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Lunch With
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312 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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About the author
Jan Wong
16Ìýbooks68ÌýfollowersJan Wong was the much-acclaimed Beijing correspondent for The Globe and Mail from 1988 to 1994. She is a graduate of McGill University, Beijing University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She is the recipient of a (US) George Polk Award, the New England Women’s Press Association Newswoman of the Year Award, the (Canadian) National Newspaper Award and a Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Silver Medal, among other honours for her reporting. Wong has also written for The New York Times, The Gazette in Montreal, The Boston Globe and The Wall Street Journal.
Her first book, Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now, was named one of Time magazine’s top ten books of 1996 and remains banned in China. It has been translated into Swedish, Finnish, Dutch and Japanese, and optioned for a feature film.
Jan Wong is a third-generation Canadian, born and raised in Montreal. She first went to China in 1972 at the height of the Cultural Revolution as one of only two Westerners permitted to enrol at Beijing University. There, she renounced rock music, wielded a pneumatic drill at a factory and hauled pig manure in the paddy fields. She also met and married the only American draft dodger from the Vietnam War in China. During those six years in China, she learned fluent Mandarin and earned a degree in Chinese history.
From 1988 to 1994, Jan Wong returned as China correspondent for The Globe and Mail. In reporting on the tumultuous new era of capitalist reforms under Deng Xiaoping, she reacquainted herself with old friends and enemies from her radical past. In 1989, she dodged bullets in Tiananmen Square, fought off a kidnapping attempt and caught the Chinese police red-handed driving her stolen Toyota as a squad car. (They gave it back.)
She returned to China in 1999 to make a documentary and to research her second book, Jan Wong’s China: Reports from a Not-So-Foreign Correspondent. It tells the story of China’s headlong rush to capitalism and offers fresh insight into a country that is forever changing.
Jan Wong lives with her husband and two sons in Toronto where she is a reporter at The Globe and Mail. The best of her weekly celebrity-interview columns, “Lunch With,� which ran for five years, have been published in a book of the same name.
[From Random House's ]
Her first book, Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now, was named one of Time magazine’s top ten books of 1996 and remains banned in China. It has been translated into Swedish, Finnish, Dutch and Japanese, and optioned for a feature film.
Jan Wong is a third-generation Canadian, born and raised in Montreal. She first went to China in 1972 at the height of the Cultural Revolution as one of only two Westerners permitted to enrol at Beijing University. There, she renounced rock music, wielded a pneumatic drill at a factory and hauled pig manure in the paddy fields. She also met and married the only American draft dodger from the Vietnam War in China. During those six years in China, she learned fluent Mandarin and earned a degree in Chinese history.
From 1988 to 1994, Jan Wong returned as China correspondent for The Globe and Mail. In reporting on the tumultuous new era of capitalist reforms under Deng Xiaoping, she reacquainted herself with old friends and enemies from her radical past. In 1989, she dodged bullets in Tiananmen Square, fought off a kidnapping attempt and caught the Chinese police red-handed driving her stolen Toyota as a squad car. (They gave it back.)
She returned to China in 1999 to make a documentary and to research her second book, Jan Wong’s China: Reports from a Not-So-Foreign Correspondent. It tells the story of China’s headlong rush to capitalism and offers fresh insight into a country that is forever changing.
Jan Wong lives with her husband and two sons in Toronto where she is a reporter at The Globe and Mail. The best of her weekly celebrity-interview columns, “Lunch With,� which ran for five years, have been published in a book of the same name.
[From Random House's ]
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 25, 2025
oh i love this book, she's one of the most callous bullies around.
Imagine a mentally ill version on Endora from Bewitched, trying to make people cry over dinner, and the Globe and Mail would make it like a transcript of a Meeting of Minds show with Steve Allen interviewing Leonardo.
/////
Alan Thicke, Canadian-born talk show host, buttered his roll and sprinkled salt over it. He poured salt on his salad, too, and on his risotto. Jan Wong made notes, described his actions in her Globe and Mail column, and brought down on his head the terrible swift sword of her contempt. Thicke, she wrote, "eats like he never left Kirkland Lake."
When I read that remark over breakfast on April 16, 1998, I laughed aloud. It was a nervous laugh, mingling horror and delight. That was a horrible thing to say about Thicke and his home town. It was mean. Yet it was also honest, Wong's crude natural response. Wong displays her prejudices in the open, and she has prejudices that most of us can barely imagine. Salting your roll is eccentric, and probably leads to high blood pressure, but does it call for a gross insult in a national daily paper?
