Food in Literature

[pattimw]

I've seen some threads with mention of food in literature (Proust's madeleines, for example) and I was wondering if we could make a list of books that involve food to a greater (or lesser, but still significant) degree.

I'll start with an obvious one- Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel.

[mstillman]

Mattanza: Love and Death in the Sea of Sicily by Theresa Maggio. A love story and fantastic huge bluefin tuna hunts done as they have been for the last 2000 years.

remarkable.

[JPW]

Just about anything by Hemingway reeks of food and booze.

[gabe]

Leopold Bloom's repasts in James Joyce's Ulysses are most unforgettable. For example:

MR LEOPOLD BLOOM ATE WITH RELISH THE INNER ORGANS OF BEASTS and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod's roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

Ah, I'm hungry.

He entered Davy Byrne's. Moral pub. He doesn't chat. Stands a drink now and then. But in leapyear once in four. Cashed a cheque for me once.

What will I take now? He drew his watch. Let me see now. Shandygaff?

-- Hellow, Bloom! Nosey Flynn said from his nook.

-- Hello, Flynn.

-- How's things?

-- Tiptop... Let me see. I'll take a glass of burgundy and... let me see.

Sardines on the shelves. Almost taste them by looking. Sandwich? Ham and his descendants mustered and bred there. Potted meats. What is home without Plumtree's potted meat? Incomplete. What a stupid ad! Under the obituary notices they stuck it. All up a plumtree Dignam's potted meat. Cannibals would with lemon and rice. White missionary too salty. Like pickled pork. Expect the chief consumes the parts of honour. Ought to be tough from exercise. His wives in a row to watch the effect. There was a right royal old nigger. Who ate or something the somethings of the reverend Mr MacTrigger. With it an abode of bliss. Lord knows what concoction. Cauls mouldy tripes windpipes faked and minced up. Puzzle find the meat. Kosher. No meat and milk together. Hygiene that was what they call now. Yom Kippur fast spring cleaning of inside. Peace and war depend on some fellow's digestion. Religions. Christmas turkeys and geese. Slaughter of innocents. Eat, drink and be merry. Then casual wards full after. Heads bandaged. Cheese digests all but itself. Mighty cheese.

-- Have you a cheese sandwich?

-- Yes, sir.

Like a few olives too if they had them. Italian I prefer. Good glass of burgundy; take away that. Lubricate. A nice salad, cool as a cucumber. Tom Kernan can dress. Puts gusto into it. Pure olive oil. Milly served me that cutlet with a sprig of parsley. Take one Spanish onion. God made food, the devil the cooks. Devilled crab.

-- Wife well?

-- Quite well, thanks... A cheese sandwich, then. Gorgonzola, have you?

-- Yes, sir.

Nosey Flynn sipped his grog.

[DRColby]

"A Life of Gluttony", A.J. Libeling.

Dave

[endless autumn]

good (though formulaic) barbecue in Homer

My favourite dish in the world in The Sea, The Sea (Iris Murdoch): eggs poached in (rehydrated) powdered egg

[adoxograph]

Children's books got me started early:

James and the Giant Peach ("I like hot dogs, I LOVE Hot Frogs"), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Hot Ice Cream You Can Eat on Cold Days), the BFG (Frobscottle and Snozzcumbers) and pretty much every other book Roald Dahl wrote for children have great food moments.

Little House in the Big Woods, Laura Ingalls Wilder. In between the descriptions of crisp roasted pig's tail and maple syrup poured on to the snow to make candy this was the first book I remember that made me hungry.

Can anyone else trace back an appreciation of food writing to books read as a child?

[JPW]

Green Eggs and Ham !

What else?

[Batgrrrl]

Little House in the Big Woods, Laura Ingalls Wilder. In between the descriptions of crisp roasted pig's tail and maple syrup poured on to the snow to make candy this was the first book I remember that made me hungry.

Can anyone else trace back an appreciation of food writing to books read as a child?

Absolutely--this always got me too. And isn't there somewhere a wonderful description of making cornbread in one of the "Little House" books?

Alcott's Little Women is full of food, too--I remember thinking how sophisticated all the picnic foods sounded.

Dickens is full of descriptions of food--often wonderful, poignant and funny scenes of people with meager livings making wonderful feasts out of very little. The Cratchits are the classic example of this, of course, but there's also young David Copperfield and the Micawbers with their punch.

But my favorite "meal" in Dickens is Miss Havisham's mouldering wedding feast, still laid out from decades ago when she was abandoned on the morning of her wedding!

