NONFICTION - Feb. 2, 1992

THE ARTFUL EATER by Edward Behr (Atlantic Monthly Press: 288 pp.; $19.95). Behr leads the life too many of us dream of: The Bennington College drop-out traded carpentry for a newsletter, called “The Art of Eating,” in 1986. Though he got only 32 subscribers from his first mailing, he had savings and a supportive family to see him through (always nice when attempting a radical career change). Now he writes, illustrates and publishes the 800-circulation newsletter at home in Vermont (with frequent forays to the University of Vermont’s Bailey/Howe Library, for historical material), and from that quarterly publication comes a series of essays on everything from vanilla to mustard. Behr is a dedicated researcher, and if he happens to have taken on a favorite foodstuff of yours, he will undoubtedly have something to say that you didn’t already know. The image of vanilla beans basking in the hot sun atop wool blankets, in which they are wrapped each night to sweat as part of the curing process, is a surreal one indeed--but then, the dark brown, wrinkled vanilla pod is an odd little creature; very nice to know how it got that way. If Behr’s writing seems a bit detached, it is probably the fault of his glorious isolation.