10 Classic Writers Who Talk About Food

Published by Monday, October 27, 2014 Permalink 3

by Jonell Galloway

Food writing is not confined to food writers. After all, food concerns us all and we all have something to say about it. Some use it as metaphor, others as porn. Here are a few examples from classic literature.

Food as the Essence of Being Human: M.F.K. Fisher

Fisher went straight to the point. Food was intertwined in almost all she wrote and used as a metaphor for the need for love in life. It was inescapable connected with its opposite, hunger.

“It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it… and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied… and it is all one.”

M.F.K. FisherThe Art of Eating: 50th Anniversary Edition

Food, Heaven and Hell: Barbara Kingsolver

“Tortolita, let me tell you a story,” Estevan said. “This is a South American, wild Indian story about heaven and hell.” Mrs. Parsons made a prudish face, and Estevan went on. “If you go visit hell, you will see a room like this kitchen. There is a pot of delicious stew on the table, with the most delicate aroma you can imagine. All around, people sit, like us. Only they are dying of starvation. They are jibbering and jabbering,” he looked extra hard at Mrs. Parsons, “but they cannot get a bit of this wonderful stew God has made for them. Now, why is that?”

“Because they’re choking? For all eternity?” Lou Ann asked. Hell, for Lou Ann, would naturally be a place filled with sharp objects and small round foods.

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Classic Food Writing

Published by Friday, August 1, 2014 Permalink 0

Classic Food Writing

My list is so old-fashioned and unsurprising:

Waverley Root

Apicius

Pellegrino Artusi

Brillat-Savarin

MFK Fisher

Hannah Glasse

Mrs Beeton

Alexandre Dumas

 

 

 

Ideas

Jason Lowe, Jonathan Lovekin, Georgia Glynn Smith

Calvin Trillin

Samuel Pepys

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Resources

Published by Thursday, July 24, 2014 Permalink 0

Stimulation for Writers in the TRE Community

Food Writing Prompts

Do you have a great idea every single time you sit down to write? An idea you are on fire with?

If so, that would be most unwriterly.

Not feeling inspired, however, is what keeps many writers from being productive – even from beginning to be.

Productivity will come with application. Inspiration is a matter of showing up for it. Be there.

Be here, too. Where we provide you with stimulation. Writing prompts, for instance. Rather than ask you to force a focus that won’t come, we invite you to jumpstart your productivity with writing prompts. Whether visual, verbal, or olfactory, prompts work the way leafing rapidly through a cookbook works, when you can’t think exactly what to cook: you may not see a recipe you’ll perform, but your thinking gains in ease and speed from small doses of stimulation that throw open big windows for you. Check out our food writing prompts.

Food Writer Role Models

Be who you are, of course. It’s the Socratic lesson.

And it’s hard. To make it a little easier, we have assembled a company of writers for you to engage with (LINK TO ENTIRE LIST) en route to establishing both your turf and your voice. These writers may treat food glancingly or with intense focus, but they all treat it vividly. Whether known for their food writing, or known better for writing something altogether different, they are citizens of the world of the senses, and their approach is unerring.

Classic Food Writers

Is food writing from earlier centuries a bit flowery? Does it take too much time to read? No. It’s surprisingly lean, precise and vigorous. Past masters of this kind of prose were not searching for words. They’d found them. Browse these authors (LINK) to see if they tire you with excess. We’re betting that won’t happen. And, please comment to add to the list.

Contemporary Food Writers

Are there true masters among us today? Food writers whose work is both current and lasting? The journalists, memoirists and novelists who now turn their attention to food make our era a very rich one. Food writers of our time have much more mobility than those of earlier times – the world is their material, as it is yours. Browse these authors to find kindred spirits. (LINK) And, please comment to add to the list.

To make sure you stay stimulated as a writer, join our community. You will receive a monthly newsletter, and occasional tasty food quotes.

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