Eating while Reading with Dwight Garner

WAMU 88.5 | By Haili Blassingame

Published October 29, 2023 at 2:48 PM CDT

Sandwiches at Sandwich City presented by Cayman Jack hosted by Jeff Mauro as part of the Food Network New York City Wine & Food Festival presented by Capital One at Harbor NYC Rooftop in New York City.

There’s something about sinking into a story — whether it’s a book or a TV show — and eating your way through a bag of chips. Or popcorn, or pizza, or whatever you like to eat. The food somehow makes the story better.

When New York Times book critic Dwight Garner was a kid, he’d sneak a sandwich loaded with mayo, a pile of chips, and a cold red drink to his living room and read for hours.

He describes this habit as rebellious, something that had to stay hidden, especially from his father.

Now, Garner is laying all his hungry habits on the table in a new book.It’s called “The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading about Eating, and Eating While Reading.”

“If you must set this book down, I invite you to mark your place with a strip of streaky bacon,” Garner writes.

Advice like this isn’t unusual in the book which is about Garner’s childhood in West Virginia, his marriage to a chef, but most of all, the pleasures of books and food.