Candyfreak

by Steve Almond

This book is great. It's the story of one man's obsession with candy (non-fiction, I believe). He's got a great writing style and it was a fun read, as it made me laugh out loud a whole lot (made the people on the bus a little nervous, though). I got this book from the library, but I think I'm going to have to go purchase a copy. It's that much fun. He talks about how the obsession with candy began, how national chains have taken over the business, and then goes on a quest to visit regional candy makers (and, of course, collect free samples). It's really the tone that makes the book work - a mix of true passion, dedication and self-deprication. He's trying to unleash the candyfreak in all of us.

"I doubt Saborin envisioned, back when he was getting his degree in mechanical engineering, that he would someday explain the technical intricacies of his job by biting into a malted milk egg. But he seemed perfectly happy asked me if I wanted to go downstairs and see the chocolate bunnies.

These were, in point of fact, marshmallow bunnies covered in chocolate. They rode the conveyor belt three astride, looking nonchalant in profile, as a curtain of milk chocolate washed down onto their white fleshy pelts and enveloped them and seeped off to reveal the dimensions of their bodies in a lustrous brown. Saborin was saying something or other, involving, I think, starch. I was watching the bunnies.

Simply: I could not stop watching the bunnies, the way the light struck the wet chocolate from above, the creamy falling away of the excess into a darkened pool below, the steel machinery flecked and streaked in brown. The workers overseeing the production line didn't seem to know what to do. I myself didn't know waht to do. I was obviously experiencing some kind of dramatic psychic event, one that bordered on the disassociative. I had fallen into what I would later come to recognize as a freaktrance, a state of involuntary rapture induced by watching candy production at close range. "

"I feel compelled to note the reaction of my friend Eve when I brought her a Goo Goo from Nashville: She launched into a story about how her father used to order Terry's chocolates from a sweets shop in his native Ireland. He kept these in his bedroom and dispersed them only reluctantly to his three children. Eve's mother later confirmed this account and added that she, herself, was kept on a strict candy ration. She even remembered finding a moldy box of Terry's on top of the armoire, where her husband had hidden them years earlier. Curiously, Eve is married to Evan, the Pop Rocks black marketeer who uses his spit to bore the center from Whoppers. They have two radioactively cute children, Milo and Theodora, both of whom were huge fans of the Goo Goo (or at least very much enjoyed rubing the melted chocolate on their cheeks) and both of whom will, I suspect, require years of therapy down the line."