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The Gastronomical Me
by M. F. K. Fisher
(12 reviews)
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Sales Rank: 83,810
 Item Summary: |
In 1929, a newly married M.F.K. Fisher said goodbye to a milquetoast American culinary upbringing and sailed with her husband to Dijon, where she tasted real French cooking for the first time. The Gastronomical Me is a chronicle of her passionate embrace of a whole new way of eating, drinking, and celebrating the senses. As she recounts memorable meals shared with an assortment of eccentric and fascinating characters, set against a backdrop of mounting pre-war tensions, we witness the formation not only of her taste but of her character and her prodigious talent.
 Reviews: |
Splendid sketches of the making of a food writer
This is a great read for food lovers and francophiles. It isnt really a travel book at all, but Fisher's highly personal and frequently witty account of the experiences that shaped her thinking and made her one of the most noted food writers of the 20th century.
Fisher was an American, and her adult life in France began in 1929 when she and her new husband moved to Dijon. One quickly appreciates how difficult her experiences as a newcomer must have been -- no stove, no refrigerator, no heating in winter. Some reviewers didn't like the way the book left gaps in her personal life story. That's true, but it isnt a standard biography, it's a literary sketch book.
If you're looking for a travel book, this isn't one. Stylistically, because this book was written 65 or 70 years ago, there is no comparison between it and much later accounts of spending a year in Provence, touring the wine country, or houseboating on the Seine.
Finally, one reviewer here thought the last part of the book about her time in Mexico seemed out of place. I agree, so if you get the book and read everything but the bit about the Mexican soujourn, you will have gotten to the heart of what I think she wanted us to know, anyway.
Maddening at Times Upon Revisiting
Having read this years ago -- and many other of M.F.K. Fisher's works over the years -- I found The Gastronomical Me to be a bit of a mixed bag, and a bit of a disappointment upon re-reading it in 2009.
Mrs. Fisher's work is like a maddening jigsaw puzzle, with bits of stories glossed over in one book, only to be written about again and fleshed out in more detail in another. Here, for instance, just when we're getting interested in her life with Chexbres (Dillwyn Parrish) we turn the page and read he's died -- the entire thing and his reasons for committing suicide glossed over, and in fact much of their life together glossed over. Then the book ends with a sequence in Mexico, the entire Crying Game-like reveal of which is too small to justify so much space in the book (hence I found it a weak ending, and terribly tedious to trudge through).
While initially charmed with the descriptions of life as a young couple in Dijon and the historical details of what that life was like (communal bathrooms and showers for the village people, making due with little more than a gas ring for a kitchen, some of the characters met along the way, and so on), upon re-reading this and acknowledging these elements (often referred to as the "travel memoir" genre today), what's left beyond seems a collection of sometimes pointless reminiscences that are sometimes maddeningly compressed while at other times maddeningly drawn out (and usually in the exact opposite places you want them to be).
Overall, one senses that while making her living as a writer who essentially shared her reminiscences with the world for money, Mrs. Fisher always had a great reluctance to actually open up about herself and share the details of her life that would have made for a compelling (and cohesive) narrative; and yet at times in the book there are sections that can make you overlook that, and where her talent is clear.
All in all a mixed bag, worth a look, but in the end ... maddening.
What was charming as one of the early travel memoir-style authors at a time when few existed begs the question of whether Mrs. Fisher's writing will be at all relevant in years to come now that the genre has exploded, and everyone who dreams of buying a house in a foreign land deigns to finance their dream by writing their version of the same story. Frankly, while I enjoy the historical detail in Mrs. Fisher's work, I had a LOT more fun reading Annie Hawes' Extra Virgin and its's sequel, Ripe for the Picking.
Way ahead of her time!
This is a terrific piece of history with lovely insights into food and love. She was naive, but eventually wise and always wonderful. A great read.
Gorgeous Personal Story
Fisher recounts her life through her intimate association with food, growing up, travelling alone to meet her formidable uncle (knowing when to order consomé,) eating blue point oysters at a sorority banquet, falling in love with her first husband, living with him in 1930s Dijon at a boarding house where the landlady made ananas au kirsch, divorcing him, nursing another sick husband, being wooed while still married, travelling on cruise liners, watching the rise of the Nazis in Europe, and finally travelling to Mexico in her widowhood. Fisher reveals food as a civilizing force, revelling in its sensual pleasure while remaining starkly aware of a world going wrong. She writes real characters; it's journalism in a short story style, using that technique of fiction. With remarkably serene prose, delicate and sensuous, Fisher shows herself to be a singular woman who understands all too well the foibles of humanity and gracefully counteracts them with an almost pious devotion to the riches and possibilities of elegant cuisine.
who else?
no one could have turned the culinary world into literature. she shames these narrow consumer-oriented marketeers like martha stewart. this is an artist and craftswoman at her best.
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