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mouth. By which I mean, one had to work the teeth through the sturdy chocolate shell, which gave way with a distinct, moist snap, through the crisped rice (thus releasing a second, grainy bouquet), and only then into the soft caramel core. Oh, that inimitable combination of textures! That symphony of flavors! And how they offered themselves to the heat and wetness of the mouth—the sensation of the crisped rice drenched in melted chocolate, chomped by the molars into the creamy swirl of caramel. Oh, woe and pity unto thee who never tasted this bar! True woe! True pity!
    Around the time I was starting high school, Cadbury acquired Peter Paul and the Caravelle was discontinued. I didn’t know this, of course. All I knew was that the best candy bar in the world was gone . And I went looking for the Caravelle everywhere. After a while, I couldn’t even remember the name of the bar, which meant that I spent countless hours describing it to one or another bemused shopkeeper, girlfriend, therapist. Strangers at parties. Potential muggers. I was frantic, inconsolable, really annoying.
    The disappearance of the Caravelle led me to the larger question: How is it that a candy bar, an absolutely sensational candy bar, can be banished to oblivion? How can the lovers of caramel and chocolate and crisped rice be left to satisfy themselves with the mealy indelicacy of the 100 Grand? This was an outrage, on par with VHS crushing Beta, a clear-cut consumer injustice perpetrated by that wonderful open market we’re all so careful to abide.
    It should be clear, at this point, that I’m more or less out of my mind. But so are you. Because every one of you has some form of the Freak within you, has sought the succor of sweets in a moment of trauma, has attached some sacred set of memories to the small, attainable pleasures of candy. Because everyone, as a child, had the same basic wiring and that wiring ran directly from the id to the freak to the memory bank, because our most cogent memory triggers—our senses of smell and taste—are the ones most closely associated with the experience of the world in our mouths.
    And this is why, when I bring up candy at a party or to a colleague or to the guy who comes to check the gas meter, there is this immediate outpouring of memories, confessions, opinions, regrets, which doesn’t happen when I bring up other hobbies of mine, such as bridge.
    A few years ago, my friends began urging me to write a book about candy. Their reasoning ran as follows: Maybe if Steve writes about candy, he will shut up about candy. I didn’t listen to these suggestions, of course, because I’m fairly stubborn and because, at the time, I considered candy to be a subject unworthy of my artistic consideration, meaning that I might actually enjoy writing such a book and thus automatically violate the serious young writer’s credo: Suffer at all times, preferably in such a manner as to convey to the rest of the world just how much you’re suffering . So I went about my business of suffering, flamboyantly, with much deep-hearted kvetching to the proper maternal surrogates.
    A couple of years ago, though, I was driving down Massachusetts Avenue and I noticed, for perhaps the 500th time, the giant chimney atop the New England Confectionery Company, which is painted in the style of a giant package of Necco wafers, and I thought of my dear old pop and his ancient Necco jones and, well, I didn’t do anything.
    But then, a week later, I was driving through east Cambridge and I saw this run-down factory with a sign painted on the side that read SQUIRREL NUT BRAND . This was a terribly sad sight, because, though the place was all chipped brick and broken windows, the lettering itself was bright and hopeful. It reminded me of the giant red Schrafft’s sign that still lords over Charlestown and how, years ago, Schrafft’s had been the big kahuna of the boxed chocolates world, and how the sign is just a curiosity today, a little