Bill Buford

Bill Buford (born 1954) is an American author and journalist. Buford is the author of the books Among the Thugs and Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany.

Not to be confused with Bill Bruford.

Bill Buford
Born1954 (age 68–69)
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
OccupationAuthor, journalist
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley
King's College, Cambridge
Literary movementDirty realism
Notable worksAmong the Thugs; Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany; Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking

He was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and raised in Southern California, attending the University of California, Berkeley from 1973 to 1977, before moving to King's College, Cambridge, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar until 1979. He remained in England for most of the 1980s.

Buford was previously the fiction editor for The New Yorker, where he is still on staff. For sixteen years, he was the editor of Granta, which he relaunched in 1979.

Buford is credited with coining the term "dirty realism".

Work

As an author

Among the Thugs (1991) is presented as an insider's account of the world of (primarily) English football hooliganism. His chief thesis is that the traditional sociological account of crowd theory fails to understand the often complex problem of football violence as a particularly English working-class phenomenon. His book, based on years of exhaustive first-hand research as an 'outsider'—in terms of both his background and his position as a member of the journalistic community—is considered by some to be one of the great social-research documents.[1]

Heat (2006) is Buford's account of working for free in the kitchen of Babbo, a New York City restaurant owned by chef Mario Batali. Buford's premise is that he considered himself a capable home cook and wondered whether he had the skills to work in a busy restaurant kitchen. He met Batali at a dinner party and asked whether he would take on Buford as his "kitchen bitch".[2][3][4][5]

Buford began his time at Babbo in a variety of roles including dishwasher, prep cook, garbage remover and any other role demanded of him. Over the course of the book, his skills improve and he is able to butcher a hog and work many stations in the restaurant; he traveled to Italy to meet cooks and chefs who were crucial to Batali's early culinary development, as Buford worked and lived in some of the places Batali honed his craft.

Subsequently, Buford started working on a book on French cuisine. In October 2007, his article titled "Extreme Chocolate: The Quest for the Perfect Bean" was published in The New Yorker. It described his world travels with a leader in the world of gourmet dark chocolate, Fred Schilling of Dagoba Chocolates.

Buford's article "Cooking with Daniel: Three French Classics", about his experience cooking with French chef Daniel Boulud, was published in the July 29, 2013, issue of The New Yorker.[6] In an interview posted on The New Yorker's website to accompany the article, he discussed his time living in France and what he had learned about French cooking.[7] The book-length treatment of Buford's time in Lyon, from December 2008 to September 2013, appeared in 2020 as Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking. It details stints working with "Bob," baker at the boulangerie Philippe Richard, attending classes at the Institut Paul Bocuse, and, at greatest length, as a stagiaire at La Mère Brazier.

Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence (2008) is dedicated "to Bill Buford".

As an editor

Buford relaunched the then-defunct literary magazine Granta in 1979.[8] Under his leadership that journal became highly influential and "rose to conquer the literary world."[9] He edited it until 1995, when he left to become the fiction editor of The New Yorker.[10] In 2002, The New Yorker announced that he would leave the latter position at the beginning of 2003, to be replaced by Deborah Treisman, his deputy whom he had recruited to the magazine.[11][12] He remains on its staff.

Personal life

Buford is married to Jessica Green.[13] They have twin sons.[13]

Bibliography

Books
  • Buford, Bill (1991). Among the Thugs.
  • — (2006). Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-1400041206.
  • — (2020). Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking. Knopf.

Essays and reporting

References
  1. Bolton, Chris. "Powell's Books review". Powells.com. Retrieved January 25, 2014.
  2. Metacritic.com review Archived October 10, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  3. Buford, Bill (August 21, 2007). "Bill Buford reads from his kitchen memoir, 'Heat'". Npr.org. Retrieved January 25, 2014.
  4. Reed, Review by Julia (May 28, 2006). "Will Work for Food (Published 2006)". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 18, 2023.
  5. Adam Mars-Jones (July 9, 2006). "What a carve-up". Books.guardian.co.uk. Retrieved January 25, 2014.
  6. Buford, Bill (July 21, 2013). "Bill Buford: Cooking French Classics with Chef Daniel Boulud". The New Yorker. Retrieved January 25, 2014.
  7. New, The (July 21, 2013). "Out Loud: Bill Buford on French Cooking". The New Yorker. Retrieved January 25, 2014.
  8. "Bill Buford". Granta. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
  9. Garfield, Simon (December 30, 2007). "How Granta conquered the world". The Observer. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
  10. Segura, Jonathan (March 6, 2020). "Bill Buford Could Stand the Heat, So He's Back In the Kitchen". publishersweekly. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
  11. Carr, David; Kirkpatrick, David D. (October 21, 2002). "The Gatekeeper For Literature Is Changing At New Yorker". The New York Times. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
  12. Finn, Robin (January 28, 2003). "PUBLIC LIVES; A Bookworm as a Child, Now the Talk of the Town". The New York Times. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
  13. "'Dirt' Author Bill Buford Takes Stock of Lockdown and Gets Back to Basics". Food & Wine. Retrieved October 13, 2023.
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