A Memoir of Noodles, Neuroses

I’ll say this for “The Ramen King and I’’: I’ve never read anything remotely like it. Andy Raskin’s memoir manages to weave together such disparate strands as romantic betrayal, Japanese cuisine, the dot.com boom, and an exhaustive personal history of Momofuku Ando, inventor of the instant noodles popularly referred to as ramen noodles. In its finest moments, the book is peculiar and riveting.
Raskin, who has a degree in computer science from Yale and a master’s in Japan studies, would seem an unlikely memoirist. But he does possess a crucial ingredient: ample neuroses. “I should not want attention or validation. I should give things another shot. I should be more organized,’’ he writes, in his self-lacerating introduction. “I should be friendlier with the guys who run the body shop. I should keep things under wraps. I should not be suffering from what the inventor of instant ramen identified - just prior to inventing instant ramen - as the Fundamental Misunderstanding of Humanity.’’

But Raskin’s real problem, as he sees it, is one of intimacy. He keeps pushing women away, or throwing them over, and eventually winds up in a 12-step-type program where his sponsor instructs him to write letters to a figure he admires. Raskin chooses Ando. He spends the rest of the book trying to orchestrate a personal audience with the entrepreneur. We can all breathe a sigh of relief that Raskin - who also has an MBA from Wharton - didn’t choose Jack Welch. MORE