Cookbook As Novel

Sometimes I feel like a genius. Sometimes I'm working on a paper, leaning back in my chair, staring at the wall with a pen fluttering between my fingers as I try to figure out what to say and suddenly BAM. I feel like I've discovered the quadratic formula. Sheer academic awesomeness. Sometimes it's more along the lines of a grin and an "Oh but I am a clever one" and before I happily proceed to produce something that, if not made of awesome, is at least smart and sharp and entertaining.

And then sometimes I go an entire semester without feeling very clever at all. Welcome, my friends, to Fall 2010. Today I had an approximate deadline of 4 pm (less than an hour ago) to post a review/synthesis question for the research seminar I'm taking entitled "The Novel and the New Ethics." I was completely stumped. No idea what to do. I babysat until 12:30, and then my time was taken up with Harry. 3:00 suddenly appeared and he was getting needy and I was getting tired and was still utterly clueless. The minutes ticked past 4 and I still just wasn't getting it. Cory called to say he was coming home to rescue me; he got home (with chocolate-covered s'more candy things, yum) and took Henry off to collect a package from the post office, and I grabbed my class notebook in an attempt to maybe find SOMETHING I'd written in a margin that might help.

Then I found it.

And then, at 4:41, at the bottom of a list of posts with "ethics" in most of the titles and bodies written in standard, interesting, academic-style prose, there appeared this, which I would put into the clever-grin category because that's exactly what it produced:

Cookbook as Novel

 (...because I've been changing diapers all day, my brain is slightly fried, and I think this would be fun.)

On our first day of class (and again since), it was suggested that an interesting discussion would arise from tossing a cookbook on the table, calling it a novel, and asking what everyone thought.

So here's my question: If we use our powers of attempted sympathy to imaginatively slip into the skins of a couple theorists we've read, how would they feel if they were sitting at that table? Would they be ok with calling a cookbook a novel? What ethical issues might arise? Would they have issues, for example, with its overwhelmingly prescriptive nature? With its apparent lack of narrative (or are "cookies" the proper telos to the progress of the text?)? Would they scoff its underdeveloped characters? With its metatexuality? With its hyperawareness of its readers, with what it assumes they do or don't know? and so on.





...yes,  I realize this probably isn't interesting to anyone, but hey. I'm proud and vain and wanted to share. :)