The Marvelous Thing About Laurie Colwin by Kelly O’Connor McNees

Kelly O’Connor McNees

As someone who has moved around a lot in adult life, I’ve often had the opportunity (yes, I thought about putting that word in quotation marks) to navigate the awkward landscape of making new friends. As a book person, I tend to like the idea of people more than people themselves. I have realized, in my friend-making fits and starts, that I am an uncommitted introvert. When I find myself in a group of people, I crave solitude; when I’m alone, I wonder if it might be a little nicer to have someone nearby. You have my sympathies if this describes you too. It’s not an easy way to be.

From New York to Chicago to Providence to Ontario, I’ve tried basing friendships on all manner of interests: knitting, farmer’s markets, films, exercise—I was faking that one—teaching, writing . . . the list goes on. Some commonalities sustain two strangers longer than others, but there is just one that I’ve found to be a spot-on predictor of instant, lifelong friendship: Devotion to the food writer and novelist Laurie Colwin.

Laurie Colwin (1944-1992) is best known for her food columns in Gourmet, which were compiled and published in two books, Home Cooking (1988) and More Home Cooking (1993), but she also wrote a handful of wonderful novels and story collections with (arguably) unfortunate titles. These include Passion and Affect (1974), Shine on, Bright and Dangerous Object (1975), Happy All the Time (1978), The Lone Pilgrim (1981), Family Happiness (1982), Another Marvelous Thing (1988), Goodbye Without Leaving (1990), and A Big Storm Knocked It Over (1993). Sadly, she died at the very young age of 48.

To read Laurie Colwin while in the kitchen is to gain a funny, sweet, and encouraging companion. She begins the introduction to Home Cooking with these words: “Unlike some people, who love to go out, I love to stay home.” A woman after my own heart.

From Laurie Colwin I learned how to bake bread “without agony,” how to plan a dinner party so fine that “no one will know how antisocial you really are,” and how to appreciate simple food. Consider this description of soup: “Soup embraces variety. There are silken cream soups that glisten on the spoon and spicy bisques with tiny flecks of lobster. There are broths in which float tiny tortellini and bouillons served in teacups on cold days . . .”

Happy All the Time, my favorite Colwin novel, is about two couples experiencing the joy, tenderness, discomfort, and humiliation of real love, the kind that changes your life. But the story is merely an excuse for Colwin to write passages like these:

She had her own ways, Holly did. She decanted everything into glass and on her long kitchen shelves were row upon row of jars containing soap, pencils, cookies, salt, tea, paper clips, and dried beans. She could tell if one of her arrangements was off by so much as a sixteenth of an inch and she corrected it. She was constantly fighting off the urge to straighten paintings in other people’s houses . . . She liked to have tea on a tray and she was fond of unmatched china. The tray she brought to Guido held cups that bore forget-me-nots, a lily-of-the-valley sugar dish, a cream pitcher with red poppies, and a teapot covered with red roses and cornflowers.

But here’s the thing about Laurie Colwin. Despite the sheer pleasure that resides in her writing, not very many people know about her. Her books are all still in print, the best sort of evidence of enduring interest, but somehow she has slipped through the cracks of most people’s literary knowledge. That’s just fine by me—it makes it all the easier to spot an ardent fan from a mile away. Love for Laurie Colwin’s writing is, by far, the best thing I have found to have in common with another person, and I’d feel safe basing an entire friendship upon it.

Are you in the mood to gush about Laurie Colwin too? Stop by and tell me all about it on my blog! http://kellyoconnormcnees.com/blog

Kelly O’Connor McNees lives in Chicago with her husband. Her first novel, The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, was just published by Amy Einhorn Books / Putnam.