Customer Reviews

Blithe Tomato

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This fellow is a talented writer. He has a keen eye for detail both concrete and abstract. His prose invites us to tag along and we do. We learn about gardening and we learn about people. The chapters are short (2 to 4 pages) and fly by, each leaving its mark. Two stars are deducted because the author insists on "enlightening" us with his "superior" political and economic philosophies. His personal smugness and self-righteousness leave ugly stains on otherwise remarkably good writing. Buy and read this book, if you agree with his prejudices, bully for you, otherwise just ignore the snide remarks and enjoy good writing for its own sake.

With beautiful writing, Mike Madison takes us behind the scenes of his farmers' market and unmasks the colorful personalities of the vendors and customers. He recounts the ideosyncratic lifestyle of today's small-scale farmer with great warmth and humor.

In good travel narratives readers submerse themselves into more detail than they could ever imagine. And sometimes the imagination far outweighs an often blurry, or myopic focus on a colorful TV show, or even from their own travels--yes, some people are not as adventurous as the books they read.

A book like Blithe Tomato is not a travel narrative in the sense that the author is an outsider recording his take on a foreign country. There are no Yugoslavian travels, or dips into war-torn Iraq's out-of-balanced cityscapes. Yet Blithe Tomato is a journey that travels to foreign lands. Mike Madison's storytelling interconnects California's small farms with farmers' markets and the diverse people who make up a peculiar American culture of food.

Madison takes you out of the city to the war-torn farmlands of California, where farmers often fight equally between natural landscapes of blights, weeds and gophers as well as against the machinery needed to toil large plots of land--all for a miniscule profit.

And Madison brings a human side as well by describing people: people who hang in the balance of despair and success, who all traverse farmlands and farmer's markets in a shared existence that Madison politely observes.

I am only half-way through this book and I want so much to contact the author to say how much I am enjoying his book -- a series of short essays filled with Mike Madison's perceptive observations of human behavior, much of it found at the farmers' market at which he sells his produce. He lovingly describes the people he meets, his philosophical meanderings, and his work at the farm. He has a wonderful way with words. Here is one of my favorite passages from a chapter titled "Jeepers, Creepers":

"The human mind is a curious thing. When we are thinking normally, our thoughts seem to proceed deliberately, if not majestically, along a straight avenue, with vistas left and right down intersecting mental boulevards, in a way that would have made Descartes happy. But this is a small minority of the time. More often our thoughts scamper across the rooftops, slide down a drain pipe, duck in an open window, emerge moments later from a distant doorway wearing an odd hat, and disappear round a corner down an alley. Occasionally we get a glimpse of this mental pathway, too."

Run, do not walk, to your nearest bookseller to buy Blithe Tomato. With a quick wit, insight, and sense of humor Mike Madison weaves stories of unique farm personalities and gives us a personal peek into his own life. Buy three books; they're great gifts.

"Blithe Tomato" is a little gem of a book. The stories are brief - just two or three pages. Just right for bed side reading. I read one or two before turning in each night. Madison has a keen eye for interesting and colorful characters. He has a dramatic flair with which he ends each piece with pithy remark or a line of wit. A philosopher in his own right he is clearly well educated. Witness his references to literature and mythology. In one story he describes his youthful stint at a boarding school in the East. In others he occasionally refers to his family's surprise and mild disapproval of his choice of profession. He is constantly at pains to explain to the reader (if not to his relatives) why he works like a slave dawn to dusk to make a meager living from the farm when he could be getting wealthy elsewhere. The explanation for this arises from his personal philosophy that appears to feature "values" such as workingmen's solidarity, being close to the earth and savoring the few pleasures of success when they arise. Altogether he is most entertaining.

This book contains my current favorite sentence or three; three because my sentence takes the set up of the two previous: "If I am unenthusiastic about Bruce's nuggets of wisdom, can I offer anything better? Perhaps. One, of limited domain, sticks with me because it came to me in the course of vivid personal experience it's `When you're burning a brush pile, don't wear a straw hat.'" Now that's a sentence! Or rather an entire story in a sentence. You can carry it out as far as you have time and imagination. And it's just one of the many such vivid and entertaining offerings in this wonderful book. In addition to the entertainment there's a large dose of history, philosophy and economics which I quite enjoyed and appreciated. I would love to spend some time at the farmer's market visiting with the author, but truthfully, after finishing the book, I feel that I have. I sincerely hope he sits right down and writes another!

Michael Madison addresses many the issues facing us today as humans while he navigates the farm and farmers markets. Could be the (god forbid) new Peter Mayles of the United States and turns the area he is from a new tourist destination! I certainly want to run to his farmers market. Blithe Tomato took me out of my life for a day!!!Loved it!!

Mike Madison's short essays are small snippets of reflection... they are witty, thoughtful, engaging and poignant. I encourage anyone to read this book, but especially those of you who enjoy farmer's markets, food, gardening and growing things. I truly enjoyed this book and often think back to bits and pieces of it (even though I read it years ago). Enjoy!

This collection of two-or three page mini-essays about various aspects of farming and the farmers' markets will please even the most city- of city-dwellers. I have given a copy of this to TEN of my friends, one of whom is an apple grower who sells at the local city market on Saturday mornings. "Read this, Tom....I think you'd like it". The report from Tom: "I bought 10 copies and gave them to MY friends!". It was my Christmas gift to EVERYONE for 2006. Even busy folks will love the small chapters and quiet insights into how we're related to the farm.