Poet of the Appetites: The Lives and Loves of M.F.K. Fisher - Softcover

Reardon, Joan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0865476217 ISBN 13: 9780865476219

Publisher: North Point Press, 2005

Synopsis

In more than thirty books, M.F.K. Fisher forever changed the way Americans understood not only the art of eating but the art of living. Whether considering the oyster or describing how to cook a wolf, she addressed the universal needs "for food and security and love." Readers were instantly drawn into her circle of husbands and lovers, artists and artisans; they felt they knew Fisher herself, whether they encountered her as a child with a fried-egg sandwich in her pocket, a young bride awakening to the glories of French food, or a seductress proffering the first peas of the season.

Oldest child, wife, mother, mistress, self-made career woman, trailblazing writer-Fisher served up each role with panache. But like many other master stylists, she was also a master mythologizer. To retell her story as it really happened, Joan Reardon has made the most of her access to Fisher, her family and friends, and her private papers. This multifaceted portrayal of the woman John Updike christened our "poet of the appetites" is no less memorable than the personae Fisher crafted for herself.

About this title

About the Author:

Joan Reardon is the author of four previous books, including M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, and Alice Waters, which was nominated for a Julia Child Award. She lives in Lake Forest, Illinois.

From Publishers Weekly:

Writer M.F.K. Fisher, born in 1908 to an upper-middle-class American family, dabbled in various schools and made her society debut before marrying and heading to France to set up housekeeping. That she eventually abandoned her husband for her friend's husband, began writing about the art of eating and went on to become a distinctive literary and gastronomic stylist has created her image as a sensualist, but culinary historian Reardon finds that Fisher was actually "self-absorbed," and "at times a destructive woman." As if to demystify Fisher's sensualist image, Reardon details her life in workmanlike, almost sterile prose. Who stopped by for tea and who picked up the newspapers is followed by a sentence recording the suicide of Fisher's brother or a lover's death. On rare occasions when Reardon's opinion surfaces, it's usually negative: she disapproves of Fisher's child-rearing skills, of Fisher's affair with an older woman, of Fisher's open-door availability in the years before she died in 1992. Scholars may find this volume useful, but devotees of Fisher's writing will find that one big question still remains: how did a woman with such straightlaced roots become one of the world's most delightfully irreverent bon vivantes? Photos.
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About this edition

• Publisher: North Point Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0865476217
• ISBN 13: 9780865476219
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 528