Batgrrrl

[fresco]

Mark Twain wrote lovingly, and well, about food in many of his books, including, most notably, Innocents Abroad, where he enumerated all of the foods he missed and would devour when he got back to the US.

[cakewalk]

Mark Twain wrote lovingly, and well, about food in many of his books, including, most notably, Innocents Abroad, where he enumerated all of the foods he missed and would devour when he got back to the US.

And don't forget his infamous fresh fish fry from "Huckleberry Finn."

[Kim WB]

The Rex Stout "Nero Wolfe" series comes immediately to mind. "How Green was my Valley by Richard Llewelyn also has a lot of food oriented descriptions..I think it opens with Huw recalling his mother's leg of lamb.

Edited January 20, 2004 by Kim WB (log)

[mongo_jones]

romesh gunesekeera's haunting "reef" uses food extensively as a metaphor for sri lankan identity.

salman rushdie in "midnight's children" likewise employs indian pickles.

[MRX]

Over ten posts and no mention of Mitchner. Almost every book that he has ever written has made me run off to sample new foods, new music, read other authors...I remember living in Hawaii and reading "The Novel" which takes place in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, and trying to figure out how to find scrapple on Maui.

I will second the Little House books, I remember being about 9 years old and running out getting pie tins of snow and pouring heated maple syrup on it. Wasn't really worth the effort - but it kept me busy and on my food and history kick.

Edited January 20, 2004 by MRX (log)

[Dave the Cook]

The Rex Stout "Nero Wolfe" series comes immediately to mind.

Thank you, Kim! Shameless plug: please read this.

As long as we're on detective fiction, James L. Burke's Dave Robicheaux novels invariably lead to Cajun binges at our house.

[bloviatrix]

I will second the little house books, I remember being about 9 years old and running out getting pie tins of snow and pouring heated maple syrup on it. Wasn't really worth the ffort - but it kept me busy and on my food and history kick.

You just brought back a memory. Although I never ran into to the snow to try it, I always wanted to.

Wow.

[Priscilla]

Oh my goodness too many to list ... children's books certainly, especially (for me) the Betsy-Tacy books, and Mr. Ray making onion sandwiches on Sunday nights and Anna the cook's beginning to teach Betsy (later, after Betsy and Joe were married) how to cook, and on and on. Betsy, Tacy, and Tib Go Over the Big Hill, and find -- Middle Eastern food in MN. And on and on.

And a third, or fourth or fifth, for the Little House books ... Farmer Boy, Alamanzo's family story, inserted a dish, Apples & Onions, into my repetoire that remains to this day. I can remember eating baked potatoes with only salt, as the Ingalls did during The Long Winter. And in the same book Pa sussing out that there was wheat (seed wheat) behind a false wall in the Wilder's store, and later Ma grinding it in the coffee grinder to make coarse bread.

And the Anne of Green Gables series, lots of evocative food moments.

Much later, excellent foodage in The Buddha of Surburbia, by Hanif Kureishi, and tea too, a bonus.

[Al_Dente]

Portnoy's Complaint. Liver...

[Alex]

Portnoy's Complaint. Liver...

[fresco]

Portnoy's Complaint. Liver... 

His mother's constant suspicion that Portnoy was spending so much time in the bathroom because he was out eating hamburgers was quite hilarious, too.

[maggiethecat]

Mark Twain wrote lovingly, and well, about food

Have you read his short satirical piece called "The Appetite Cure?"

Ah, Simenon -- Inspector Maigret walking into his flat at lunchtime and smelling Mme. Maigret's pot au feu. Or sharing steak frites on the zinc with Janvier and Lucas.

Edited for egregious sloppiness.

[fresco]

Mark Twain wrote lovingly, and well, about food

Have you read his short satirical piece called "The Appetite Cure?"

Can't recall it, but my intense Mark Twain phase was many years ago.

[Al_Dente]

Confederacy of Dunces. If you've never read this, check it out. One of the funniest novels I've ever read. Takes place in New Orleans. Did he ever sell a hot dog out of his cart? Seems like he ate them all.

Oh, my pyloric valve...

[fresco]

Confederacy of Dunces. If you've never read this, check it out. One of the funniest novels I've ever read. Takes place in New Orleans. Did he ever sell a hot dog out of his cart? Seems like he ate them all.

Oh, my pyloric valve...

True.

His other book, also unpublished when he killed himself in despair over not getting published, is pretty much a dud. Can't remember the name.

[MobyP]

The Electric Bible?

There's a wonderful short story in Boccaccio's Decameron about a man who murders his daughter's lover - so she takes the heart out the body, and cooks it for her father's dinner. Sounds gruesome, but it was incredibly romantic.