ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

TO WRITE A BIOGRAPHY is to plead with ghosts to move in so you can study them; it’s only later that you discover what stubborn houseguests the dead can be. So first I want to thank my husband, Perry Lucina, for his patience with the greedy shadows who demanded most of my time and nearly all my focus. My love to Perry, also, for serving as chief researcher and supporter of this book, acting as road manager during our summer of sifting through archives in New York City, and for embarking on this journey—same as all the others we’ve taken—with an appetite for wonder and a taste for change.

How do I begin to describe my gratitude to my onetime Lucky Peach editors Chris Ying and Peter Meehan? I can’t repay the debt I owe them for prodding along “America, Your Food Is So Gay,” my 2013 essay that contained the kernel of this biography, just as I can’t stop mourning the food magazine that nurtured writers and artists like no other.

Thanks likewise to Lukas Volger and Steve Viksjo, founders of the queer food magazine Jarry, for tracing the outlines of a world that James drew first in invisible ink. They invited me into the very first issue, and we found a community.

To my agents, Steve Troha and Dado Derviskadic of Folio Literary Management, for all the times they had a surer sense of my voice than self-doubt allowed me to hear. To my editor, Melanie Tortoroli, who trusted where the manuscript took me. Also to Maria Guarnaschelli and John Glusman, likewise in the Norton family, who thought I might have something to say; and to Will Scarlett, associate director of publicity at Norton, whose excitement for this book has never cooled.

Thanks to those who knew James and who dredged up anecdotes and memories: Peter Aaron, Gerald Asher, Ariane Batterberry, Hilary Baum, Ronald Bricke, Robert Carmack, Billy Cross, Jim Dodge, Morris Galen, Mary Goodbody, Dan Greenburg, Madhur Jaffrey, Matt Kramer, Jerry Lamb, Chris Lenwell, Alec Lobrano, Nick Malgieri, Cornelius O’Donnell, Judith Olney, Madeline Poley, Ruth Reichl, Claudia Roden, Irene Sax, Raymond Sokolov, Caroline Stuart, Jeremiah Tower, Patricia Unterman, Alice Waters, Golda Weiss, Michael Whiteman, Clark Wolf, and Louis Worden. I’m grateful to Carl Jerome for his kindness and generosity, and especially his openness. The same to John P. Carroll, who invited me to sit at his table in San Francisco for long talks and Jue Let’s tea cake.

And to those, sadly, who shared what they knew of James but passed away before this book could take form: John Bennett, in his memorabilia-crammed home in Oklahoma City; Charles “Joe” Goodner; James Villas; and especially Tom Margittai, who took me to lunch at Zuni Café in San Francisco and charged me with making my biography a good one—a challenge, as I understood it, to capture James in all his complexity.

To those who cast light on James and his world by remembering friends, parents, or other relatives who knew him: Renée Davis, Nicole Duplaix, Jonathan Ned Katz, Jim Mellgren, Elizabeth Randal, Mike Rhode, Lumi Sava, Tim Schaffner, Jill Stanford, and Alastair Watt.

To the historians and scholars who were generous with their time and their knowledge: Víctor M. Macías-González of the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse; Jacqueline Peterson-Loomis of the Portland Chinatown Museum; Charles Kaiser, gay historian of New York City; Thomas A. Guglielmo of George Washington University; Giovanni Dall’Orto and Gerard Koskovich, specialists in European LGBTQ history; Joanna Black of the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco; and Rachel Hope Cleves. A huge thanks to Sara B. Franklin, author of a forthcoming Judith Jones biography, for generously sharing selected transcripts.

I’m grateful to David Kamp, author of The United States of Arugula, and Robert Clark, who wrote the last Beard biography, for moral support and other gracious gestures; likewise to Mitchell Davis and Diane Harris Brown of the James Beard Foundation. I could not have researched this book without the help of Marvin J. Taylor and Nicholas Martin of NYU’s Fales Library and Special Collections, and their 2017 summer crew of pages, who delivered box after box of archival materials with cheerful efficiency. At Reed College, my thanks to Gay Walker (now retired), Dena Hutto, and Kevin Myers. To Tom McCutchon of Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and to Kansas State University’s David Allen, Jane E. Schillie, and Andrew Le.

Scott Daniels of the Oregon Historical Society was helpful and accommodating. So was Jeff Roberts, principal at Seaside High School in Oregon, who gave me a tour of the home-economics classroom where James taught in the 1970s.

This book would have been impossible to write without the support of Kathleen Squires and Beth Federici, makers of the 2017 documentary America’s First Foodie: The Incredible Life of James Beard. Thanks also to Bonnie Slotnick of Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks in Manhattan’s East Village, who lent me vintage materials, and Matt Sartwell of Kitchen Arts & Letters on the Upper East Side, who helped me connect with a source.

Love to my group-chat friends Nik Sharma and Mayukh Sen—the Cecily Brownstone and Ann Seranne to my James, though on screens, rather than early morning telephone calls—for the daily round of industry gossip, career advice, media critiques, and Tears of Joy emoji. And to friend and fellow writer Sarah Henry, forced to endure the saga of this book’s coalescence in real time.

Finally, I could not write at all without the mentorship of my mother, Barbara, who taught me how to love books and who still feeds our shared hunger for words, characters, and stories. Nor without the love and support of my late father, Walter, who was proud of me when I feared nobody could be, a lesson in showing compassion, even to those who happen to be less than perfect—ghosts included.