The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand

A complete collection of the author's food writings includes his Smart and Esquire columns, correspondence with French gourmet Gerard Oberle, and pieces on food in France and America for Men's Journal.

A rumination on the unholy trinity of sex, death and food, this long-awaited collection of gastronomic essays reads like the love child of M.F.K. Fisher and James Thorne on acid. Harrison poet, novelist and screenplay writer perhaps best known for Legends of the Fall and Just Before Dark writes with a passion for language equal to his passion for good food. His thick, muscular phrases tumble off the tongue: you can almost hear him sampling the language as deliberately as he does his French burgundies, and with as much genuine pleasure. The essays filled with sightings of big names (Jack Nicholson, Peter Matthiessen) take readers from meals in Harrison's homes in northern Michigan and New Mexico, to delicacies in New York, Los Angeles and Paris; Harrison's palate, while refined, is refreshingly earthy. He is a lover of duck thighs, pigs' feet, calves' brains, foie gras, confit, sweetbreads, game birds and mussels, served with exquisite wines and "shovels of garlic." Perhaps not surprisingly, Harrison also ruminates on gout, weight and indigestion. But to him, the trade-off is worth it: "Only through the diligent use of sex and, you guessed it, food," he writes, "can we further ourselves, hurling our puny `I ams' into the face of twenty billion years of mute, cosmic history. With every fanny glance or savory bite you are telling a stone to take a hike, a mountain that you are alive, a star that you exist." Equally recommended for the literary crowd and armchair cooks (although perhaps not for vegetarians).

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

It is impossible to pigeonhole this collection of essays they are about hunting and cooking, eating and drinking, and are written in a style that is simultaneously sophisticated and earthy. The work is full of high literary references mixed with a unique patois of tough wisecracks, street slang, and lustrous imagery. Moving from the wilds of Michigan's pristine forests to international culinary meccas, Harrison sensually captures his epicurean philosophy, liberally sprinkled with crackling, dark humor: "Life is too short to approach a meal with the mincing steps of a Japanese prostitute." Harrison may be best known for his fiction (e.g., Legends of the Fall), but he has been writing articles on food criticism for more than 20 years. Most of us will never be lucky enough to share a meal with this "roving gourmand," but this volume provides a satisfying alternative. An essential purchase for all literary and culinary essay collections. Wendy Miller, Lexington P.L., KY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.