Entertaining: The Book that Started it All

A review
By Andrew Ritchie

She greets us from the front cover as she perches, all in white, on the edge of her dining room table, her lacy collar centered with a Queen Anne broach and flanked by a string of pearls. Her blond hair is long and wavy, her smile warm and inviting. The table is set with fine china and three tall vases are brimming with shredded poppies in hues of orange, red and yellow. Tall French doors lead out to the expansive backyard behind her, where earlier that day she had harvested a small crop of vegetables and collected eggs from her Araucana hens.

This is the world of Martha Stewart and Americans had their first glimpse of it in 1982 with the publication of her first book "Entertaining."

It is a book that promises "thousands of inspiring ideas" and it delivers them, in their finest forms, in over 300 glossy pages with as many recipes and 450 full-colour photographs.

What makes the book such a classic, as many critics have now called it, is not so much the abundance of recipes but the abundance of audacious confidence conveyed to the reader by the author herself. This is Martha Stewart at her unapologetic best.

We see her standing in her Connecticut kitchen, every inch of counter surface covered by fruit, vegetables and woven baskets; we see her feeding her chickens, harvesting honey from her bees, standing next to her thriving sunflowers and emptying quart after quart of strawberries into a basket, which she notes had once belonged to the Baroness Hilla von Rebay, who had once owned the property behind Martha’s house.

At the time the book was written Martha was in her early 40s but looked ten years younger, of course. She was still married to her lawyer husband Andy Stewart and she was a virtual unknown outside of New York and Connecticut where she had become a rather famous cateress.

"Entertaining" marked her first forays into the publishing world and signaled a new trend in the social stratosphere: even amid early-80s corporate growth, the home, and all its traditions, was becoming the key to happy living.

Martha would eventually take her basic philosophy of "Entertaining," that of beauty, comfort and organization, and turn it into a multi-million dollar enterprise that would spark a revolution in home-décor commerce, making the existence of stations such as HGTV and the Food Network possible.

She would also make the name "Martha Stewart" synonymous with big business as she turned herself into a self-marketed brand name in the late 80s with a line of products at Kmart and publications in the early 90s to back up her "It’s a good thing" mantra.

What Martha may not have realized, however, is that in conjunction with creating legions of fans and do-alikes she would also unwittingly make herself a magnet for unparalleled vituperation and spite.

Men didn’t like her because she was encroaching on their business territory and making more money than they were, in many cases. Women didn’t like her because she was espousing the wonders of domestic bliss just as they were scrambling to get out the front door in a panic to get to work.

In short, the word "arrogance" would soon become closely associated with Martha’s name, polarizing America into two armed camps of Martha supporters and Martha haters. And, as is so often the case with celebrity, Martha had very little to do with it.

"How dare she?" they would all scream. "How dare she make more money than me?" called the men. "How dare she assume that women should do it all?" asked the women.

It all began in 1982 with Martha’s first book "Entertaining." And Martha, with all her insight and her well-honed business acumen, likely never dreamed it would be the beginning of controversy.

"Entertaining with Style"

In the first few chapters of "Entertaining," Martha assures us that you can host a sit-down country luncheon for one-hundred-seventy five and do it with ease, so long as you are prepared and organized, two skills the author admits took her ages to learn. You can host a midnight omelette supper for thirty or a Chinese banquet for ten to twelve. And you can do it all in style, provided you have a bit of help from family, friends or a small staff, which Martha actually acknowledges in many of the chapters.

"Engaging a caterer will lighten your responsibilities, provide skill in an area where you have none, or simply introduce you to an exotic cuisine" she writes. "But it should not mean you surrender either your individuality or your taste."

Taste for Martha includes abundance and artful presentation, two cornerstones of her popular image in American culture. But no good party can happen properly, of course, without organization – another piece of the Martha Stewart puzzle.

In the book, Martha acknowledges that she was not always organized as a cateress and that she learned from her mistakes, sharing some humorous anecdotes with the reader along the way – like the time she had to use roughly chopped paper towels at a luncheon picnic because she forgot the napkins and no stores were open, or the time she spent so much time in the kitchen preparing the food that the guests became bored with her and barely remembered she was there. There was the time a wedding cake she had made nearly collapsed in front of everyone at the reception and the time she burned her thanksgiving turkey, filling the house with smoke.

And so, "Entertaining" offers some rare glimpses into the very real, very human Martha Stewart, making the reader feel more at ease. "Martha makes mistakes too," is the underlying message to the reader. "But with time and experience, you will (or should) get better."

Photo Fabulous

The writing is wonderful and is an interesting peek at Martha’s writing voice. Granted, she had help from an assistant editor, Elizabeth Hawes, but they are Martha’s ideas conveyed through Martha’s words.

