Favorite Writers?
As I was writing Taking the Long Way Home and bored or restless with the process, my imagination would run wild. I’d picture myself chatting with Terry Gross about the book and my influences, favorite authors, etc. In other author interviews I’ve read or listened to, the writers revered tend to come from the same genre. Not so in my case.
Who is my all time favorite writer? M.F.K. Fisher. Who is the close second? Ruth Reichel. I am now guiltily adding Joan Didion’s essays to the list because it seems a sin of omission not to. But, while I reread “Goodbye to All That” at least once a quarter, it was the discovery of MFK Fisher in a college writing class that truly delighted me and likely was the gentle push into the brook that would lead me here, writing. The way a child is when they first read a novel that mystifies and moves them? That’s the way it was with me and Fisher’s “Once a Tramp, Always a Tramp.” And it was a most fortuitous coincidence that, in the first month I lived in NYC, unemployed and wandering, I bought her massive tome, “The Art of Eating.” Walking the city and dining alone while reading, I fell more in love with both her and New York.
Is it strange that my two favorite writers are food journalists? Or rather food memoirists? I don’t think so. Learning about people by what and how they eat is what I’m essentially all about. It gathers up so many of the strings that braid themselves into me: cooking, hospitality, taste, smell, conversation, nourishment, love through action (in this case, through the preparation of the meal), indulgence, and simple pleasures. Proust made famous the madeleine and with it the idea of memorializing a single instance of food delight. MFK Fisher and Ruth Reichel’s writings just take this to a new level. While Proust went on and on, these women write with a frugality of words and forthrightness of phrases that pleases me immensely. I think it’s because they cook - you don’t need a whole lot of fuss to make a good dish. Sometimes you just need a little salt and olive oil - done!
But what these two writers and their memoirs also did was provide me with examples of independent, confident and successful women. Women who took lovers, as opposed to just being loved. Women who made careers of their writing. Women who enjoyed eating and traveling on their own. I feel my mother could have been that type of woman. I’m pretty sure my grandmother could have been one too. But the apron strings of propriety and patriarchy were tied a bit too tight around them. MFK Fisher and Ruth Reichel showed me a different path. And I am grateful for it.
What to Read
MFK Fisher
“Once a Tramp, Always a Tramp” (published in the New Yorker in 1968)
Ruth Reichel
Comfort Me with Apples (which has a chapter of Ruth meeting MFK Fisher!)