Only Wong would answer, "Yes." Wong is unique among journalists in her shamelessness. In a period that universally condemns snobbery, she has the courage (call it perverse courage if you like) to present herself as a blatant snob, superior to all those around her and thus entitled to make harsh appraisals of everything from their table manners to their conversation.
A Jan Wong interview has all the charm of a train wreck, complete with the moaning of the survivors. With Wong, every day is Judgment Day, and she's a hanging judge.
The Alan Thicke interview appears in Lunch with Jan Wong. This collection of columns, decorated with a few afterthoughts and an occasional fresh fact, brings together some mildly interesting observations about mainly uninteresting people. But it is rarely boring. It tells us only a little about each subject, but it amounts to an extensive portrait of Wong.
She's an unusual character, a mixture of spunk, rancour and pride, with an imperious way of pulling rank on both her readers and her subjects. Jan Wong has been to hell and back, and she wants us to know it: "My years in China toughened me for the celebrity beat. After witnessing the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, I'm only mildly unnerved by a celebrity hissy fit."
Does she understand that many readers will see that as braggadocio? Certainly she scores low marks on self-awareness. Otherwise, she couldn't write, "Mostly, a meal has a civilizing effect on people."
She's explaining why her victims never stomp out of the restaurant, even if she asks about their breast augmentation, but she apparently doesn't realize that many readers will wonder why a meal doesn't have a civilizing effect on Jan Wong.
Her amused nastiness enrages some readers and excites others, but it's not just an attention-getting device. It seems to flow naturally from her, as much a part of her personality as her mischievous smile, her easy charm, and her admirable devotion to the craft of writing.
She loves the damaging detail. Helen Gurley Brown hogged the breadbasket, taking all the focaccia and cornbread, then ate her salad with her fingers. Jukka-Pekka Saraste grabbed a bowl of spinach, meant to be shared by three people, and gobbled it up himself. Anthony Quinn shook "a frightful dose of salt" into his soup, before he tasted it. Eartha Kitt took home a bottle of olive oil from the restaurant table. George Cohon squeezed five packets of ketchup onto a single hot dog. The horror, the horror. Did Tiananmen Square really prepare her for these atrocities?
Wong may speak disdainfully of celebrity culture, but it's essentially as celebrities that she approaches her subjects, whether they happen to be actors, writers or executives. Often she starts out with no more than a hazy idea of who they are.
She confesses that she agreed to interview Michael Ignatieff only because she confused him with Michael Ondaatje (she was surprised when The English Patient didn't show up in the research). Preparation makes her superficially knowledgeable about her human subjects, but her understanding seems rarely to go beyond a computer search and maybe the reading of a book or two.
A TV playwright, after reading her account of an interview with him, says: "I feel as if I've been shat on from a great height by a bilious bird of prey."
Imagine a mentally ill version on Endora from Bewitched, trying to make people cry over dinner, and the Globe and Mail would make it like a transcript of a Meeting of Minds show with Steve Allen interviewing Leonardo.
/////
Alan Thicke, Canadian-born talk show host, buttered his roll and sprinkled salt over it. He poured salt on his salad, too, and on his risotto. Jan Wong made notes, described his actions in her Globe and Mail column, and brought down on his head the terrible swift sword of her contempt. Thicke, she wrote, "eats like he never left Kirkland Lake."
When I read that remark over breakfast on April 16, 1998, I laughed aloud. It was a nervous laugh, mingling horror and delight. That was a horrible thing to say about Thicke and his home town. It was mean. Yet it was also honest, Wong's crude natural response. Wong displays her prejudices in the open, and she has prejudices that most of us can barely imagine. Salting your roll is eccentric, and probably leads to high blood pressure, but does it call for a gross insult in a national daily paper?
Only Wong would answer, "Yes." Wong is unique among journalists in her shamelessness. In a period that universally condemns snobbery, she has the courage (call it perverse courage if you like) to present herself as a blatant snob, superior to all those around her and thus entitled to make harsh appraisals of everything from their table manners to their conversation.
A Jan Wong interview has all the charm of a train wreck, complete with the moaning of the survivors. With Wong, every day is Judgment Day, and she's a hanging judge.
The Alan Thicke interview appears in Lunch with Jan Wong. This collection of columns, decorated with a few afterthoughts and an occasional fresh fact, brings together some mildly interesting observations about mainly uninteresting people. But it is rarely boring. It tells us only a little about each subject, but it amounts to an extensive portrait of Wong.
