ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 22, 1996 TAG: 9612230088
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: Associated Press
In his coarse, hooded robe, Brother Victor-Antoine d'Avila-Latourrette only seems as if he's poised to take up quill and bend low over a gilded manuscript.
He is, in reality, planning another book tour, complete with back-to-back TV interviews, signings and cooking demonstrations.
The Roman Catholic monk from upstate New York wrote a cookbook on soups - and became hot himself.
``God works in strange ways,'' Brother Victor says while taking a break at Our Lady of the Resurrection Monastery near Millbrook, N.Y., where he worked six years on ``Twelve Months of Monastery Soups.''
As the book goes into a second printing and his editor prepares to re-release an earlier cookbook, monks like Brother Victor are finding the fruits of their labors are gaining unexpected cachet.
Monks have been brewing, baking and chanting for centuries, selling their products to support a life based on prayer and solitude. But the things monks make are today increasingly marketable, with part of the attraction based on the very distance they maintain from secular society.
A book on monks in Ireland is on The New York Times best-seller list. The Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos in Spain have recorded their third CD and claim to have sold 8 million copies of the first two. Individuals like Brother Victor retain agents, appear on network news shows and demonstrate techniques at chic cooking emporiums like Williams-Sonoma.
``They are hot,'' says Barbara Kuck, director of the Culinary Archives & Museum at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I.
Williams-Sonoma put Brigittine Monks Fudge in its catalog, right next to the French chocolate truffles priced at $39 for a half-pound box. Company spokeswoman Amy Burke says monk appeal may be one reason why people buy Assumption Abbey Fruitcake, made in the foothills of the Missouri Ozarks.
Kuck thinks people simply buy things that taste good.
``I think they are very high quality,'' she says of the food items she's sampled. ``Is it part of the hype, or do I unconsciously want to support their lifestyle so it tastes wonderful? I don't know.''
Kuck sees the low-profile phenomenon as part of a historical cycle in which people every hundred years or so focus on simplicity as they review the past and confront the future.
``The closer you get to the end of the millennium, the more you get nostalgic for a quiet, more peaceful, less stressful life,'' she says.
With numbers dwindling among religious orders, the monks and sisters who sell fudge, fruitcakes and jam to help support themselves are avidly advertising in gourmet magazines, taking telephone credit card orders and setting up Web pages on the Internet.
The monastic orders do manage to contain capitalistic impulses, however, by limiting production, taking prayer breaks and keeping short hours - even at Christmas, the busiest time of year.
Take Sister Barbara Smickel of Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Crozet, Va. A single paragraph about the sisters' cheese in a magazine helped fuel such demand that new customers will have to wait until the third week of February when the next batch is made.
``We made as much as we could, and when it's gone, it's gone,'' she says.
Brother Victor readily admits he prefers solitude and prayer to television lights and book signings, even though he wants to sell books.
But he says his purpose is bigger than earning enough cash for monastery upkeep. Like monks of the past who established soup kitchens to feed the hungry, Brother Victor seeks to nourish souls with good food, simply prepared.
``I think cookbooks - to me - are a way of opening up the monastery to the world and sharing something from the inside,'' he says. ``The Lord provides.''
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP Brother. Victor-Antoine d'Avila-Latourrette, a Romanby CNBCatholic monk, will go on tour to promote his soup cookbook.