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Susskind Show, and in the course of the program, Beard held up the book and plugged it on the air. Afterward, Claiborne wrote a letter to Susskind, with carbon copy to Beard, saying that if he had known he was going to appear on the same show with the Time-Life cookbook, he never would have consented to go on.
    (That Julia Child has managed thus far to remain above the internecine struggles of the food world probably has more to do with the fact that she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, well away from it all, than with her charming personality.)
    The success of the Time-Life cookbook series is guaranteed, Claiborne’s review notwithstanding. Offered by mail order to subscribers who care not one whit whether the soufflé on the cover is actually a meringue, the series rapidly signed up five hundred thousand takers—for all eighteen books! (The
New York Times
Cookbook, itself a blockbuster, has sold only two hundred thousand copies.) “The books, whatever their limits, are of enormous quality,” says Field. “Every recipe works and is honestly conceived.” Yet a number of those intimately connected with the books have complained about the limits Field parenthetically refers to, and most particularlyabout the technique of group journalism that has produced the books: apparently, the text, recipes, and photographs of some of the cookbooks have been done independently of each other.
    “It’s a joke,” said Nika Hazelton, who is writing the text for the
Time-Life German Cookbook
. “First there is the writer—me, in this case, but I have nothing to do with the recipes or illustrations. Then there is the photographic staff, which takes recipes from old cookbooks, changes them a little, and photographs them. Then there is the kitchen, under Michael Field’s supervision. I think Michael knows about French and Italian food, but he doesn’t know quite as much about other cookery. The cook is John Clancy, a former cook in a short-order house who once worked for Jim Beard. I’m the only person connected with the project who knows languages besides French. There is a consultant who hasn’t been in Germany for thirty years. My researcher’s background is spending three years with the Morgan Bank. It’s hilarious. I’m doing it only for the money.”
    The money that is available to members of the Food Establishment is not quite as much as they would have you think, but it is definitely enough to keep every last one of them in truffles. James Beard—who commands the highest fees and, though a purist, has the most ties with industry—recently turned down a hundred-thousand-dollar offer to endorse Aunt Jemima mixes because he didn’t believe in their products. Retainers offered lesser stars are considerably smaller, but there are many jobs, and they suffice. Nevertheless, the impression persists that there are not enough jobs to go around. And because everyone in the food world is free-lancing and concerned with putting as many eggs intohis basket as possible, it happens that every time someone gets a job, the rest feel that they have lost one.
    Which brings us to the case of Myra Waldo. An attractive, chic woman who lives on upper Fifth Avenue, Miss Waldo published her first cookbook in 1954, and since then she has been responsible for forty-two others. Forty-two cookbooks! In addition, she does four radio spots a day for WCBS, is roving editor of
Family Circle
magazine, is retained by Pan American Airways, and recently landed the late Clementine Paddleford’s job as food editor of
This Week
magazine. Myra Waldo has never been a favorite in the Food Establishment: she is far too successful. Furthermore, although
she
once made forty-eight soufflés over a July Fourth weekend, she is not a truly serious cook. (To a visitor who wanted a recipe for a dinner party, she suggested duck in a sauce made of frozen orange juice, Melba sauce, red wine, cognac, lemon juice, and a can of Franco-American beef gravy.) For years it has