In case you haven't read the updates, here's the news - definite plans have been announced for an official Cat Who... cookbook. This isn't the same group-effort project that was announced on the mailing list some months ago; this cookbook is to be put together by a two-woman team of one writer and one chef (no names as of yet).
This's good news in a way, I suppose, since a Cat Who... cookbook has been eagerly awaited by a great many fans (the interest and support this site's recipe page (which was initially thrown in the site as an afterthought) has received completely took me by surprise) but the idea's execution prompts some concerns; why, for example, is there only one chef? The Cat Who... oeuvre contains a lot of great, original dishes from many different types of cuisine; a series cookbook'd have to encompass recipes for foods from master chefs of Italian (from Robert(o) Maus's boarding house and restaurant Down Below), Middle Eastern (from Onoosh Dolmathakia), Scottish (from all o'er Moose County), and the ever-venerable U.S. greasy-spoon (the Bearburger) cuisine - plus all of Mrs. Cobb's delectable treats and assorted odd foods (Dobos torte, lobster bisque, banana-split cake, spinach timbales, etc.) scattered throughout the books. Plus put together a pasty recipe that meets the standards set forth in Said Cheese by Homer and Rhoda Tibbitt and wouldn't make Moose Countians revolt and throw bar stools through the windows of the Sip 'n' Nibble. (And this isn't even getting into Kabibbles.) Can just one person, no matter how skilled in the culinary arts they are, do justice to _all_ these types of dishes? (Perhaps one of the great New York or Parisian chefs...but if you're a renowned New York or Parisian chef, you ain't writin' Cat Who... cookbooks.)
Most (if not all) of my issues with this prospective cookbook come from it being the product of just a couple people, in fact. We recently had a rather lengthy thread going on the mailing list about the idea of a Cat Who... movie; most folks voted against it on the grounds that whatever would be filmed could never live up to the images the author's words had suggested in their minds. And isn't this "official" cookbook just like the movie debacle, in a way? Wouldn't the above reservation apply to the unique foods described within the books as well as its characters and locales - its distinctive tastes as well as its sights and sounds? (I know some people out there are saying that I'm blowing this matter out of proportion, but given the feedback I get about the food in the Cat Who...s, yeah, I would say that it's that considerable a part of the series.) In a series that so involves the individual imaginations of its readers, the author's descriptive prose encouraging each of them to conceive their own vision of the Cat Who... world, is it appropriate or right for just two fans to attempt to impose their vision of a part of that world on everyone by pushing to make it official and canonic?
To put it another way - it's one thing for a group of fans to gather and put together a semi-informal recipe collection to share their opinions and interpretations of this aspect of the Cat Who... world just out of fun and a labor of love (with any profits donated to charity, as was originally planned), and another for just two folks to pop outta the woodwork (this project was just announced this weekend, and it's gonna be published this spring?) and set about molding a certain part of the series in their image - deciding for certain what all those treasured, arcane, one-of-a-kind foods of Mrs. Cobb's taste like all by themselves - in the name of making a buck. Not that making a buck is necessarily bad, of course, but the way this cookbook deal is being handled makes me uneasy - Putnam is handing over what, when you look at it, is quite an important undertaking to two unknowns who seem to be heedlessly rushing as fast as they can to that publication date - and taking the wrong route, to boot. They might be as rabid fans as me or any of us - but I sense that if they were - if they did decide to undertake this project mainly for love of the books - they would've paid more respect to the great role that personal interpretation of Braun's prose (evocative yet just vague enough to lure one's imagination into completing painting the picture of each reader's rendition of Braun's subjects) plays in bringing the series to life and, at the very least, sought out more input from their fellow Cat Who... lovers rather than storming ahead with their two-woman vision. That's the problem with going for the jugular of "official"; it's tough to prepackage the subjective.
The Cat Who... mysteries have been being published over a period of almost two decades (actually, almost four, if you count in the hiatus Braun took between On and Off and Saw Red), and yet this peripheral merchandise - the cookbook, The Cat Who... Companion, and whatever else eventually comes down the pike - have only started cropping up within the last couple years or so - curiously coinciding with a dip in the quality of the newly-published mysteries. This points to somewhat of an abdication of responsibility by the publisher, Putnam, which has as of late shown precious little interest in quality control on the series (as evidenced by the spotty proofreading and apparent lack of editing in the last couple books) and intense interest in milking the books for all the profits they're worth with little care for the consumer (as shown by recent specious marketing tactics involving preferential deals with Barnes & Noble and repeatedly setting back the official release date (after the books had been delivered to stores) to hep up demand). Not to say that all the prospective products are destined to be bad (the Companion, though flawed in spots, did indeed prove a valuable resource) - but when the powers that be give a green light to seemingly anyone with an idea to make them some extra moolah off the series with minimal regard to how exactly the idea will be executed, you know that a slipshod work's gonna slip through sooner or later - most probably sooner. And, as a fan, I'd find it a sad prospect to see the books eventually viewed as little but a strictly commercial property, and the series's license and future farmed out to nigh anyone who wants to use and dilute the Cat Who... brand just to make a name for themselves.
So - will the cookbook be an actually well-thought-out collection of approximations of beloved foods involved with the Cat Who... series, or will it contain a lot of unrelated recipes "inspired by" the Cat Who... books with the characters' names just slapped on 'em - in other words, a way to get the authors' own personal cookbook published through riding on the Cat Who... coattails? The end result of this project will be a good barometer for what lies ahead for what could be an expanding Cat Who... franchise - whether the increased attention paid to this series will contribute to a welcome fresh perspective or expansion of its world or a bleak future.
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