The series brings audiences today’s top authors, and the best of fiction and nonfiction.  Previous writers in the series include Andre Dubus III, Jennifer Egan, Stephen Greenblatt,  and Chris Bohjalian.  Next up in the series, on January 17, 2012, is Henry Louis Gates, Jr. with his new work, Life Upon These Shores.

Writers in the Loft Package Purchase

Tickets to Writers in the Loft; Adam Gopnik are $37 for members of The Music Hall ($40 for general public).  Included in the package are a reserved seat, a copy of THE TABLE COMES FIRST ($25.95, hardcover), bar beverage; and author presentation, Q+A, and book signing meet-and-greet. Tickets are available through The Music Hall Box Office, located at 28 Chestnut Street, Portsmouth, over the phone at 603-436-2400 or online at www.themusichall.org.   Packages can also be purchased on the night of the event, if available, at The Music Hall Loft Box office at 131 Congress Street, beginning at 6:00pm for the 7pm event.  The author will autograph his book for package-purchasers on the night, following his reading and discussion.

 

 

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