OP: Mouth Wide Open (signed first printing)
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North Point Press, New York, 2007. Hardcover. Fine. Signed first printing.
The last of John Thorne’s books, Mouth Wide Open (2007), in many ways feels like the proper culmination of his life’s work. It shares hyperfixational tendencies with all his previous material, but here each essay implies a broader, more experienced palate. It seems to invite, in subtext, a thought exercise: “Imagine all the things you will have or could have tasted in your whole life.” What pleasure, excitement, and wonder!
He perfectly and cleverly conveys the life-altering experience of tasting something magnificent and novel for the first time: “a falafel sandwich can provoke a feeling of cognitive dissonance—the gustatory equivalent of being forced, after a lifetime of doing the opposite, to read from right to left.”
The recipes reflect Thorne’s uninhibited joie de vivre (de manger?) of concocting something totally unhinged (cilantro sandwich) out of refrigerator detritus and discovering a totally new and acceptable midnight snack in the process.
Our copy is a Fine first printing double signed by John and Matt Lewis Thorne.
Also available in paperback.