She's an unusual character, a mixture of spunk, rancour and pride, with an imperious way of pulling rank on both her readers and her subjects. Jan Wong has been to hell and back, and she wants us to know it: "My years in China toughened me for the celebrity beat. After witnessing the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, I'm only mildly unnerved by a celebrity hissy fit."
Does she understand that many readers will see that as braggadocio? Certainly she scores low marks on self-awareness. Otherwise, she couldn't write, "Mostly, a meal has a civilizing effect on people."
She's explaining why her victims never stomp out of the restaurant, even if she asks about their breast augmentation, but she apparently doesn't realize that many readers will wonder why a meal doesn't have a civilizing effect on Jan Wong.
Her amused nastiness enrages some readers and excites others, but it's not just an attention-getting device. It seems to flow naturally from her, as much a part of her personality as her mischievous smile, her easy charm, and her admirable devotion to the craft of writing.
She loves the damaging detail. Helen Gurley Brown hogged the breadbasket, taking all the focaccia and cornbread, then ate her salad with her fingers. Jukka-Pekka Saraste grabbed a bowl of spinach, meant to be shared by three people, and gobbled it up himself. Anthony Quinn shook "a frightful dose of salt" into his soup, before he tasted it. Eartha Kitt took home a bottle of olive oil from the restaurant table. George Cohon squeezed five packets of ketchup onto a single hot dog. The horror, the horror. Did Tiananmen Square really prepare her for these atrocities?
Wong may speak disdainfully of celebrity culture, but it's essentially as celebrities that she approaches her subjects, whether they happen to be actors, writers or executives. Often she starts out with no more than a hazy idea of who they are.
She confesses that she agreed to interview Michael Ignatieff only because she confused him with Michael Ondaatje (she was surprised when The English Patient didn't show up in the research). Preparation makes her superficially knowledgeable about her human subjects, but her understanding seems rarely to go beyond a computer search and maybe the reading of a book or two.
A TV playwright, after reading her account of an interview with him, says: "I feel as if I've been shat on from a great height by a bilious bird of prey."
August 6, 2018
We enjoyed reading her newspaper column.
September 21, 2020
I know Jan Wong can be controversial - you either hate her or you like her, and I like her - but frankly, I didn't find much in here to be that shocking. It was instead mildly interesting. I suspect it would have been more fascinating had I recognized more of the interviewees (alas, the book being both Canada-focused and older than I am doesn't help my already celebrity-impaired mind).
Still, there are some real highlights in here: Yo-Yo Ma, Alek Trebek, Margaret Atwood, Atom Egoyan, etc. One of those four demanded a quieter table despite being the only guest (other than Ms. Wong) in the restaurant, another was twenty minutes late, and another thinks James Cameron is a "terrible man". I'm not saying which is which, though - you'll have to read the book to find out.
Still, there are some real highlights in here: Yo-Yo Ma, Alek Trebek, Margaret Atwood, Atom Egoyan, etc. One of those four demanded a quieter table despite being the only guest (other than Ms. Wong) in the restaurant, another was twenty minutes late, and another thinks James Cameron is a "terrible man". I'm not saying which is which, though - you'll have to read the book to find out.
December 8, 2023
Obviously this book is quite dated, but I enjoyed reading about these famous people’s lives at the certain point of time. I’m a fan of the author’s China books and I enjoy her style here as well. This was perfectly satisfying bus commute reading as the entries are short so I was never interrupted when my stop arrived.
April 14, 2020
I read this a long time ago, but I enjoyed this compilation of Wong's lunch interviews. I know not everyone is a Jan Wong fan, but I've always enjoyed her work.
April 1, 2024
great read
Just enough to wet the appetite
Lots of interesting insights even though over 20 years ago
Would have enjoyed more
Just enough to wet the appetite
Lots of interesting insights even though over 20 years ago
Would have enjoyed more
October 18, 2015
In the sixties, Jan Wong worked as columnist at the Globe and Mail where she had a column titled “Lunch with Jan Wong�. Wong was a feared interviewer at the time, known to be snobbish, ready to pick up on any failure or habit of her guest, and ready to deliver her judgements from the exalted notion she was better than anyone at doing the job of interviewer.
This is a compilation of her favourite interviews from that time period. Wong describes the story behind each column, what she had to do to get the interview, who came begging for a lunch date and why celebrities continued to accept her invitations to lunch.
