Collection highlights, news about acquisitions, events and exhibits, and behind-the-scenes looks at the work and services of Rare Books & Special Collections (RBSC) at Notre Dame.
Due to OIT infrastructure work being done in the Hesburgh Library, Special Collections is closed today, Monday, December 19, 2022.
Rare Books and Special Collections is open Tuesday through Thursday this week (December 20-22, 2022). After that, we will be closed from Friday, December 23, 2022, through Monday, January 2, 2023, in participation with the campus-wide holiday break for all faculty, staff, and students. Special Collections will reopen on Tuesday, January 3, 2023.
This is the last blog post for 2022. Happy Holidays to you and yours from Notre Dame’s Rare Books and Special Collections!
A Prayer for Christmas Morning by Henry Van Dyke, donated by American poet Raymond E. F. Larsson (London & New York: Ernest Nister & E. P. Dutton, n.d.). Special Collections, Rare Books Small BV 45 .V32
Generations of Irish children first experienced the theatre at the Christmas Pantomime. This year’s panto offerings in Ireland include The Jungle Book, Sleeping Beauty, and a number of variations on Jack and the Beanstalk such as Olly, Polly and the Beanstalk.
The tradition probably found its way from Britain to Ireland in the eighteenth century, and has delighted children since then. Peculiarly, its popularity has not spread across the Atlantic.
The typical pantomime has a basic story, presented with an abundance of song and dance, great hilarity, and often with predictable gender cross-over as we shall see below. Scenes of slapstick comedy are interspersed with witty dialogue for the grown-ups in the audience. Pantomimes are peppered with current political references, from the setting and characters to the scripted or perhaps ad-libbed asides in the performance.
A selection from our extensive Irish Theatre Program collection gives us a glimpse of the genre in Ireland, as we look at a handful of Dublin theatre programs.
Cover of the program for Dick Whittington, the annual pantomime at the Theatre Royal, 1904.
The 1904 pantomime at Dublin’s Theatre Royal was Dick Whittington. According to the program, it was written specially for this theatre by William Wade. In the tradition of pantomime, Dick Whittington is played by a female, Carlotta Levey.
An Irish Times review includes particular praise for Carlotta Levey: “Miss Levey has proved herself to be one of the very best Principal Boys we have had in Dublin for very many years, and has made a host of friends for herself…”
Ninth Annual Christmas Pantomime: Mother Goose, Theatre Royal, January 31st, 1907. Book of Songs.
The above program is also a Book of Songs, and includes pages of songs in addition to photographs of some of the cast. Once again, Carlotta Levey plays the principal boy, while Mother Goose is played by a male actor, Martin Adeson.
A newspaper review tells us that local references ‘largely directed against Dublin Corporation, and many of which provoked a good deal of laughter, are furnished.’ (Irish Times 22 Jan 1907, p. 7)
John MacDonagh’s Grand Christmas Pantomime, Cinderella. Program for the Olympia Theatre, 1928.
The Olympia Theatre’s annual pantomime in 1928 was Cinderella, a perennial pantomime favorite. The Irish Times review praised almost every element of the show: the scenery, costume, lighting, music, songs, and indeed the actors. The reviewer provides an example of a witty (at that time) local reference: ‘“There are two gentlemen at the door,” says Chris Sylvester as Buttons. “How do you know they are gentlemen?” asks Dick Smith, as Baron Touch. “They have Cork accents,” says Buttons.’ (IT 10 January 1928, p. 4.)
Turfyella (The Emergency “Cinderella”) By Brighidín NIc an Bháird and Eamon Byrne. Sunday, 15, February, 1942 (left); and “Gone with the Glimmer” by Eamon Byrne, Sunday 14th February 1943 (right).
An Óige, the Irish Youth Hostel Association, held their pantomimes in the Olympia theatre from 1941. Our two programs of their pantomimes staged during the “Emergency” (World War II) suggest shows loaded with commentary on the scarcity and rationing of the Emergency years.
From the 1942 program for Turfyella, we can be confident that the reference to turf in the title is connected to the fact that all fuels, among other commodities, were rationed during the Emergency—but as turf, also known as peat, could be cut from the ground in Ireland’s bogs, there was much activity cutting and gathering turf.
Turf was harvested at a frantic rate. The main avenue of the Phoenix Park was eventually flanked on both sides by ton upon ton of turf destined for the fires of the people of Dublin. The avenue was soon christened The New Bog Road.
