Koster: Would’st thou enjoy a pie?

“Ishmael looked at the menu, then over at Queequeg. ‘You have a LOT of facial tattoos. Is that Woody Woodpecker on your forehead?’

“The Polynesian fellow smiled shyly. ‘Why, yes,’ he said. Then, ‘Hey, I’m not much for chowder. Wanna go to Appleby’s down the street? It’s Rib Tips Night.’

‘Let’s do it!’ exclaimed Ishmael. It was the start of a beautiful friendship that only ended when a giant whale destroyed their boat and Ishmael was able to survive by floating on a coffin that the prescient Queequeg had constructed. But all that stuff is hundreds of pages away.”

Phillip Roth’s “Goodbye Columbus” has a scene in which opening a refrigerator door reveals shelves stuffed with various types of ripe, colorful fruit. Roth then describes each type of fruit in such detail that, by the time he’s finished, the novella is 12,000 words longer than it would have been — and the fruit in the refrigerator is rotten.

Maybe Phil could have just said: “The refrigerator was a disappointment. I’d been hoping for fruit — LOTS of fruit. But the only items were a bottle of Sprite, a carton of eggs and, somewhat inexplicably, the severed head of a razorback hog.”

I’m hard pressed to think of anyway I can improve on Fannie Flagg’s delightful “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café.” But! What if they were out of green tomatoes that day and, instead, it became “A Piece of Dry Wheat Toast at the Whistle Stop Café and There’s Only One Slice of Peach Cobbler Left, Too, Just So You Know“?

In 1999, Julie Taymor directed a film of Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus” starring Jessica Lange and Anthony Hopkins. The movie awakened an awareness of the play, which had been relegated to the bottom of the Bard’s heap. This was in no small part because of a scene in which Titus serves Tamora some pies, which she eats unaware that her murdered children have been baked inside!

Mine is a kinder version: Titus (eyes glittering wickedly): Would’st thou enjoy a pie?

Tamora (sniffing air suspiciously): I think I’ll pass. Do you have any fried green tomatoes? Or perhaps a madeleine?