John Anderson

IMAGINE NEWTON and his apple. Proust and his Madeleine. Kane and his
Rosebud. Now, imagine naked picnics and clam chowder.

It was spring. We were fortunate enough to be in Paris, inside the
Musee d’Orsay and confronted by Edouard Manet’s “Luncheon on the
Grass” – a painting that caused near riots in 1863 because its
elements include two fully dressed men and a female companion who’s
dining toute nude.

In a museum full of wonderful art, this was a highlight. But
testifying to the ultimate roundness of things, our beloved companions
(not coincidentally female) provided the defining – and definingly
’90s – critique of one of the pivotal works of the impressionist
movement: “Why is the woman the only one naked?”

Forget the fact that Manet was demolishing artistic assumptions
about subject, composition and perception. Never mind that it’s that
woman in the picture – the one with the challenging stare and the
“who-cares” nudity – who possesses all the power of the painting.
Never mind that it remains an alarming, revolutionary work nearly 140
years after Manet made it. The politicization of seeing was rearing its
ugly head.

Chapter Two. It was summer. We were fortunate enough to be on
Montauk Highway, confronted by a bowl of Manhattan chowder and a
quandary: No clams. Not a bivalve in the bowl. I peered. I spooned. I
swirled. I considered cheesecloth. I considered chemical analysis. But
all my succulent mollusks apparently had been given the Memorial Day
Weekend off.

But what of it? Does a clam really make a clam chowder? If the
broth is potent and well-intentioned – if the essence of clam, in
other words, is possessed by the soup – do we have a moral legitimacy
in demanding actual clam in our chowder?

You’re darn right we do. Clamlessness may not be evil, of course. But
it doesn’t constitute chowderhood, either.