Reading and Eating – Interchangeable

Sebastian Czapnik, "Girl Eating and Reading"

Conclusion of Summer Food Summer Series

It seems appropriate to conclude the Summer Food and Literature Series with a post by my colleague Jennifer Cognard-Black, who gave me the idea for the series in the first place. (See her earlier posts on the subject here and here.) Jennifer is allowing me to run an excerpt from the introduction to a book that she is co-writing with Melissa Goldthwaite that is tentatively titled Words Rising:  The Making of a Literary Meal.  It will be published sometime next year by the University of Nebraska Press.

I love the way that the authors move seamlessly between the acts of eating and of reading. I’ll let you know when the book comes out.

By Jennifer Cognard-Black, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and Melissa A. Goldthwaite, St. Joseph’s University

The act of reading is always a matter of a task begun as much as of a message understood, something that begins on a flat surface, counter[,] or page, and then gets stirred and chopped and blended until what we make, in the end, is a dish, or story, all our own.

—Adam Gopnik, “Cooked Books”

As a character from Peter Elbing’s The Food Taster observes, “The joy of eating is like the joy of learning, for each feast is like a book.  The dishes are words to be savored, enjoyed, and digested.”  The opposite, too, is true:  the joy of learning is like eating, and words are dishes to be savored.

We’ve organized Words Rising in the form of a cookbook, from an invocation to the final toast, from starters to desserts.  As such, each section begins with an excerpt from an influential American cookbook, included chronologically to show the development of this genre.  All literatures of food are indebted to the form and purpose of cookbooks, and, thus, the literary works within each section should be read as an extension of the cookbooks, while the cookbook excerpts should be understood as pieces of literature:  as forms of storytelling and memory-making all their own.

Each section, too, includes an assortment of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction, with every selection offering at least one recipe.  In our inclusions, we’ve sought to show the range of ways in which authors employ recipes, whether the recipe is in service of the story or the story serves to contextualize the recipe.

Why recipes?  Why offer a collection of food writing that embeds bona fide recipes in each and every selection?  Put simply, because recipes are far more than a set of instructions on how to make a dish.  As Janet Floyd and Laurel Forster maintain in The Recipe Reader, “Food and cookery are crucial elements in all cultures. . . .  The work of cooking and the texts that represent that work to us, situated as they are between the purchase of food and its consumption, can scarcely be less important to our sense of identity and shared values than food itself.”  Recipes are culture-keepers as well as culture-makers.  They both organize and express human memory.

To give us a sense of the book, Jennifer and Melissa close their introduction with following “series of sample menus.” As they say, this is not to  “exhaustively representative of these selections, but just a taste to whet your appetite”:

Sample Menus: Themed Meals

Eating Outdoors

“An Unspoken Hunger” by Terry Tempest Williams
“Eat Your Pets” by Ellen Meloy
“How to Make Stew in the Pinacate Desert: Recipe for Locke and Drum” by Gary Snyder
“Spirit-Fried No-Name River Brown Trout: A Recipe” by David James Duncan

Cultural Critique

“All It Took was a Road / Surprises of Urban Renewal” by Ntozake Shange
“American Liver Mush” by Ravi Shankar
“13/16” by Sherman Alexie
“Eat Your Pets” by Ellen Meloy
“Pie Throwing” by CrimethInc. Collective

Ethnic and Cultural Identity

“A Tsil Primer” and “Puffballs: Finding the Inside” by Thomas Fox Averill
“Recipe: Gingerbread” by Karen L. Anderson
“All It Took was a Road / Surprises of Urban Renewal” by Ntozake Shange
“Turkey Bone Gumbo” by Sara Roahen
“Imam Baildi” and “A Greek Myth: There Is Only One Way to Tell This Story” by Catherine Temma Davidson
“Boiled Chicken Feet and Hundred-Year-Old Eggs” by Shirley Geok-Lin Lim
“13/16” by Sherman Alexie
“The Vegetable Gardens at Bilignin” by Alice B. Toklas
“The Demystification of Food” by Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor
“Repulsive Dinners: A Memoir” by Laurie Colwin
“How to Cook Moong Dal, Bengali Style” by Deborah Thompson
“Food and Belonging: At ‘Home’ and in ‘Alien Kitchens’” by Ketu H. Katrak

Love and Desire

“To Cèpe, With Love (or, The Alchemy of Longing)” by E. J. Levy
“An Unspoken Hunger” by Terry Tempest Williams
“Whistle Stop, Alabama” and “Sipsey’s Recipes: Buttermilk Biscuits” by Fannie Flagg
“XX” and “Rafioli Commun de Herbe Vanzati” by Peter Elbing
“Potatoes and Love” by Nora Ephron

How-To Poems

“Full Moon Soup with Snow” by April Lindner
“Coriander and Carrot” by Michael S. Glaser
“The Poem of Chicken Breast with Fettuccine” by David Citino
“How to Make Rhubarb Wine” by Ted Kooser

Living, Dying, and the Dead

“In Nancy’s Kitchen” by Caroline Grant
“Making the Perfect Fried Egg Sandwich” by Howard Dinin
“Baking for Sylvia” by Kate Moses
“Pie” by Judith Moore
“Funeral Food” by Michael Lee West

Family Relationships

“Porkchop Gravy” by Bill Kloefkorn
“Bread” by Sharon Olds
“XX” and “Rafioli Commun de Herbe Vanzati” by Peter Elbing
“H is for Happy” by M. F. K. Fisher
“Poison Egg” by Tenaya Darlington
“Imam Baildi” and “A Greek Myth: There Is Only One Way to Tell This Story” by Catherine Temma Davidson
“A Good Roast Chicken” by Theresa Lust
“The Poet in the Kitchen” by David Citino
“How to Cook Moong Dal, Bengali Style” by Deborah Thompson
“Food and Belonging: At ‘Home’ and in ‘Alien Kitchens’” by Ketu H. Katrak
“All the Old Tales are Tales of Hunger” by Cailin Newcomber
“The Assurance of Caramel Cake” by Maya Angelou
“Suman sa Ibos” by Cheryl Quimba

The authors conclude,

Over four-hundred years ago, Francis Bacon wrote, “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”  We invite you now to the table of Words Rising in hopes that you will chew and digest this book that cooks.  Eat.  Savor.  Enjoy.  And as Julia Child would say, Bon appetit!

Information about the artist Sebastian Cpaznik  (Sebcz) can be found at www.dreamstime.com/Sebcz_info. The photo can be found at www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-girl-eating-and-reading-image14218397.

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