Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #72408 in Books
• Published on: 1989-10-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780865473928
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
M. F. K. Fisher sees life stomach first. The New York Times said "She spit Puritan restraint out like a dull wine and made a life of savoring the slow, sensual pleasures of the table." And between meals, she savored the pleasures of men and travel, too. She recalls California in 1912, life in France in the 1930s, and traveling solo to Mexico in 1941. Her first oyster is a beautiful story, about adolescence and the glory of the briny mollusk, and her humor is as forthright as her taste at table.

Review
"Because The Gastronomical Me is autobiographical, following Mrs. Fisher from childhood to widowhood in different countries, we are able to see its food not only as a matter of personal taste, but as a perpetual emotional and social force within a life. Here are meals as seductions, educations, diplomacies, communions. Unique among the classics of gastronomic writing, with its glamorous but not glamorized settings, its wartime drama and its powerful love story, The Gastronomical Me is a book about adult loss, survival, and love." -- Patricia Storace, The New York Review of Books

"I do not know of any one in the United States who writes better prose." -- W.H. Auden

"I do not know of any one in the United States who writes better prose."--W.H. Auden

"Poet of the appetites."--John Updike

"Because The Gastronomical Me is autobiographical, following Mrs. Fisher from childhood to widowhood in different countries, we are able to see its food not only as a matter of personal taste, but as a perpetual emotional and social force within a life. Here are meals as seductions, educations, diplomacies, communions. Unique among the classics of gastronomic writing, with its glamorous but not glamorized settings, its wartime drama and its powerful love story, The Gastronomical Me is a book about adult loss, survival, and love."--Patricia Storace, The New York Review of Books

"She writes about fleeting tastes and feasts vividly, excitingly, sensuously, exquisitely. There is almost a wicked thrill in following her uninhibited track through the glories of the good life."--James Beard

"She writes about food as others do about love, but rather better."--Clifton Fadiman
-- Review

"M.F.K. Fisher is our greatest food writer because she puts food in the mount, the mind and the imagination all at the same time. Beyond the gastronomical bravura, she is a passionate woman; food is her metaphor." -- Shana Alexander

"Poet of the appetites." -- John Updike

"She writes about fleeting tastes and feasts vividly, excitingly, sensuously, exquisitely. There is almost a wicked thrill in following her uninhibited track through the glories of the good life." -- James Beard

"She writes about food as others do about love, but rather better." -- Clifton Fadiman

Review

Customer Reviews

A great book for readers of all backgrounds!
Do the former critics not read Tolstoy because he was a Count? I was born into a working class neighborhood in New York, and this is one of my favorite books. Being a gourmand is an enlightened point of view, a matter of personal taste. In my opinion this is Ms. Fisher's very best book. The writing, and the personality, are exquisite. Especially in the chapter about her Father and a childhood journey, and the discovery of her crush on a fellow boarding school student (female) and her love of oysters, at the same time! Am I the only one who feels that I've shared all of those wonderful meals with her when I put down this book? Great to pack along when you are traveling, even if you've read it before!

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.

I loved it in spite of myself
First I should admit I'm not a usual fan of MFK Fisher. I find her rambling and neurotic style a bit unsettling. Even in this book, one minute she's a snob and the next minute ... well I don't want to give it away. Nonethless, I loved it through and through. Much less neurotic or rambling than her other stuff. Marvelous stories. Wonderful points of view coming through. I really loved the story about that cook in her childhood who ... okay, I won't tell. If you like autobiography, this is a good one.