Tuesday, April 10, 2001
Jan Wong with Lunch - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- “Lunch with...” is Jan Wong’s popular column in the Toronto Globe and Mail. Wong has taken some of her past noteworthy tomes and culled them in a book aptly titled, Lunch with Jan Wong. As a reporter for the Globe, Wong has won awards for her reportage and praise for her two previous books, Red China Blues and Jan Wong’s China.
In the book, Wong pastes together her memorable columns that include her lunches with Margaret Atwood, Don Cherry, Dr. Henry Morgantaler, Gillian Guess, Valerie Pringle, Mordecai Richler, Evelyn Lau, Lise Bisonette and Robert Duvall among others. It’s a readable tome that pulls no punches and lets us into the world of eating with famous people on the all-important expense account.
Breaking bread with the high and mighty and lowly and infamous has fashioned her infamous in journalistic circles. Allan Fotheringham is among the loathers, as is Sondra Gotlieb. Both were dined and managed with spaces of their own to return the favour. I found certain columns interesting, such as the one where she took Nancy Lynn Hallam to dine at Centro, a swank Italian eatery where Wong says, “lunch for two, without wine, easily costs $100 and up.” Hallam, is no Bay Street big-wig or anything of the sort. She’s never even been on Open Mike. She happens to be a panhandler.
WWF star Sable was dined and she allowed Wong to feel her... er, breasts. Ah, the perks of being a much-sought after journalist.
Jan Wong is sought after. What was a mere lunch with the difficult Margaret Atwood, became a Globe fixture that has PR flacks itching to book a date with the talented Ms. Wong.
Evelyn Lau, the hooker/drug addict turned poet/novelist, had lunch with Wong and told of her escapades on the other side of the tracks. She talked about her trysts with W.P. Kinsella, which I’ll leave at that, should W.P. want to sue me, too. She was offered Tom Green, only if she’d lunch with Mike Bullard. Jesse Helms, Ross Regablitatti and Hillary Weston, among others have declined for years.
To be loved is one thing, to be loathed another. Being as naive as I, I’d settle for the love, but Wong as professional and just plain good as she is, she takes the good with the bad. She can ask pointed questions and make curt comments, like telling Valerie Pringle she’s no fun, because she’s only slept with one person her whole life, or reporting that For Better or Worse cartoonist Lynn Johnston was a caustic scene as she filled out the comment card as they ate at the Keg, issuing a damning critique of their server. Nothing seems to faze her. She very matter-of-factly, states that having witnessed the Tienamen Square massacre, a celebrity hissy-fit doesn’t vex her.
In an e-mail, I asked Jan Wong how many lunches she participates in a week. She says at times she does three or four and saves them for future weeks. Ah, to dine at Ken Thomson’s expense.
The most poignant of pieces are near the back, where Wong reprints pieces she wrote of get-togethers with her Auntie Ming and her many family members. Even with her family she is no more kind.
Her son Ben, too sick to partake in the lunch, asks for a piece of cake saved for him. Dutiful mum, Jan Wong even places a note atop saying “Save for Ben.” An uncle asks for paper plates, which baffles her, as she knows she set out more than enough China. Figures out her relatives have cleaned her out of leftovers, including the piece of cake marked “Save for Ben.” Ben cries. Next year, at another gathering, food aplenty Wong tries to unload the leftovers. They refuse, as they wouldn’t want the embarrassment of reading about their hoarding in the Globe and Mail.
Robert Duvall cost the paper $300 bucks on dim sum and tangoed him self out of the restaurant.
It’s a nice read. The pieces are short and a good collection is presented. Pick it up, it’s worth reading. Lunch with Jan Wong, $29.95, published by Doubleday.