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July 27, 2004
OGIC: More from M.F.K.
The matched set of Fortune Cookies below, once I had posted them, set me to thinking. I yield to no one in my adoration of M.F.K. Fisher--not even to W. H. Auden, who said of her, "I do not know of anyone in the United States today who writes better prose"--but after I typed in and reread the longer of the two quotations, it struck me as haughty and unpleasant. I worried that it might give readers unfamiliar with her work the wrong impression of Fisher.What I had in mind in putting together the post, of course, was the striking contrast between Fisher's description of herself at nineteen in the first quotation, and her self-assessment at thirty in the second. Only after posting did I recognize the second extract as uncharacteristically off-putting. In context, it serves as the set-up and counterpoint to a self-critical remembrance of one of those men Fisher angers with her independence, and it works very differently than it does in isolation.
In another meditation on the subject of eating alone, Fisher is more her usual self. This appears in An Alphabet for Gourmets, where "A is for Dining Alone."
And the kind people--they are the ones who have made me feel the loneliest. Wherever I have lived, they have indeed been kind--up to a certain point. They have poured cocktails for me, and praised me generously for things I have written to their liking, and showed me their children. And I have seen the discreetly drawn curtains to their family dining rooms, so different from the uncluttered, spinsterish emptiness of my own one room. Behind the far door to the kitchen I have sensed, with the mystic materialism of a hungry woman, the presence of honest-to-God fried chops, peas and carrots, a jello salad, and lemon meringue pie--none of which I like and all of which I admire in theory and would give my eyeteeth to be offered. But the kind people always murmur, "We'd love to have you stay to supper sometime. We wouldn't dare, of course, the simple way we eat and all."
As I leave, by myself, two nice plump kind neighbors come in. They say howdo, and then good-by with obvious relief, after a polite, respectful mention of culinary literature as represented, no matter how doubtfully, by me. They sniff the fine creeping straightforward smells in the hall and living room, with silent thanks that they are not condemned to my daily fare of quails financière, pâté de Strasbourg truffé en brioche, sole Marguéry, bombe vanille au Cointreau. They close the door on me.
I drive home by way of the corner Thriftmart to pick up another box of Ry Krisp, which with a can of tomato soup and a glass of California sherry will make a good nourishing meal for me as I sit on my tuffet in a circle of proofs and pocket detective stories.
Even that, wonderful as it is, suffers some deformation in being yanked out of the full essay it belongs in. I continually encounter this problem with Fisher: she's very difficult to excerpt satisfyingly. It's one mark of a really masterful writer: search as you may, you just can't find the "money graf," or even two such grafs, or three. They're all necessary, and they all droop a bit in isolation. They aren't pearls strung together but a whole interdependent nervous system. You either throw up your hands and reproduce the whole thing--which seems to me neither practical nor ethical--or you compromise as I have done here, gritting your teeth and severing vital cords between the extract and the text around it, despite how violent it feels.
Posted July 27, 2004 5:12 AM