The same article tells us a little about the ‘glimmer’ of the following year’s an Óige pantomime Gone with the Glimmer, by Éamon Byrne. During the Emergency, the use of gas was limited to certain times of the day. A small flow had to be maintained in the pipes, but people were forbidden to turn on their stoves to use this tiny flow of gas.
Hence the arrival of that fearsome figure who still haunts Dublin folklore – the Glimmer Man. Emergency or no emergency there were babies’ bottles to be warmed, and many mothers used the glimmer in desperation to soothe a crying baby. The Glimmer Man had extraordinary powers: he could legally enter your house and check for recent illegal usage of gas by placing his hands on the cooker ring. Guilty parties could have their supply cut off forthwith.
Cinderella by Dick Forbes, at the Theatre Royal, 1946 (program cover) and Mac ‘Q’ Productions’ pantomime, Cinderella at Saint Anthony’s Theatre, 1957 (program cover).
As we glance over the years of programs, we find Cinderella repeated often, from major city theatres such as the Theatre Royal (no longer in existence), the Gaiety (still staging a popular Christmas pantomime), to smaller theatres and local dramatic societies. The above covers are from programs for the Theatre Royal in 1946 and St. Anthony’s Theatre in 1957, while the program below is from the Gaiety’s 1956 pantomime.
Howard and Wyndham’s Cinderella. Gaiety Theatre, 1956. Program cover.
Cast list from the program of the Gaiety Theatre’s Cinderella, 1956.
While the Gaiety’s pantomime has been a regular event since 1873, it was only during the mid-twentieth century, under the management of Louis Elliman, that their pantomime became home-produced rather than imported. The cast list here shows Jimmy O’Dea playing Buttons, a very important role in the pantomime Cinderella, and Maureen Potter playing the maid, Dolores.
Mícheál Mac Liammóir and Milo O’Shea, must have been a great sight as the sisters Marigold and Myrtle, while the valet Dandini is played in another gender cross-over by Maureen Toal.
Clár Fuireann na Mainistreach, Amharclann na Mainistreach/ Program of the Abbey Theatre Company, Abbey Theatre, 1961.
Our theatre program collection began with some two hundred Abbey theatre programs, and has expanded to include programs of many theatres throughout Ireland. The Abbey, Ireland’s National Theatre, began its Irish-language pantomimes in 1945 with Muireann agus an Prionsaby Mícheál Ó hAodha, based on The Golden Apple by Lady Gregory.
Our program for the 1961 Abbey pantomime, or geamaireacht, is for another tale with a princess and a magical kingdom. In An Sciath Draíochta, Princess Clíona is banished from Tír na nÓg by the witch, Muiregáin. The hero, Aonghus, rescues her with the help of the magical shield of the title, and after many adventures.
In some later pantomimes, the magical setting takes the form of an overt parallel to Ireland. The plot of the Abbey’s Flann agus Cleimintín (1963) would not be clear to a very young audience. The mythical land of youth, Tír na nÓg, is partitioned and therefore vulnerable. However, the opportunistic sea-god and the emperor of China are foiled in their tracks when the border is abolished. The synopsis provided in the program was probably essential to follow this plot.
Synopsis of Flann agus Cleimintín, Abbey Theatre program, 1963.
Partition is once again the subject of the 1964 pantomime, Aisling as Tír-na-nÓg. The story begins with dissatisfaction with the Irish Partition, and a request to an ancient king to come from Tír na nÓg and reunite the country. The call is answered by the king’s son Conall who travels the land and ends up crowned king of Ireland, along with his queen, the heroine of the title, Aisling.
The examples selected here are from a very large collection of programs of many kinds of performance in theatres throughout Ireland, over a century and more. They are currently being cataloged, and these titles will eventually be added to the existing list of programs on our archival finding aid.
Due to OIT infrastructure work being done in the Hesburgh Library, Special Collections will be closed on Monday, December 19, 2022.
The painting of a wild turkey featured in this Thanksgiving post is also displayed in pride of place in the book in which it was printed: opposite the title page in Audubon’s American Birds, from Plates by J.J. Audubon, published in 1949 in London and New York by a British publisher, Batsford. As the title indicates, this is a book of reproductions of fewer than two dozen of John Audubon’s paintings from his monumental work of natural history and painting, Birds of America, published in London between 1827 and 1838.
