Saturday, December 27, 2008

The Poet of the Appetites

“When I write of hunger, I am really writing about love
and the hunger for it, and warmth and
the love of it and it is all one.” —M. F. K. Fisher


I recently finished reading The Gastonomical Me by MFK Fisher.
It is a wonderful read if you like food writing.
The book is mostly a memoir but her appreciation of food helps to define her experiences in memory, and in this way the book is very unique and engaging.
Her writing is very sensual, slow, almost conversational, and conjures vivid images of her life, and extraordinary culinary journey's.

One passage that I particularly enjoyed:
In 1931, Dijon, France:
"The people who came oftenest to our room above the Fin Gourmet were Norah, on her free Thursday afternoons away from the convent, and the American student Lawrence, who was like our brother... For Norah I would get a pitcher of milk and a pot of honey. I'd put them with a pat of sweet butter on the table, and a big square block of the plain kind of Dijon gingerbread that was called pavé de sauté. There would be late grapes and pears in a bowl.

Norah and I would sit by the open window, listening to the street sounds and playing bach and Debussy, and Josephine Baker on the tinny portable phonograph.

The food was full of enchantment to my sister after her gray meals in the convent, and she ate with the slow voluptuous concentration of a dévouée."


The New York Times recently published a travel piece centered on her former ranch in Sonoma, CA.

No comments: