Column: 'Roast beef, medium'

By Jim Rosenberg
Posted 12/8/16

Though she died almost a half a century ago, Edna Ferber (1885-1968) remains a well-respected American novelist, short story writer, and playwright. Her 1924 novel, “So Big,” won the …

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Column: 'Roast beef, medium'

Posted

Though she died almost a half a century ago, Edna Ferber (1885-1968) remains a well-respected American novelist, short story writer, and playwright. Her 1924 novel, “So Big,” won the Pulitzer Prize the following year, her 1926 novel, “Show Boat,” was transformed into a popular Jerome Kern musical, while her 1952 novel, “Giant,” was “translated” into a powerful movie starring Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean.

I confess that I have not read anything by Edna Ferber. Nevertheless, for one reason or another, her name keeps on coming up in the ProJo crossword puzzles that I work on Monday through Saturday — the Sunday puzzle being too time-consuming. A typical clue reads “Writer Ferber,” either four letters across or four letters down.  The answer is, of course, EDNA.

The Wednesday, Oct. 26 crossword featured a 45-letter quote by Ferber in three 15-letter segments — 17 Across, 35 Across, and 56 Across: ROASTBEEFMEDIUM/ISMORETHANAFOOD/ITISAPHILOPSOPHY.  (Roast beef medium is more than a food. It is a philosophy.)

What is the philosophy implied in “roast beef medium”?  

At first glance, medium suggests the Aristotelian ideal of moderation, balance, common sense. The meat is not too rare, not to well done. However, for those of us who prefer our roast beef rare, roast beef medium is not a “happy” medium but an excess — that is to say, overcooked. So much for Aristotle and his philosophy of “the middle way.”   

When my wife Sandy and I were first married, before the steady stream of dire warnings that red meat clogs our arteries, we would from time to time splurge and buy a roast beef and cook it to perfection — rare in the middle, less rare on the ends, but never medium, which to me means drained of juice and drained of taste.

One fateful Saturday evening, we were waiting for another newly married couple to join us for a roast beef dinner in our apartment in the northern Manhattan neighborhood known as Inwood. When our friends called to say that they would be about an hour late, I insisted that we take the roast beef out of the oven to keep it from getting overcooked; Sandy was equally insistent that it would be better to keep the roast in the oven on warm, so that we would not be serving cold meat. The sad result? Roast beef medium through and through.  

Perhaps “roast beef medium” can be viewed as a key to penetrating the hidden meaning of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” The bowl of porridge that Goldilocks prefers, you will remember, is the one that is not too hot, not too cold, but just right. The chair she prefers is the one that is not too hard, not too soft, but just right; and the bed in which she falls asleep is the one that is not too big, not too small, but just right.

But is it possible to construe this fairy tale as a celebration of the philosophy of the middle way? On the contrary, by choosing the middle between the extremes, Goldilocks gets herself into a heap of trouble. She winds up escaping from the fury of the three bears by jumping out of an open window and running away as fast as her little legs could carry her.

Might we presume that “roast beef medium” points to our need for the kind of moderate policies that could bring our divided country back together again? Can we achieve a politics of consensus that is neither too liberal nor too conservative? What kind of America would look like “roast beef medium”? How would the language of “roast beef medium” sound? Can you imagine our leaders crafting a “medium” economy that is neither overheated nor undercooked?

I am happy to say that I ruminated about “roast beef medium” before turning to Google to investigate the context of Ferber’s statement. My ignorance of context enabled my speculative faculty to run freely and, at times a bit wildly.

As it turns out, the Ferber quote in the ProJo is found in a slightly different form in the preface to her 1913 collection of short stories, “Roast Beef, Medium: The Business Adventures of Emma McChesney.” Mc Chesney is the divorced mother of a 17-year-old son, Jock, who makes her living as a canny and hard-working traveling saleswoman, a highly competitive and successful Midwest representative for T. A. Buck’s Featherloom Petticoats. 

According to one interpretation, McChesney’s “experience has taught her that it’s best to stick to roast beef, medium — avoiding both physical and moral indigestion — rather than experiment with fancy sauces and exotic dishes.” Another commentator writes: “The title refers to the only consistently good road food, in Emma’s opinion: roast beef. On the road, Emma daydreams about the Sunday dinners she could cook if she were an ordinary housewife. Roast beef became a metaphor for the family life she feels she is missing, though none of the women she knows lead that life.”

In the end, the philosophy of roast beef medium resists a satisfying interpretation. All I can say with any certainty is that roast beef medium is overcooked.

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Jim McGaw

A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.