Batsford, the publisher that produced this modest, post-war volume, wished to place Audubon’s accomplished paintings within reach of nearly everyone. The publisher asked Sacheverell Sitwell to write the introduction, which makes up (excluding the illustrations’ captions) the book’s text. Sitwell was a poet and a prolific writer, mostly on artistic themes and as an art critic. In this book on Audubon’s birds, Sitwell places Audubon’s work firmly within the history of British and American art.
Sitwell also underscored the publisher’s populist intent. The writer noted that books like Audubon’s original work, which was produced in the largest possible format—elephantine, was the “modern equivalent of the illuminated missals of the middle ages. They were accessible only in the houses of the rich and in public libraries.” (p. 10) Sitwell (who was himself both wealthy and titled) and Batsford made Audubon’s great nineteenth-century achievement accessible to popular audiences in Britain and the United States. Turkey for the people.
RBSC will be closed during Notre Dame’s Thanksgiving Break (November 24-25, 2022). We wish you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving!
Due to renovation-related work being done in the department, on November 28-29 Special Collections will be closed to visitors, except for previously scheduled classes.
This year’s Halloween tale comes to you from Jeremiah Curtin’s Tales of the Fairies and of the Ghost World (London: D. Nutt, 1895). Curtin, a linguist, translator, and folklorist, was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Irish immigrant parents, and grew up in Milwaukee county, Wisconsin. With the aid of interpreters, he collected folklore in the Irish-speaking regions in the west of Ireland. Recent scholarship demonstrates that Alma Curtin, his wife, was an important partner in this work.1 He also translated Russian and Polish literature, and spent some years working for the Bureau of Ethnology in Washington, D.C., working with Native American peoples. He published three books of Irish folklore, of which this was the third.
“John Reardon and the Sister Ghosts” tells of bravery rewarded and wickedness punished—and of the special properties of “what belongs to a plough”. Enjoy!
Happy Halloween to you and yours from all of us in Notre Dame’s Special Collections!
[1] Bourke, Angela. “The Myth Business: Jeremiah and Alma Curtin in Ireland, 1887–1893.” Éire-Ireland, vol. 44 no. 3, 2009, p. 140-170. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/eir.0.0043.
We join the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month.
The United Farm Workers, an organization with deep ties to the Mexican American community, came into existence in 1965, under the leadership of labor leader Cesar Chavez. It merged two existing groups of farm workers, one primarily Mexican and one primarily Filipino. Under Cesar Chavez’s leadership, United Farm Workers became a highly influential, multi-racial labor movement. It orchestrated the most successful consumer boycott in American history, against California grape producers, between 1965 and 1970. By allying with national and local unions and building boycott houses in 10 major cities, the UFW effectively shut down the U.S. market for grapes in protest over treatment of farmworkers. In July of 1970, after a final, failed attempt to offload rotting grapes in Europe, twenty-six grape growers capitulated and signed collective bargaining agreements with the UFW, a major victory for the country’s farm workers.
This post highlights some of Rare Books and Special Collections’ ephemeral material related to the history of the United Farm Workers organization, a beacon of Chicano strength and power.
Andrew Zermeño, a graphic artist who created a number of political cartoons for United Farm Workers, produced this large bilingual poster in 1968. It connects the president-elect, Richard Nixon, to the abusive practices of California grape growers and warns that if “La Raza,” or the Mexican American population, doesn’t stop Nixon, he will stomp, or crush, them.
Portrayed in a grotesque fashion, Nixon waves his characteristic “V” for victory sign and greedily devours grapes. A grape grower is literally in Nixon’s pocket and farmworkers are crushed under his stomping feet. Small signs in Spanish and English refer to the boycott. A man representing La Raza lies inert in a pool of grape juice at the bottom of the poster.
In 1969, the Scholastic, the University of Notre Dame’s student magazine, recognized the grape boycott. Its editors published the striking emblem of the Delano strike on the cover of the November 7 issue. Inside, the first of two articles on the farmworkers’ actions, authored by Steve Novak, describes the formation of the UFW and the history of the grape boycott. Novak observes that, “the Delano strike has done much for the Mexican-American people of the United States,” making them more visible, uniting them, and bringing their struggles to light.