After reading the interviews, the reader soon realizes he knows more about Jan Wong the person, than the celebrities she has interviewed. What underlies the text of the columns is her perception that she is superior to almost everyone around her. Her intent is always the same--to find something to criticize and reveal to her audience rather than delving into the person she is interviewing. At times you wonder how aware she is of how she is perceived by others, but then she gives you the clear sense that she doesn’t care. It’s all part of the business and after a childhood growing up in China she says, she has a thick skin.
Some readers may be put off by her nasty approach (noting Robert Redford’s pock marked skin), others may laugh at her criticism of her victim’s dietary choices (too much salt, too much ketchup), their manners (eating salad with their fingers) or their behavior in a restaurant (walking out with a bottle of olive oil). It appears what she wants is every detail that damages a celebrity’s mystique. She tenaciously pursues the stories her lunch guests do not want told and seems to have the bravado to ask the questions everyone wonders about, but no one will ask.
It is clear she does little research before each interview, just a glance at the internet and perhaps skimming a book or two, because that is not where she is intending to lead her guest. She approaches each of them in such a charming manner they are seduced into thinking she will treat them kindly. But they are mistaken. She wants to find out what makes them tick and hone in on their weaknesses, giving her readers all the damaging details she can observe or pick up from the conversation. Although some readers may be dismayed at her approach, Wong has gathered a group of loyal readers who love to see what she will reveal to them next and anxious to see the “failures� of their perceived celebrities. Wong offers no apologies, saying she is just being honest.
Wong speaks disdainfully about the whole aura of celebrity, yet it is clear she wants to be a part of it. She is a fascinating person and this book about a style of journalism may not appeal to everyone, but is certainly not a boring read.
This is a compilation of her favourite interviews from that time period. Wong describes the story behind each column, what she had to do to get the interview, who came begging for a lunch date and why celebrities continued to accept her invitations to lunch.
After reading the interviews, the reader soon realizes he knows more about Jan Wong the person, than the celebrities she has interviewed. What underlies the text of the columns is her perception that she is superior to almost everyone around her. Her intent is always the same--to find something to criticize and reveal to her audience rather than delving into the person she is interviewing. At times you wonder how aware she is of how she is perceived by others, but then she gives you the clear sense that she doesn’t care. It’s all part of the business and after a childhood growing up in China she says, she has a thick skin.
Some readers may be put off by her nasty approach (noting Robert Redford’s pock marked skin), others may laugh at her criticism of her victim’s dietary choices (too much salt, too much ketchup), their manners (eating salad with their fingers) or their behavior in a restaurant (walking out with a bottle of olive oil). It appears what she wants is every detail that damages a celebrity’s mystique. She tenaciously pursues the stories her lunch guests do not want told and seems to have the bravado to ask the questions everyone wonders about, but no one will ask.
It is clear she does little research before each interview, just a glance at the internet and perhaps skimming a book or two, because that is not where she is intending to lead her guest. She approaches each of them in such a charming manner they are seduced into thinking she will treat them kindly. But they are mistaken. She wants to find out what makes them tick and hone in on their weaknesses, giving her readers all the damaging details she can observe or pick up from the conversation. Although some readers may be dismayed at her approach, Wong has gathered a group of loyal readers who love to see what she will reveal to them next and anxious to see the “failures� of their perceived celebrities. Wong offers no apologies, saying she is just being honest.
Wong speaks disdainfully about the whole aura of celebrity, yet it is clear she wants to be a part of it. She is a fascinating person and this book about a style of journalism may not appeal to everyone, but is certainly not a boring read.
October 2, 2016
Jan Wong appears to have a sadistic streak. For a long time she capitalized on interviewing celebrities over lunch and finding ways to embarrass them. I purchased the book because I was interested in some of the people she interviewed, but I didn't learn a single thing I was interested in or wanted to know. The celebrities probably accepted her invitation knowing they would end up with egg on their face but believing that any publicity is good publicity. In my opinion, they didn't do themselves a favor. She shouldn't have been encouraged. I submit that should would have won a much larger readership if she had invested the same time and effort discovering interesting new tidbits that would add to our understanding of these people. She claimed that everything had already been said about them, but it's always possible to learn something new about a person's life.
October 2, 2013
Jan Wong is one of my favorite authors. She is caustic and would be one of the scarier people to do an interview with. This book is about her various interviews with different celebrities. My favorite is the one she does with Don Cherry because the tone of the interview is the opposite of his TV personality.
July 28, 2011
Semi-interesting interviews with many famous people by Jan Wong, who seems more petty and malicious than I had hoped. Instead, read Red China Blues, her novel about China. Dec 07
June 17, 2013
Very entertaining! Jan is not afraid to say what's on her mind, that's for sure!
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