Synopses & Reviews
"To be up on stage, shoving food in your face, beats everyday existence for most people." David "Coondog" O'Karma, competitive eater.
"Hungry" Charles Hardy. Ed "Cookie" Jarvis. Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas. Joey "Jaws" Chestnut. Will such names one day be looked back upon as the pioneers of a new manifestation of the irrepressible American appetite for competition, money, fame, and self-transformation? They will if the promoters of the newly emerging sport of competitive eating have their way. In Horsemen of the Esophagus, Jason Fagone reports on the year he spent in the belly of this awakening beast.
Fagone's trek takes him to 27 eating contests on two continents, from the World Grilled Cheese Eating Championship in Venice Beach, California, to Nagoya, Japan, where he pursues an interview with the legendary Takeru Kobayashi, perhaps the most prodigious eater in the world today, and to the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest at Coney Island, the sport's annual grand finale, where Kobayashi has eaten more than 50 dogs in 12 minutes. Along the way, Fagone discovers an absurd, sometimes troubling subculture on the make, ready to bust out of its county fair and neighborhood-fat-guys niche and grab a juicy piece of the big-time television sports/Vegas spectacle jackpot.
Fagone meets promoters like George Shea, the P. T. Barnum of the International Federation of Competitive Eating (aka IFOCE, "the governing body of all stomach-centric sport") and enters the lives of three "gurgitators": David "Coondog" O'Karma, a fiftyish, six-two house painter from Ohio who's "not ready to become invisible"; Bill "El Wingador" Simmons, the Philly Wing Bowl legend who is shooting for a fifth chicken-eating championship despite the fact that it may be killing him; and Tim "Eater X" Janus, a lean young Wall Street trader who takes a seriously scientific and athletic approach to the pursuit of ingesting mountains of food in record-breaking times. Each in his own way feels as if he has lost or not yet found something essential in life, and each is driven by the desperate hope that through consumption he may yet find redemption, that even in the junkiest of America's junk culture, true nourishment might be found. After all, as it says on the official IFOCE seal: In Voro Veritas (In Gorging, Truth).
With forays into the gastrointestinal mechanics of the alimentary canal ("it's what unbuilds the world to build you," but, hey, you can skip that part if you like), the techniques and tricks of the experienced gurgitators (pouring a little club soda on top of high-carb foods makes them easier to swallow), and the historical roots of the competitive eating phenomenon, Horsemen of the Esophagus gives the French something else to dislike about America. And it gives the rest of us food for thought about the bizarre and unlikely places the American Dream can sometimes lead.
Review
"Jason Fagone's Horsemen of the Esophagus is an inspired, hilarious and more than occasionally frightening look at the uniquely American phenomenon of competitive eating. As the grilled cheeses, the chili, and the oysters disappear down the hatch at a shocking rate, Fagone redefines the phrase fast food and finds in competitive eating a not-entirely-reassuring metaphor for American life. When it's over, you'll want to buy everyone in the book a bottle of Pepto Bismol, and you'll never look at a hot dog the same way again." Warren St. John, author of Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer
Review
"This is a rapacious, capacious and almost insane tale. I love Jason Fagone for recognizing that eating contests make for excellent drama, and I love him for having the tenacity to explore his topic as deeply as he does here, and with such glimmering prose. And as a former speed-eating champion myself (I won a pie-eating contest in high school, beating out a young man who later became a Navy SEAL), I devoured every word." Elizabeth Gilbert, author of The Last American Man (an NBCC finalist) and Eat, Pray, Love
Review
"With colorful prose to capture the unique drama, Fagone offers a probing look at a curious pastime. Grade: A-" Entertainment Weekly
Review
"A sly and vivid debunking, with liberal quotes from Kafka, E.L. Doctorow and Don DeLillo." Newsday
Review
"He nails competitive eating's vaguely depressing subtext the eaters take the pastime dead seriously even as the rest of the world sees nothing but sideshow and, most important, he doesn't patronize or condescend to his subjects. It would have been easy to turn the book into a snarkfest, but Fagone realizes that, eccentricities aside, all the eaters want is validation that their lives have meaning." Boldtype
Synopsis
A young journalist follows a year in the life of competitive eating, the quintessential sport of 21st century America, and explores the big American appetite--for food, for fame, for competition, for money, for love--through the prism of this luridly fascinating subculture.
About the Author
Jason Fagone is a writer-at-large for Philadelphia magazine. In 2002 he was named one of the "Ten Young Writers on the Rise" by the Columbia Journalism Review. He lives in Philadelphia.