This final item is a modest poster promoting a United Farm Workers benefit held in Madison, Wisconsin, at Freedom House, a small venue. Likely also dating to the era of the grape boycott, the poster features the strike emblem and a group of three protestors, one with arm raised and one wearing a farm worker’s hat.
Together, these items reflect the national impact of the Delano grape strike. It spawned protest posters by Mexican American artists like Zermeño, merited a place on the cover of university student magazine in South Bend, Indiana, and prompted organization of a benefit in Madison, Wisconsin. The impact of this event was widespread and impressive, and it is an important part of the legacy of the U.S.’s Mexican American population.
“The 30th day of May, 1868 is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land. …”
What is now known as Memorial Day—a day to remember those U.S. military personnel who died while serving—was originally known as Decoration Day. Below are a selection of images from Harper’s Weekly published during the first decade after General John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic first called for this official day of national mourning in 1868.
“Honoring Our Dead Heroes” from the June 6, 1868, issue of Harper’s Weekly (365).Continued text from “Honoring Our Dead Heroes” (366).“‘In Memorium’—Decoration Day, 1872” from the June 8, 1872, issue of Harper’s Weekly (441).Caption text for “In Memorium” (442).“Decoration Day” article from the June 14, 1873, issue of Harper’s Weekly (498).Illustration from later in the same June 14, 1873, issue (501).
A happy Memorial Day to you and yours from all of us in Notre Dame’s Special Collections!
Rare Books and Special Collections is closed today (May 30th) for Memorial Day and will be closed on July 4th for Independence Day. Otherwise, RBSC will be open regular hours this summer — 9:30am to 4:30pm, Monday through Friday.
During June and July the blog will shift to our summer posting schedule, with posts every other Monday rather than every week. We will resume weekly publication on August 1st.
For St. Patrick’s Day, we feature The Breastplate of Saint Patrick, translated by Thomas Kinsella.
Thomas Kinsella, recently deceased, was one of Ireland’s most highly-regarded poets of recent times. In addition to his poetry, he translated many literary texts from Old Irish and Modern Irish to English. Prominent among these are his translation of the epic Táin Bó Cuailgne, and also his translated poems in An Duanaire: Poems of the Dispossessed. Liam Miller’s The Dolmen Press published many of Kinsella’s works, usually with the close collaboration of poet, printer and artist.
The Breastplate of Saint Patrick (front cover) by Thomas Kinsella, published by Dolmen Press, 1954 (left) and Faeth Fiadha: The Breastplate of Saint Patrick translated by Thomas Kinsella from the Irish (front cover), published by Dolmen Press, 1961.
The 1954 edition of The Breastplate of Saint Patrick is decorated with designs by H. Neville Roberts, based on early Christian art. On the cover is a picture of the Shrine of the Bell of Saint Patrick, an ornate shrine made around 1100 to house the older relic, the Bell of Saint Patrick, which is held in the National Museum of Ireland. The image, and the designs within the book, are appropriate to the text, which is a hymn found in an eleventh-century manuscript, the Liber Hymnorum, thought to date to the eighth century.
On the left is the first page of the hymn in the 1954 edition, and on the right is the first page of the hymn in the 1961 edition.
A note in this Dolmen Press edition states that this text is from the manuscript in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. This is one of twoLiber Hymnorummanuscripts. The other is part of the Franciscan Manuscripts collection at UCD Archives, also in Dublin. Both manuscripts have been digitized and images of the text may be viewed and studied online.
According to the introduction, Patrick composed the hymn to shield him and his monks from ‘deadly enemies who were ambushing the clerics.’
The manuscript introduction announces that the hymn is called ‘fáeth fiadha’. This is usually translated as the ‘deer’s cry’ and is the title given to a later Dolmen Press edition, also by Thomas Kinsella.
Our other Dolmen Press edition, published in 1961, is also a translation by Thomas Kinsella. There are textual variations, as can be seen from a comparison of the initial lines. ‘I arise today’ and ‘Today I put on’. The Old Irish caused more difficulty for earlier translators. George Petrie, who translated the text in the nineteenth century, decided the word ‘atomriug’ must have been two words, and that ‘tomriug’ was a form of ‘Tara’. Subsequent research in Old Irish language sources show that ‘atomruig’ may be translated as ‘I arise’.
George Petrie, On the History and Antiquities of Tara Hill, Dublin, 1839
We end with an image of the best-known part of the text. The prayer beginning with ‘Christ by me, Christ before me’ is sung in many variant arrangements. this is from the 1954 edition.
