In her creative nonfiction piece “Toward a Unified Theory of the Doughnut,” Elizabeth McCracken uses doughnuts to frame her narrative about growing up and watching the world change. She talks about her experiences with doughnuts chronologically, moving from her early school years to now, and reflects on how both doughnuts and society in general have changed.
McCracken “debates” aspects of the doughnut—how the word should be spelled, what the best kind of doughnut is, what flavors should and shouldn’t exist—both to be humorous and to parallel the way in which people become attached to their way of doing things. For example, McCracken brings up the subject of doughnut holes. She finds them distasteful, and says that they remind her of “surgical waste” or “amputated toes.” Of course, this is absurd: a doughnut hole is just a bit of fried dough. Why would anyone have such strong feelings about something like that? However, a main theme of McCracken’s piece is how doughnuts, to her, are like an anchor into the world she grew up in.
“The doughnuts of my high school and college days weren’t from the Cottage Doughnuts of my childhood, which was gone by then. The entire neighborhood of my childhood—the Paramount Movie Theater, the Woolworth’s, the Boston Fish House, Mac’s Smoke Shop, any number of other oddball shops I’ve forgotten—was erased, the block of buildings sold and then set on fire and then torn down, in that order, in the early 1980s… Perhaps I cling to doughnuts because doughnuts still exist in the world, though Woolworth’s and Howard Johnson’ses don’t.”
McCracken’s voice is unique and clear throughout the piece. One of my favorite lines was:
“I grieve to report that in 2018, the least sexy year since official record keeping began, a Springfield, Missouri doughnut joint introduced a pickle-flavored doughnut.”
The piece is filled with dry humor and wit, and this line stood out to me simply because it caught me by surprise and made me laugh out loud. Another element of craft that made this piece such a pleasure to read were the exquisite details that McCracken included. The descriptions of the doughnuts were delicious, especially when she spoke of her favorite doughnuts from a shop called Lori Ann’s:
“I remember them as better than any other doughnut anywhere, light, ungreasy, all air, with just a hint of a crust. I never went to Lori-Ann’s myself. Those doughnuts were special. They had to be brought to you.”
That description alone made me wish it was Thursday!
In the second to last section, McCracken reveals that she doesn’t eat doughnuts anymore, and hasn’t for quite some time. Her vivid descriptions of doughnuts—their flavor, their smell, how the glaze dissolves in your mouth when you take a bite—purposefully make the reader think that she’s as much a doughnut connoisseur now as she was in her youth. This revelation is like the twist at the end of a fictional short story, aided by the placement of this information. They’re meant to shock the reader, and make them question what, exactly, doughnuts mean to the author and what they represent in the piece. Why did she choose to write about doughnuts so lovingly if she no longer eats them? Why did she stop eating them in the first place?
In the end, McCracken reminds us that doughnuts are only a small part of her life narrative, something that we might forget while reading this piece, stuffed as it is with doughnut descriptions. She ends on a note that contradicts her earlier doughnut-policing tone, comparing doughnuts to art and saying that they “belong to anyone.” She and the world are changing, but as long as people are still eating something that resembles doughnuts, things will be all right.
As usual, Emma, this is a wonderful post.