The Gastronomical We

Introducing an M.F.K Fisher classic for May’s book club

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The Gastronomical Me is a deceptive book. It starts off full of youthful naivety and a seemingly simple premise: from the taste of jam-skimmings in 1912, to a shivering oyster swallowed at school, to the voyage of a young bride, we are to witness the making of a gourmet.

But there are hints at a more complex truth early on. Ora, the family cook (this book was published in 1943, long before the age of checking one’s privilege) commits a brutal murder. The oyster feast reveals forbidden love. The marriage ends abruptly, and subsequent voyages chart the rise of European fascism. Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher takes obvious and abundant joy in food, but also has an eye for the world’s myriad darknesses, as well as for the queer, in both meanings of the word.

So this is certainly a book about food - sumptuous feasts in French restaurants, chic kitchen suppers gleaned from the kitchen garden, boozy snacks in Mexican beer halls - but it’s also about a world that is shifting, and a restless spirit whose first love may well be storytelling itself.

All is not what it seems in this book; among the people who knew her best, Mary Frances has a reputation for embellishment and sometimes insensitivity. Some of her subjects were upset at seeing their private lives - complete with their real names - arrayed in her stories. Others questioned how much was true. “Trouble is,” mused her nephew Sean in Joan Reardon’s biography, Poet of the Appetites, “she embroiders the facts to the point where what she ends up with is virtually fiction.”

But don’t let that put you off. Writers are complicated creatures, and the stories they tell are always carefully constructed in one way or another. It is perhaps appropriate that such a venerable culinary memoir should be taken with a grain of salt.

About M.F.K. Fisher

Mary Frances Kennedy was born in Albion, Michigan in 1908. She met her first husband, Al Fisher, while attending Occidental College in Los Angeles, and moved with him to Dijon, France upon their marriage in 1929. While Al, an academic and poet, worked on his doctorate at the University of Dijon, Mary Frances explored the restaurants and studied fine wines with a local sommelier.

MFK Fisher. Image: Daunt Books Publishing

After moving to Strasbourg (where Mary Frances became depressed) and the French Riviera, they returned to California at the height of the Great Depression. Here, Mary Frances fell in love with her neighbour Dilliwyn Parrish (known as Chexbres in her books), and she later left Al to marry him. However, Dilliwyn soon developed Buerger’s Disease, a circulatory condition which led to multiple clots and amputations, as well as severe, chronic pain. He took his own life in 1941.

This period coincided with an incredible acceleration of writing on Mary Frances’ part, including two novels and Consider the Oyster. At the same time, she had a contract with Paramount, writing jokes for Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour. She became pregnant in 1943, and gave birth to a daughter, Anne Kennedy Parrish, never revealing who the father was, and sometimes claiming that Anne was adopted.

She continued to work apace, producing an acclaimed translation of Savarin’s The Physiology of Taste in 1949, alongside many other books. In 1945, she married literary agent Donald Friede, and had a second daughter, Kennedy, although the marriage soon collapsed due to Donald’s mental-health difficulties, which left the couple in enormous debt.

At work. Image: M.F.K. Fisher Foundation

She continued to move between Europe and America, finally settling in Glen Ellen, California in 1971 (although never ceasing to travel throughout the Seventies). She died there in 1992, having long suffered from Parkinson’s and arthritis.

Read M.F.K. Fisher’s obituary in The New York Times

Book Club dates

I’ve been trying to work out how best to structure our book clubs so that it feels fun rather than prescriptive, and invites plenty of discussion. My plan for May and June is to run two themed discussions on Substack Chat (which you can access either in the app or on the website), and then invite you all to a live recording for a grand finale in early June.

Here are the dates:

19th May - join us in the Chat to discuss the theme of love and learning in The Gastronomical Me.

2nd June - we’ll be discussing the theme of loss in the Chat.

16th June (5pm UK time - check your local time here) - join me and and Elissa Altman here on Substack for a live discussion of The Gastronomical Me. A full recording will be sent out as soon as possible afterwards. .

Take care,

Katherine

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