We join with The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in paying tribute to the generations of African Americans who struggled with adversity to achieve full citizenship in American society.
Searching for Claude Monroe Paris, Unheralded African American Basketball Pioneer: Documenting Black History Using Notre Dame’s Joyce Sports Research Collection
For several years, I’ve been on the hunt for Claude Monroe Paris, a largely unheralded African American basketball pioneer from the early twentieth century whose name does not appear in the standard books about the history of African Americans in basketball. A native of Waupaca, Wisconsin, Paris excelled on the court and was one of the few African Americans to compete on high-level integrated basketball teams in the early 1900s. Usually playing at forward or center, he received wide praise for his abilities, and his teams competed in national amateur basketball tournaments in Chicago.
Basketball was in its infancy and—compared to sports like baseball or college football—often received less coverage. So, it has sometimes been difficult to uncover information about early basketball players like Claude Paris. Fortunately, in my new position as the Sports Archivist at Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Library, I can use the incomparable resources of the Joyce Sports Research Collection to better document Claude Paris’s trailblazing athletic career.
After starring at Waupaca High School, Paris joined the region’s top amateur team sponsored by the nearby Stevens Point Athletic Club in 1901. He quickly gained local fame, with one reporter describing him as “a well known colored basket ball player.” The state press routinely praised him as a “crack forward,” and one sportswriter said simply that Paris “is said by players of experience to have been the best forward in the state.”
The Stevens Point Athletics were one of the top teams in Wisconsin, and in 1901, they were invited to Chicago to compete in an eight-team basketball tournament billed as the “National Amateur Championship.” Other teams in the field included Kenton, Ohio; Chicago’s West Side YMCA; the University of Nebraska, and the Silent Five of Brooklyn, New York, a team composed of deaf players.
Before the tournament, the Chicago Chronicle, wrote that Stevens Point “has this year made a very enviable reputation and has an undisputed right to be classed among the best teams in the country.” The Chronicle singled out Paris for “the star playing of the team” and noted that “Paris, who is an unusually small man for the position he fills, is an excellent player and is looked upon as one of the strongest of the team.”
Paris played well in Chicago, but the tournament ended without a clear champion as Stevens Point and Kenton, Ohio, both finished with records of 3-1.
1901-02 Spalding’s Official Basket Ball Guide 1905-06 Spalding’s Official Basket Ball Guide
Over the years, I have tracked Claude Paris and the Stevens Point Athletics “championship” team through newspaper stories, but the Joyce Sports Research Collection—namely, its nearly complete run of Spalding’s Official Basket Ball Guide—has now let me put a picture to these words. Spalding Guides routinely featured hundreds of team photographs from every level of competition, and these images are a fantastic resource for researchers to study and to document the development of sports.
The Joyce Collection’s 1901–02 Spalding’s Official Basket Ball Guide includes on page 60 a team photograph of the “Stevens Point A.C. Basket Ball Team.” Claude Paris (identified as number 7) sits on the left side of the first row, providing a visual record—seen around the country in the popular Spalding Guide—of this early integrated basketball team and graphically documenting Claude Paris’s participation at the highest levels of amateur basketball.
After Stevens Point, Paris attended and continued his basketball career at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, for two years. But his career after Lawrence is not well documented. Further investigation in the Joyce Collection, though, has led to more information. I discovered that the 1905–06 Spalding’s Official Basket Ball Guide pictured Claude Paris (identified as number 6) with the 1905 Menasha (Wisconsin) Young Men’s Social Club Basketball team—providing additional evidence of Paris’s trailblazing career as an African American basketball player on predominantly white teams.
Unfortunately, little information has survived about the specifics of Claude Paris’s experiences against white competitors, but visual evidence of his participation on integrated teams is an important addition to our knowledge about the history of African American athletes in this era.
Some contemporary observers also noticed the significance of Claude Paris. In April 1903, the Milwaukee Sentinel published a lengthy article about Paris, then a student at Lawrence. The Sentinel described him as “studious and industrious” and “of quiet manner and engaging personality.”
The article also noted that “Paris finds time to devote considerable attention to athletics… [and] he has an excellent record. Before he came to Lawrence he played on the Stevens Point basket ball team which tied the team of Kenton, O., for the national championship in 1901.”