Taking center stage in her book, though, to back up Martha’s array of suggestions, are lavish color photographs that play up the opulence of the food presentations – baskets overflowing with strawberries, the entire surface of a table covered with piles of sliced vegetables (or crudités, as Martha likes to call them), a dining room perfectly appointed with fine linens, crystal stemware and bone china.

Contrary to the popular image of Martha as the infallible, unapproachable hostess who intimidates rather than encourages, the photos in the book are real and convey a more relaxed element to Martha’s renowned perfectionism.

In one image, for instance, we see that Martha has tucked her spectacles behind a large bowl of egg batter while she maneuvers a hot skillet with a paper towel in hand. In another, we see her anxiously dodging a plume of billowing smoke from a large barbecue where she and her then-husband, Andy Stewart, are roasting suckling pigs on a beach for a luau party.

The photographs in Martha Stewart Living magazine, which emerged a decade later, have been criticized in the past for being too arranged, too distilled and artistically presented, disabling the reader from truly enjoying the process of imaging how the food would taste, smell and feel – more like paintings than a true representation of the food.

Similar criticisms have been made of the photographs in "Entertaining." One critic called it "homemaker porn" for its reversal of perspective – making the food an object of desire while pushing any humanity to the background. Another charged that Martha was "the Barbara Courtland of entertaining," making reference to the late romance novelist known for her particularly lavish settings and sappy style.

John Thorpe, a British food writer, devoted an entire chapter to Martha Stewart in his book "Outlaw Cook" and says that the philosophy behind "Entertaining" is not at all appetizing because Martha herself seems unappealingly detached from the act of creation – too much the ideal cateress and not enough the welcoming hostess.

He writes: "Without anything quirky, difficult, or hidden, surface becomes everything, an impenetrable veneer. And she herself, although perfect in every detail, runs the risk of causing disquiet in her observers, who cannot find behind these any person there at all."

We do see that the food presentations in "Entertaining" bear the foundation trademarks of the photos that would appear in Martha’s magazines a decade later: the food is artfully and imaginatively arranged in lavish settings; the hors d’oeuvres, cocktails and main courses are the centerpieces of the photos and all are printed in glossy color.

And yet, the difference here is that the food looks more graspable in more natural settings. Far from being ‘pornographic’, the food photos are instead a glimpse into the reality of imaginative food presentation, where things don’t always turn out perfectly.

In one photograph, for instance, we see that Martha’s jelly molds did not come out entirely intact, though they still look artful and delicious. In another we see that a wedding cake looks a little lop-sided as it rests precariously on the corner of a table. This is what makes the book so charming. The food conveys Martha’s love of presentation and her desire to make a moment memorable, precisely because of the starkness of the photographs and the confidence in portraying it as it appeared the moment it was removed from the kitchen.

‘70s Pastiche

The book seems a bit dated only because of its photography. The decorative elements of late 1970s decor have bled into the backgrounds of many of the photographs, whether it’s a brown plaid table cloth or a multi-colored woven placemat, the overabundance of wicker or the styles of clothing that Martha and her guests are wearing in some of the images. And yet, it is precisely this datedness that gives the book its appeal, both as a relevant reflection of Martha’s past and as a representation of the styles and customs of 80s culture when catering and large parties were extremely common.

The writing and ideas, however, are timeless. This is testament to Martha’s broad and visionary understanding of the book’s cultural importance and scope, not only for the 1980s but for decades to come. "Entertaining" remains the most comprehensive and inspirational book on its subject.

It was all a prelude to something bigger, and the photos are clearly illustrations of Martha’s drive, devotion and inspiration.

The ideas contained in "Entertaining" represent the genesis of Martha’s revolutionary and creative philosophy, which would one day become the popular standard.

The critics of the book were eventually silenced when "Entertaining" sold over 750,000 copies. They had clearly underestimated the demand for such a book and had overlooked its point entirely.

This was not a cookbook in the way Julia Child’s "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" is a cookbook, which Martha incidentally cites in her book as a primary influence on her cooking technique.

Instead, "Entertaining" is a book of party ideas and suggestions for elaborate menus, since, as Martha notes, few of us can go a lifetime without having to entertain, so we may as well do it in style.

More than this, though, the book is a presentation of a philosophy – a dream world that Americans had secretly been yearning for: a world of bounty, style and thoughtful entertaining that can be done easily and relatively inexpensively, provided you are organized and plan well ahead. The book is truly indispensable to anyone who needs to know the basics of entertaining a group of people as well as to those who seek to make the event a slightly more artistic affair.

It would not be long before Martha would understand these aspects of her audience’s requirements in totality. And she would also recognize her own capabilities as both a business woman and as an artist, bringing a new reverence to the culture of the American home.

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