Purchase
Horsemen of the Esophagus
Jason Fagone
Competitive Eating and the Big Fat American Dream
Crown
May 2006
320 pages ISBN: 0307237389 Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction
"To be up on stage, shoving food in your face, beats
everyday existence for most people." --David "Coondog"
O'Karma, competitive eater "Hungry" Charles Hardy. Ed "Cookie" Jarvis. Sonya "The Black
Widow" Thomas. Joey "Jaws" Chestnut. Will such names one day
be looked back upon as the pioneers of a new manifestation
of the irrepressible American appetite for competition,
money, fame, and self-transformation? They will if the
promoters of the newly emerging sport of competitive eating
have their way. In Horsemen of the Esophagus, Jason Fagone
reports on the year he spent in the belly of this awakening
beast. Fagone's trek takes him to 27 eating contests on two
continents, from the World Grilled Cheese Eating
Championship in Venice Beach, California, to Nagoya, Japan,
where he pursues an interview with the legendary Takeru
Kobayashi, perhaps the most prodigious eater in the world
today, and to the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest at
Coney Island, the sport's annual grand finale, where
Kobayashi has eaten more than 50 dogs in 12 minutes. Along
the way, Fagone discovers an absurd, sometimes troubling
subculture on the make, ready to bust out of its county fair
and neighborhood-fat-guys niche and grab a juicy piece of
the big-time television sports/Vegas spectacle jackpot. Fagone meets promoters like George Shea, the P. T. Barnum of
the International Federation of Competitive Eating (aka
IFOCE, "the governing body of all stomach-centric sport")
and enters the lives of three "gurgitators": David "Coondog"
O'Karma, a fiftyish, six-two house painter from Ohio who's
"not ready to become invisible"; Bill "El Wingador" Simmons,
the Philly Wing Bowl legend who is shooting for a fifth
chicken-eating championship despite the fact that it may be
killing him; and Tim "Eater X" Janus, a lean young Wall
Street trader who takes a seriously scientific and athletic
approach to the pursuit of ingesting mountains of food in
record-breaking times. Each in his own way feels as if he
has lost or not yet found something essential in life, and
each is driven by the desperate hope that through
consumption he may yet find redemption, that even in the
junkiest of America's junk culture, true nourishment might
be found. After all, as it says on the official IFOCE seal:
In Voro Veritas (In Gorging, Truth). With forays into the gastrointestinal mechanics of the
alimentary canal ("it's what unbuilds the world to build
you," but, hey, you can skip that part if you like), the
techniques and tricks of the experienced gurgitators
(pouring a little club soda on top of high-carb foods makes
them easier to swallow), and the historical roots of the
competitive eating phenomenon, Horsemen of the Esophagus
gives the French something else to dislike about America.
And it gives the rest of us food for thought about the
bizarre and unlikely places the American Dream can sometimes
lead.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
|