The Milwaukee Sentinel ultimately used Claude Paris to make an overtly political point. In an era that witnessed increasing legal segregation and racial violence and growing restrictions on African American rights, the Sentinel held up Paris’s example as a direct refutation of the racist philosophy of segregationists exemplified by notorious South Carolina Senator “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman:
“Claude M. Paris of Waupaca… in every detail of his personality and every incident of his career gives the lie to Senator Ben Tillman’s dictum that the negro is and must always remain… inferior.”
I am grateful that the Joyce Sports Research Collection has helped me to further document and honor the life of Claude Monroe Paris, an unsung African American athletic pioneer.
Rare Books and Special Collections is open through this Wednesday (December 22, 2021). After that, we will be closed for the Christmas and New Year’s Break (December 23, 2021 through January 4, 2022). Special Collections will reopen on Tuesday, January 5, 2022.
This is the last blog post for 2021. Happy holidays to you and yours from Notre Dame’s Rare Books and Special Collections!
To celebrate Thanksgiving this year, Special Collections highlights Alice’s Restaurant Cookbook by Alice Brock (the Alice of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” song) and the 1965 Thanksgiving that occasioned it. This is not a cookbook for Thanksgiving. It is a book that exists because of Thanksgiving. It is also a commercial, even nostalgic, artifact (produced by a mainstream publisher—Random House) about a countercultural moment already in the past when the book appeared in 1969.
Alice Brock had opened a restaurant—The Back Room—in Stockbridge, Massachusetts in 1965. That Thanksgiving she hosted a gathering of friends that included Arlo Guthrie, the son of folk singer Woody Guthrie. The day after the festivities, Guthrie and a friend helpfully removed a large load of garbage from Brock’s house. The city dump was closed so the young men threw the trash down a nearby ravine. The owner of the property had the two arrested and criminally charged with littering. Brock bailed them out of jail and Guthrie was inspired to write a song, which became “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” released in 1967.
In the song, Guthrie relates his Stockbridge Thanksgiving, detention, and subsequent conviction. Then the song changes and Guthrie describes how he used his criminal record to secure a rejection from the New York City Draft Board and avoid military service during the Vietnam War. The song, which is 18 and a half minutes long, unexpectedly became an anthem of anti-Vietnam protests and an expression of countercultural rebellion. Since the 1970s it has also become a cultural icon around Thanksgiving. Today, many radio stations around the country play the song on this holiday.
Guthrie’s story/song also caught the attention of film director Arthur Penn, who adapted it into a film, Alice’s Restaurant. It was released in 1969 with leading roles by Guthrie and a small cameo by Brock (Patricia Quinn played Alice Brock in the film).
Brock published Alice’s Restaurant Cookbook on the song and the film’s commercial coattails. It contains image stills from the movie as well as a small, vinyl record tucked into a pouch attached to the back inside cover. The recording doesn’t include “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” but the disk underscores the book’s connection with Guthrie’s famous song with a short introduction by Guthrie and Brock followed by two songs by Guthrie. In “Italian-Type Meatballs” and “My Granma’s Beet Jam,” he puts the words of two of Brock’s recipes to music.
Brock’s cookbook captures her playfulness and openness along with the countercultural ethos of both her Thanksgiving gathering and her cooking. In her introduction, Brock riffs on the chorus of Guthrie’s song (“you can get anything you want at Alice’s restaurant”). “There is no one way to get what you want unless it is to remain open,” she writes. “Keep guessing. . . . No one has ever fried an egg without turning on the gas, but maybe this time if you look that egg straight in the eye and say ‘FRY,’ it will.” (p. 3). And no Betty Crocker cookbook had index entries for “Blowing Your Own Horn” and “Doctor, Get the” as well as “Used Chicken.
If you hope to find special recipes for cooking a Thanksgiving feast in Brock’s book, however, you’ll be disappointed. The section on “Turkey” takes up just a part of one page and the only reference to Thanksgiving appears in a chapter on “Stuffings And Forcemeat.” But as Alice Brock wrote in her author’s bio, she “[c]ooked good good food with a smile and other expressions . . . Bought a crummy diner . . . Turned it into a crazy-yummy-cozy restaurant . . . Thru it all Alice is a real live human bean—Still foolin’ around and still cookin’ . . .”
Happy Thanksgiving!
RBSC will be closed during Notre Dame’s Thanksgiving Break (November 25-26, 2021). We wish you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving!
