Julie and Julia by Julie Powell
Book 5 in Cannonball Read 2
I picked up Julie and Julia, Julie Powell’s book about the year she cooked every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blogged about it, after watching the movie. I did not find the Julie storyline very interesting, but I was intrigued by the actual food she was making and thought I could hear a bit more detail about the cooking, instead of it being the backdrop for a not that interesting story.
Sadly, the book, just like the movie, contains a lot more about Julie’s personal life than it does about the project she has undertaken. That personal life is not so interesting. Basically, she does all of the following things a lot: 1. drinks, 2. orders bacon pizza, and 3. struggles with her project. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with those things, but it does not make for fascinating reading unless the writer is truly great. Julie Powell is not a great writer; she’s not bad, but if she had not undertaken a fairly complex and interesting project, no one would take much interest in her writing.
It also suffers from Powell’s own self-image. Did anyone else, when they were watching Adaptation, think there was no way Charlie Kaufman could be so unlikeable as he made himself in that screenplay? There’s a little of that going on here. The Julie Powell in her autobiographical work is fairly insufferable, becoming self-centered and acting as if the whole world revolves around her project. She is repeatedly rude and dismissive towards her husband - and this is only made worse by the fact that she recognizes she is being pretty awful to him but then continues to do it anyway. I have a feeling that this is Powell’s attempt to put on a certain personality, a flawed but lovable and self-deprecating cutie-pie - ‘oh look at me, I got carried away but I’m mocking myself for it later’ - but it just doesn’t work. She comes off as grating, cold, and self-absorbed.
My next move is to go straight to the source and read Julia Child’s cookbook. That’s all I wanted - writing about food, detailed writing about the process of cooking and the way different methods impact the result. Sorry Julie Powell, and Amy Adams, you’re not really worth my time.