I found the experience much like seeing a house guest naked - you don't know whether to avert your eyes and mumble an apology or pretend it's hilarious and hope he laughs along.
From that point on, we are treated to sad reflections on how one may ineffectively attempt to use candy to fill the void created by emotionally unavailable parents, an alarming, overly personal description of penile hypochondria, and finally, how Dubya, terrorists, college hockey players and Reaganomics are to blame for everything from airport security to the author's inability to give up pot and find love. At one point the author himself notes, "I realize that I am over-sharing," a phrase that, in a work of humor especially, should be immediately followed by the words, "so I'll quit while I'm ahead." No such luck. I giggled, chuckled and guffawed my way through the author's confessions of freak-like candy-hoarding, reveling in the kind of sweet self-effacing wit only a candy junkie could muster.įrom there, it's mostly an historical tour of the four candy companies he visited, fascinating and richly detailed, yet interspersed with progressively more disturbing moments of personal crisis. The best laughs are all in the first five chapters.
Goaded by the disappearance of his adored Caravelle bar, Almond (yes, he talks about the name) tours independent candy companies (read: anyone other than Mars, Nestle, or Hershey) to, "chronicle their struggles for survival in this wicked age of homogeneity, and, not incidentally, to load up on free candy." That said, you can't help but laugh outright at the sugar-fanaticism of a man who gets faint with joy witnessing the birth of chocolate bunnies and is rendered speechless at the thoughtless waste of even one piece of chocolate, recalling, "I stood there in a cloud of disillusionment.I'm someone who has been known to eat the pieces of candy found underneath my couch."
I'll take it where I can get it and I'm not half as discriminating about its origins. If Steve Almond is a candyfreak, then I'm a candywhore.
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