Writer Unboxed

I read a great article in The New Yorker recently called Cooked Books, about the place of recipes and food talk in novels. Said the author’s article Adam Gopnik:

Cooking is to our literature what sex was to the writing of the sixties and seventies, the thing worth stopping the story for to share, so to speak, with the reader.

Quite a statement, don’t you think?

I don’t know if I believe it wholly, but I do know I love to read about food, and there have been some memorable food entries in some of my latest reads. How could I forget Barbara Samuel’s references to chai tea and various cheese-and-tomato filo concoctions in her novel Madame Mirabou’s School of Love; or the zeppoles, chicken wings and apple pie in No Place Like Home. Said The Seattle Times:

Samuel even tucks in a few tasty-sounding recipes between the chapters; you may even be tempted to set the novel down temporarily to try that apple pie with the gingersnap crust.

It’s true; I personally purchased a cookbook she referenced in Madame Mirabou just to try the referenced butterscotch pie (note to self: bake more).

Honey talk dribbled from plenty of the pages in Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, and I’ll forever remember the delicious BBQ sauce scene in Marsha Moyer’s The Second Coming of Lucy Hatch. And then there’s Elizabeth McNeill’s Nine and A Half Weeks…

Gopnik drew from his own shelf, referencing his (mostly failed) experiences trying to replicate culinary creations mentioned in books like Robert Parker’s School Days (“a dish of cranberry beans, diced steak, and fresh corn, dressed with olive oil and cider vinegar”) and Ian McEwan’s Saturday (a bouillabaisse of tomato and fish stock and a handful of dried peppers — “you have to wash your hands instantly, with soap, since nothing is more common among home cooks, like Henry, than wiping a tear from your eye while chopping the onions, your hand still contaminated by hot pepper, with horrific results.”).

Maybe Gopnik is right and food is the new sex in literature. I did an Amazon search and found that there are a lot of scrumptious sounding food-themed books out there:

* Cleo Papanikolas’s Cook Until Desired Tenderness , about a woman who simultaneously records her love life and her original recipes;
* Love and Meatballs, a novel written by real-life chef Susan Volland, about discovering the full menu life has to offer (in relationships) while juggling the demands of a big, Italian, restaurateuring family;
* Cleo Coyle’s Latte Trouble, a story centered around the serving of one poisonous latte;
* The IPPY-award winning Comfort Food by Noah Ashenhurst, featuring characters whose lives are “interlaced like the ingredients in the various mouthwatering dishes that are devoured throughout the novel;”
* And Anthony Capella’s The Food of Love, full of “gustatory epiphanies.” Said the Washington Post:

Capella’s love and knowledge of Roman dishes is apparent in his metaphors of food as love — and sex — as he describes the cooking of cicale (a “cross between a large prawn and a small lobster”) over an open fire: “When you have pulled them from the embers with your fingers, you spread the charred, butterfly-shaped shell open and guzzle the meat col bacio – ‘with a kiss.’

Alrighty. I’m hungry.

Though my wip doesn’t focus on food, half of it is set in Rome, so you know there’s mention of creamy risotto, chocolate gelato, richly-scented espresso, chewy bread and pizza…

How about you?

Has food ever played a role in your writings? How do you use food and cooking references to enrich your story? As a reader, how do these scenes affect you? And do you agree with Gopnik’s statement about cooking being the “new sex” in literature? Why or why not?

Therese Walsh co-founded Writer Unboxed in 2006. Her debut novel, The Last Will of Moira Leahy, sold to Random House in a two-book deal in 2008, was named one of January Magazine’s Best Books of 2009, and was a Target Breakout Book in 2010. She's never been published with a lit magazine, but LOST's Carlton Cuse liked her haiku best on Twitter, and that made her pretty happy.

Therese Walsh

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