My Korean Deli: Risking It All for a Convenience Store

A rough start - I don't know why approaching it as a novel instead of a memoir threw me off. The thought of a Boston bred, liberal arts WASP working at the Paris Review with George Plimpton while taking ownership of a faltering Brooklyn deli with Korean immigrant in-laws felt too contrived, heavy handed almost.

Thankfully he handles the two worlds with a light hand and I began settling into the narrative. “Truth” is stranger than fiction and the memoir moniker extended author Ben Howe bit of slack. I enjoyed his brand of navel gazing and digression that avoided veering too far into wry, hand-wringing New Yorker.

My Korean Deli by Ben Ryder Howe




There are books I read that make me wish I were as good at reviewing books as I am at reading them. This book is one of these.




Howe is the WASP-iest of WASPs, with Pilgrim ancestors who came over on the first boats, and an A+ education. He's an editor at the Paris Review which, to the five of us who continue to salute the written word, is up there with the Supreme Ruler of the Western World. He's married to a woman who is a new immigrant, with that killer drive which leaves the rest of us watching her zip by as we watch by the edge of the highway, dazzled and dazed.




The story is really the story of America today told with both humor and sadness, an America sitting proudly on its crumbling throne, an America where new immigrants vigorously race around to throw together businesses that fail nevertheless, where intelligence doesn't work, where energy doesn't work, where nothing works, where everyone is left sad and bewildered. All in a humorous way.

I would have read this at the beach, except I'm not at the beach. I'm stuck staring down the deadline for a huge grad school obligation. Blah. But this was a fun bit of distracting fluff. Ryder Howe could have been obnoxiously pretentious (I think my roommate thought he was), but I found him droll. Just the right book at the right time, you know? And an interesting sliver of the deli scene in NYC, interracial marriages, and the inner workings of a hoity-toity literary magazine. Quite the cultural smorgasbord.

Easily a 3.5 star book. I read it in a weekend – a rare occurrence in my world – and enjoyed every minute of it. I really appreciated/enjoyed his non-whiney, deer-in-headlights take on opening and running a deli with his wife and Korean in-laws.

“Wouldn't it be a hoot to open a Deli so I'll have a premise for a novel, which I'm going to call a memoir even though I've invented situations, characters and conversations.”