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easier to open than hard-shell clams, but their shells tend to crumble. This is a problem if you want to fry them, which requires that you shuck them first. But if you’re careful, you can open them gently by trimming away the membrane that holds the top and bottom shells together and delicately cutting the muscle that holds the clam to its shell. Then remove and discard the black sheath covering the neck, and dip each clam in cool water to get rid of the sand. For frying, you should look for smaller clams, two inches or so from top to bottom. They are easier to eat. Save the larger ones for steaming. Dip the clams in buttermilk or condensed or plain milk and then toss them to coat in a mixture of one-third all-purpose wheat flour and two-thirds corn flour and a pinch of fine sea salt. In a colander, shake off the excess. The battered clams will become soggy unless they are fried at once. Drop them immediately, one by one, into a fry basket, and drop the basket into corn, peanut, or canola oil at 360 degrees, cooking for a minute or so, just until they are the color of a paper bag. They will fry more quickly after the first batch. Drain them on paper towels. If I’m frying a lot of clams, I set a sheet pan on the stove beside my fry pot, line it with paper towels, and drop the fried clams on it. The classic accompaniment is tartar sauce made from a cup of Hellmann’s mayonnaise, chopped pickle relish, a tablespoon of capers, drained, lemon juice, a little chopped onion or shallot, and a tablespoon of Dijon mustard.

So-called Ipswich clams are soft-shell clams dug mostly from the coastal mudflats north of Boston. The rich mud provides their unique sweetness, noticeably different from their bland cousins dug from sandy bottoms. But genuine Ipswich clams have been scarce lately, and most clams sold under that name are harvested from mudflats along the Maine coast. The shells of clams dug from mud tend to be darker than those dug from sand. Occasionally the Seafood Shop in Wainscott, Long Island, has these darker clams, and though they are a long way from Ipswich, their greater intensity is noticeable. My fried clams are much more delicate than the heavily battered, more durable version sold by roadside stands. They should be eaten while still warm. With fried squid, oysters, and whitebait, if you can find it, they make a great fritto misto.

STEAMED SOFT-SHELL CLAMS

For steamed soft-shell clams, simply rinse the clams under the faucet to wash away the sand, and place the clams in a covered pot over a medium flame. In five minutes or so, the shells will have opened. Scoop up the clams from the pot with a Chinese strainer and drop them into a serving bowl. Strain the broth from the pot into as many mugs as you have guests, and serve each guest a small cup of melted butter. Guests should remove the clams from their shells and slip off and discard the black membrane from the neck. Then they should dip the clam into the broth to remove any remaining sand, and from there into the butter.

My mother, who needed no lessons in self-esteem, enjoyed, in her damp, drizzly November moods, taunting my father with the claim that she had agreed to their courtship only when he offered to treat her to fried Ipswich clams at Hugo’s Lighthouse Restaurant on Boston’s South Shore. Thus I learned at a vulnerable age that because of a fried clam I am. Perhaps this is why New York, where Ipswich clams are hard to find, still doesn’t seem, after so many years, like home.

SIX

THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT GO TO SEA IN A BEAUTIFUL FRENCH LINE BOAT

On the morning of December 30, 1953, my first wife, Barbara, and I were married at a friend’s apartment in Morningside Heights in upper Manhattan, adjacent to Columbia University, from which I had graduated in 1949, with no idea what to do with the rest of my life and in no hurry to find out. At Columbia my friends and I read and studied literature as a kind of religion, an inexhaustible source of wisdom, we believed, to which we became addicted: Plato, the unknown authors of Ecclesiastes and Job, Dante,