The Return of “Salt”
The writer Mark Kurlansky, a seventy-seven-year-old man with a bad back, was futzing around in his apartment on the Upper West Side the other day when his daughter flashed her phone at him with some surprising news: “Salt: A World History,” Kurlansky’s nonfiction best-seller from 2002, was suddenly trending.
The book had sold half a million copies when it came out, but sales had since flattened. Two years ago, Wyatt Derman, a twenty-eight-year-old American living abroad, picked up a copy in a London Waterstones, and, as he recently said on TikTok, became “a man who can’t pass a salt shaker without feeling the weight of human civilization.”
Kurlansky, who has a scruffy Santa-white beard and matching curls, had never seen TikTok, or Instagram. But Derman is all over both, lately having professed his love for “Salt” to his five hundred thousand followers in various posts, including a ninety-second reel. Of all the words derived from salt, he seems most drawn to “salary.” “Did you know Romans were paid in salt?” he asks in the reel. “Party fact. I dropped it once, and people went, Whoa.”
People also went to Amazon. “Salt” was suddenly a Times best-seller again.
Derman was in town from Paris, and he tracked down his new favorite author for brunch, to celebrate IRL. Kurlansky arrived first, wearing saggy Levi’s held up by fish suspenders (“sharks, snappers, a grouper or two”). Waiting for Derman to arrive, Kurlansky talked about “Salt” ’s social-media resurrection. “He really got the book,” he said. “But he failed to say my name! Or the title. People wrote in and said, ‘It’s Mark Kurlansky, you jerk!’ ”
Since Derman’s posts, paperback sales of the book have increased by more than four hundred per cent. In a stroke of luck, Bloomsbury was already planning a twenty-fifth-anniversary hardcover edition.
“This whole thing has been an education, ” Kurlansky said. “Maybe publishers are doing something wrong.”
Derman arrived, beaded in sweat, having just docked a Citi Bike. He extended a hand and apologized for being late.
As a gift, Kurlansky had brought a copy of his 1999 book, “The Basque History of the World.” “I want you to get into the Basques,” he said. “I’ve never gotten a Pulitzer, but how many people can say they’re in the Basque Hall of Fame? I’m not even Basque!”
“I’m still learning French,” Derman said.
Kurlansky had moved to Paris during his twenties, too. They swapped street names and extolled the Sixth Arrondissement. “Oh, you’ll love this,” Derman said. “I lived in Gertrude Stein’s building!”
Latkes and bagels ordered, Derman started asking questions about writing.
“It’s just all I do,” Kurlansky said. “From 6 a.m. until the Red Sox come on.” He asked Derman, “So, have you always done this Instagram thing?”
“For about a year and a half,” Derman replied. “I resisted it hard for a while.” After high school, in Minnesota, he went to Los Angeles to try acting. He appeared in a social-media campaign for Dove Men’s hair-and-body wash. “I was a guy who wants to smell good and feel good for a date,” he said. “It wasn’t great.” Then he spent a summer in Oxford, studying Shakespeare.
Kurlansky, a theatre major, approved. “I might’ve not gone to college,” he said. “Except there were these people in the government trying to get me to go to Vietnam.”
Derman forked a latke—his first. Kurlansky said, “He’s never had a latke! That solves that. My wife’s first question was ‘Is he Jewish?’ ” Then he added, “Wyatt, though.” He asked his new young friend, “Who are all these people buying my book?”
“They’re curious. They want depth,” Derman said. “They’re not just bookworms. They’re interested in storytelling, in something unexpected.” He added that his reel about “Salt” had around eight million views.
“That’s the population of some countries!” Kurlansky said. “My daughter just set me up on Instagram.” (His handle is @codlansky, a nod to his 1997 hit, “Cod.”) “Every morning, I say, ‘Hey, chief, how many members now?’ ”
Derman said that he’d followed his posts on “Salt” with one about pepper. (It didn’t quite perform.)
Kurlansky scrunched his nose. “Pepper’s just not a good story,” he said.
Talk turned to potential collaborations. A live Q. & A.? Maybe Derman would like to record the audio version of Kurlansky’s forthcoming book, “Lobster”? (He would.)
“Wasn’t lobster prison food at one time?” Derman asked.
“Fertilizer,” Kurlansky corrected.
A server asked whether they would like cheesecake (the title of Kurlansky’s fortieth book, from 2025, a novel). They declined, and Kurlansky grabbed his cane. “This old writer has just been kicking around for years,” he said. “You don’t expect anything new to happen, you know?”
Derman smiled. “You’re doing very well for yourself, Mark,” he said. “I hope I have your hair when I’m your age.” ♦