1 bunch red grapes (frozen)
1 honeydew melon (balled and frozen)
Fine rum
Combine grapes and melon. Add rum. Set it alight.
…Or at least that’s how I remember many a dessert recipe from an amusingly vintage cookbook, With a Jug of Wine by Morrison Woods . The first edition was from 1949, but I’m pretty sure mine was from the early 60’s. Many of the recipes were taken from his newspaper column, “For Men Only,” and they seemed intended for a bachelor aiming to impress, despite rudimentary kitchen skills. Hence the preference for finishing a dessert by lighting it on fire. Dramatic. Manly. Extremely simple.
In this interview with Dmitri Nabokov, Steve Coates recalls that Vladimir Nabokov’s wife saved a finished draft of Lolita from the flames. (She, as his amanuensis and editor, was saving her own opus, too.) And one reads of this from time to time, these sacrificial burnings born of frustration, defeat, or just the simple wish for a clean slate.
I can imagine these feelings. But it’s hard to imagine having one paper draft, a single embodiment of all one’s labor. Not just the labor of writing, but also of typing, correcting, retyping, and so on.
If I wanted to destroy my manuscript, wipe it off the face of the earth, it would involve hitting delete, then shredding the contents of my virtual recycling bin. Just not the same as watching the pages blacken, curl, then float skyward, never to return…
In the digital age, what becomes of this urge to destroy? By what means the satisfying digital destruction? Or is there really no substitute for fire?