Candy Freak
by Renee
Steven Almond, Candy Freak: A Journey Through The Chocolate Underbelly of America. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books, 2004. US$21.95 cloth (ISBN 1-56512-421-9), 226 pages.
If you log on to Steve Almond’s website, www.stevenalmond.com, you can read the accounts of his readers’ obsessions with candy, inspired by his book, Candy Freak: A Journey Through The Chocolate Underbelly of America. These sugar-inspired testimonials can be found on the menu bar under “Freak Testify.”
In the spirit of these testaments to the enduring legacy candy can have in one’s life, I offer my own – the once a year at Easter time Cadbury Crème Egg. Hailed in by a clucking Easter Bunny on television, the Cadbury Crème Egg was at once my best buddy and worst nemesis. From ages 13-18, I was obsessed with the goal of becoming a ballet dancer, and during the Cadbury Crème Egg season, I spent my time furiously practicing and dieting for the all-important spring auditions for the pre-professional programs at the nation’s elite ballet companies. So, the coveted Crème Egg was out for me. Instead, I greedily purchased this spring-only confection and hoarded it during the audition season. When I had a bad experience at an audition, I secretly cursed the egg, completely convincing myself, however unrealistic, that the fat and calories had already made it into my system without my even consuming it, and that is was responsible for my poor performance – cellulite and fat. If a good acceptance letter arrived, preferably with a full scholarship promised within, I celebrated with the eating of the egg. I’d nibble a hole in the outer chocolate egg and gently lick out the gooey innards of white and yellow crème. My tongue, coated with a thin layer of sugar, gently dissolved the other pieces of chocolate until the entire thing was consumed, and I was left only to guilt myself into another near- anorexic diet.
As my “Freak Testimonial” attests — as do many of the ones on Almond’s site — candy links us with all sorts on subliminal desires. This is not lost in Almond’s account of candy – from his own obsessions with it to his journeys through the country visiting the smaller confectioners the country has to offer.
Anyone familiar with Almond’s fiction knows that he never shies from the subjects of sex and sensuality. In fact, he embraces them wholeheartedly and they serve as the underlying aspects of his work. In Candy Freak, Almond demonstrates a similar vein. Like writing about sex, in which Almond vividly accounts for the greater and lesser aspects of his characters, his writing about candy bring out his joys, fears, guilty pleasures, humor and slightly obsessive feelings, not only about the candy itself, but his relationship to it and the people who produce it. We learn more about Almond the person as he takes us through his confessional narrative of sweets:
“Every now and again, I’ll run into someone who claims not to like chocolate or other sweets, and while we live in a country where everyone has the right to eat what they want, I want to say for the record that I don’t trust these people, that I think something is wrong with them, and that they’re probably – this must be said – total duds in bed.”
Candy, in Almond’s world, is linked to sexuality, a pleasure principle that is neither lost on the reader nor overly sentimentalized, because it is tempered by self-effacing humor. Ironically, while the characters in Almond’s fiction are often most revealing as the characters disrobe, Almond’s insights into self and sensuality are revealed in this work as the candy in enrobed by chocolate, layered in the ingredients that make the mouth water. It is the layering that adds meaning and texture, as well as pleasure. As he says about the Twin Bing: “What I can’t explain is how the bar managed to beguile me. It was sort of like that girl at the party who’s so strange looking you can’t stop looking at her…”
The candy mavens that Almond introduces us to throughout his journey – from Necco to the Idaho Candy Company – cause him both great joy, in the form of free samples, to consternation at the fact that the candy business is, in fact, a commercial enterprise. While he writes that the companies that he visits had “the poor judgment to extend me an invitation,” he also becomes their biggest champions. Almond, who detests coconut in candy, bonds with Russ Sifers (who produces the Valomilk) because of Sifer’s discontinuation of a product made with coconut, something that Almond detests in candy. In this way, he aligns himself with the candy makers. Similarly, he admires the athletic springing step and can-do mentality of Marty Palmer, of Palmer Candy of Sioux City, Iowa. He also admonishes himself for his lack of the same characteristics. His various visits inspire a gnawing feeling of anxiety fueled by the candy and what it cannot replace – love and affection. When he visits Dave Wagers of the Idaho Candy company, he puts together many of his complex feelings:
“He retained a necessary fascination with the teleology of capitalism, which is to maximize profit. But he could also see that there was a spiritual price to be paid for all that striving. Roiling within him was a messier, less-profitable impulse – the wish to create.”
It is this realization that the two must co-exists that both amazes and confounds Almond. To the reader, it feels like an impulse pushed inward to inner soul-searching with the outward guise of exploring the world of obscure candy makers.
By the end of his account, we are left with the aftermath of Almond’s sugar high. The book has a less hopeful, more introspective dénouement. “I had decided to write about candy,” he writes, “because I assumed it would be fun and frivolous and distracting.” And while all is this is true, he brings us to his realization that there are “no untarnished pleasures.” This is where my own candy testimony intersects with his – that the thing that gives such pleasure is often and unavoidably the thing that gives us pause for guilt and fuel for obsession. However, Almond gives us one last glimmer of optimism, in the form of his young nephew’s joy in eating jelly beans as something redemptive, unspoiled and still hopeful.
Reviewed by Renée K Nicholson
March 14th, 2005 at 7:49 pm
A simply delicious review of what sounds like a juicy book. I need to get my hands on a copy of Candy Freak and some great chocolate to go with it.
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