Paris Review Steps Into New Narrative Icon Steve Abbott's Kitchen

For the Eat Your Words column at Paris Review, Valerie Stivers spends time with Beautiful Aliens: A Steve Abbott Reader (Nightboat, 2019), in which Abbott's daughter, Alysia Abbott, introduces readers to one of her father's domestic staples: tuna casserole. "To honor Abbott, his parenting, and even the errant Jim, wherever he may be, I made two tuna noodle casseroles: one traditional version—I’ll admit I was a little scared of this—and one elevated version with tuna in oil, homemade white sauce, Parmesan cheese, baby kale, and, of course, mushrooms, though not ones harvested from my car," writes Stivers. More: 

Both of my dishes had some things to recommend them—the seventies canned-soup casserole sure is fast, cheap, and easy!—and I was surprised by how easily the white sauce came together (it’s the first time I’ve made one) as well as how edible, if not highly recommended, the second casserole was. But my children wouldn’t try them, and neither had much flavor for the wine to hang on to. With tuna casseroles, like with parenting, it turns out to be about getting through the day as best you can, despite the mess in your car or that you’d prefer to be talking to angels. It’s only in hindsight that all those fast dinners and harassed days turn into something. What Abbott probably didn’t realize at the time he was being an “alien” in the Haight—a swinging, young, gay, single parent—and lamenting his double duties as parent and poet was just how much his unorthodox family acted as its own front in the battle for gay liberation, and how his legacy would outlive him, beautifully.

Dig in at Paris Review.