Kurlansky, Mark.  Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed
the World.  New York: Penguin Books, 1998.

     Although the slippery cod makes an unlikely anchor,

Mark Kurlansky uses this groundfish to secure his thousand-

year study of Transatlantic histories.  Already a culinary

historical writer, Kuransky sets out to illustrate man's

complex relationship to an apparently simple food commodity,

and thereby the interconnectedness of the political and

biological spheres.  Cod's style is deceptively light, and

the intrinsic environmental lessons are subtly presented

rather than used as a club.  The players on the stage speak

their lines against the backdrop of the Atlantic and then

the reader is left to ponder the meaning for himself.

     Kurlansky handles his source materials like a culinary

artist, combining style and content into a unified work.

Each chapter opens with a literary or historical quote and

ends with a fragment of culinary history, a cod recipe

contemporary to the subject of the chapter.  For example, a

chapter on the Icelandic Cod Wars, "Three Wars to Close the

Open Sea" opens with an Icelandic "Life is Saltfish" quote

(158) and ends with an Icelandic recipe for stuffed cod roe

(174).  In this example, the reader is reminded of both the

more formal or objective point of view (that cod is

essential to Icelandic physical and economic survival) and

the realities of ordinary lives (the recipe can be changed

because "babies don't like liver").

     Like a playwright, Kurlansky uses the Prologue to set

the stage for the reader: he introduces the main characters

and foreshadows the development of the story to unfold.  The

author's describes through personal observation1 the rough,

short-sighted but ultimately likeable fishermen, the inshore

fishing community, the short-sighted juggernaut government,

the cold sea, the codfish themselves.  The reader gets an

example of the political charades played out for commercial

gain, in Sam's admission that ".everyone tries to say [the

ban on trawling and gillnetting] was for conservation.

There was no such thing as conservation."  He adds "For

God's sake, there were enough fish to walk on. (8)."2  This

quote is indicative of the weltanschauung that, combined

with technology like motorized trawlers and sonar, resulted

in the massive overfishing of cod detailed in later

chapters.

     Subsequent chapters flesh out the complex and tangled

lines between men, their nations, their religion and their

society.  Kuransky juggles the specifics of cod biology and

behavior, international etymology and folk mythology.3  Cod

shows up as critical to early American colonial agricultural

productivity (68) and economy, and an influential topic of

Revolutionary-era aesthetics, economics and politics.  The

cod as natural resource coveted by nations dominates the

remainder of the work.  The political machinations include

such as seemingly minor adjustments of Icelandic waters from

three to four miles, and such dangerous confrontations as

the three Cod Wars where shots were fired, boats rammed, and

property destroyed but no lives lost.

     The way the people (and national markets) preferred and

consumed cod is an unexpectedly interesting study in

culinary nationalism.  The predominance of the cheaper cured

cod in Caribbean enclaves recalls times (and economic

realities) of slave plantations (105).  Claims to the One

True Way to prepare cod ('the true Gloucester fashion", 143)

reminds us of the saying that nationalism is merely the

remembrance of w what one ate as a child.

     Because of this impressionistic presentation of

characters, themes, situations and dialog Cod is less like

an orthodox synthesis than like a historical chowder; the

reader savors the understated historical base, meaty

anecdotal chunks of human experience, and delicate flavoring

of regret for the destruction of former bounty.  The reader

is left with an appreciation for author-provided sustenance,

and is left to ponder what it means for him personally, his

community, nation, and world.  Delicioso!





jason carr

_______________________________
1 Or what appears to be personal observation.  The book's
journalistic-style narrative does not directly indicate what
sources were used where, although Kurlansky provides an
ample bibliography.
2 Note the similarity to the Dumas quote on page33.
Kurlanky's inclusion of these two quotes may suggest that
highbrow literature informs even the lowly fisherman, and
that the overestimation of cod resiliency was common in
different  social and geographical locations.
3 Such as the story of the New England tale of the
ontological variance between cod and haddock.

http://www.mousetrap.net/~mouse/uta/transatlantic/