While here I read Leonardo Sciasia’s The Day of the Owl, a decidedly unglamorous depiction which delves into the seamy underbelly of localized mob control. Less a unified system than a murky network of connections, this world is imagined as one whose outlines are not even fully understood by those on the inside. Such a representation gets a nice cinematic pairing in Francesco Rosi’s Salvatore Giuliano, a portrait of an apolitical hustler that avoids any direct depiction of the man, only the shadow cast by him on the island’s arid landscape, and the way his actions were influenced by the eternal forces (organized crime, church, and state) which tussle for total control, balancing each other out in the process. It may seem trite to try and connect food to all this, but the culinary patchwork here is equally indefinable and unorganized; having spent dozens of hours trying to enforce order upon it, I feel like I’m no closer to pinning down any essential character or qualities, beyond the fascinating maelstrom of complete culinary entropy.
I saved this topic for the final post, both because these establishments typically serve the heaviest, most dinner-centric meals, and because I didn’t want to lead with a mafia reference. It would be easy to entirely ignore the existence of the island’s most famous criminal enterprise, both because it’s a distasteful topic, and one that doesn’t intrinsically have much to do with food. Yet the two are also linked in some essential way, constituent elements in Sicily’s enduring outlaw mystique. There’s an inherent untamabilty to this area, which has been dominated by so many external rulers yet remains stubbornly singular, refusing to cede control of its inner workings. Italy has failed to fully subjugate it as well, despite years of struggle during the fascist era and beyond, during which period the mafia gained further mystique as desperado freedom fighters.
While here I read Leonardo Sciasia’s The Day of the Owl, a decidedly unglamorous depiction which delves into the seamy underbelly of localized mob control. Less a unified system than a murky network of connections, this world is imagined as one whose outlines are not even fully understood by those on the inside. Such a representation gets a nice cinematic pairing in Francesco Rosi’s Salvatore Giuliano, a portrait of an apolitical hustler that avoids any direct depiction of the man, only the shadow cast by him on the island’s arid landscape, and the way his actions were influenced by the eternal forces (organized crime, church, and state) which tussle for total control, balancing each other out in the process. It may seem trite to try and connect food to all this, but the culinary patchwork here is equally indefinable and unorganized; having spent dozens of hours trying to enforce order upon it, I feel like I’m no closer to pinning down any essential character or qualities, beyond the fascinating maelstrom of complete culinary entropy.
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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