You can too judge a book by its cover.
Horsemen of the Esophagus: Competitive Eating and the Big Fat American Dream is pretty much all there in the title. It’s an inside look at eating competitions. Not so much the ones with cherubs stuffing their cheeks on country-fair blueberry pies; more on the modern version where behemoths pack in megacalories at an queasy rate only to find a skinny Japanese kid eating them all under the table. Like the title, the book is snappy, sometimes funny, and ultimately unable to match the overhyped grandiosity of its subject.
In turning the subject of a great magazine article into a full-length book, Jason Fagone runs out of gas shortly after a bang-up opener. He heads to Japan to discover the secret of the hot-dog-demolishing Kobayashi, but comes up empty (not too surprising — Japan has been confounding visiting writers for generations). He chooses to narrow his lens instead on two American competitors, but the closer we get, the less interesting they become. There are clearly some fascinating characters here, but we never do quite get into their heads or hearts. (I at least hoped to learn more about the slick promoter behind the modern contests who came up with the title depiction.)
Fagone has a running battle throughout his book with the absurdity of it all — and understandably so. Taking on any book project can be a lonely task. When it’s about something like big eaters, self-doubt is inevitable. But Fagone’s solution, to concoct out of brief glimmers of insight some half-baked and purple-tinted big ideas, doesn’t exactly convince.
Then again, how much meaning do you need in a book about eaters? It’s a fun story. Dig in.
