Bibliography
Jul. 4th, 2010 03:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilyAppetite for life: the biography of Julia Child - Noel Riley Fitch
I decided I wanted to read this after watching Julie and Julia, where the character of Julie left me pretty cold but Julia Child left me wanting to know more. So obviously I went to the big biography of Julia Child, which this is. It's been quite interesting reading it over the course of the last few weeks because of the obviously lengthy sustained narrative interest in food and the nature of eating in the United States, especially given the surprising popularity of posts with my cooking tag and the beginning of my first ever CSA share.
Julia Child, for those who don't know (and I didn't), was a big American celebrity whose main claim to fame was teaching America how to do French cooking in a way that they could manage given their own resources and kitchen equipment. Her first book was Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which went into a second volume; there were also assorted books to tie in with television programs, where she got her real publicity and became a much-loved face for America, made mainly for PBS and public television rather than commercial stations. This book tracks her story from her birth in Pasadena, California, in 1912 to what must be shortly before the book's publication in 1997; Child died in 2004 a few days before her 92nd birthday.
Her life was... extraordinary, there's no other word for it. The first 30 years were standard West Coast rich girl, private school, Smith College, living at home with her father after her mother's death. With the Second World War she volunteered in the military, and ended up, of all things, as one of the key administrators in the spy network in Ceylon and China. This is where she met her husband-to-be, Paul Child, although neither of them quite realised what a love affair was going to spring out of their comfortable companionship and shared interest in local cuisine.
After the war, Paul continued in government service, and Julia went with him to Paris - where she got into French cooking and the rest is history. She had French collaborators on Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and fought for a new type of cookbook - one which gave home cooks who didn't know what they were doing clear enough instructions to recreate the sort of things one might eat at a restaurant. It's quite stunning to see the contrast between Child's meticulous recipes and the kind of basic 'knowledge assumed' list that passed as a recipe in cookbooks previously - and that's without mentioning the kind of cooking that mainly involved Jello that her countrymen happily snacked on at the time.
Anyway, the book tracks the growth of Child's career beyond her husband's, as well as the horribly heartbreaking end of their marriage through Paul's health and failing memory. I have to say that I did cry when he eventually passed away - Fitch does a great job in bringing out the love story as well as the business relationship between them. In fact, the two do rather intertwine - you couldn't have had one without the other.
There are a couple of failings to the book which seem to be peculiar to the biographical genre (and it was a bit strange to be identifying the same issues with The Poison King, given the contrasting subject matter). There's often unnecessary glossing of people, and repetition of events and information. The book comes in at a weighty 500 pages, so I see the point in not wanting people to get lost, but it does occasionally get a bit irritating. However, Fitch does do a good job of putting Child in her cultural context, and how her attitude to food seemed constantly to be fighting against either the 'scientific' cooking method (which favoured canned and frozen rather than fresh produce) or the hyper-healthy, no fat, no taste, diet-crazy style which swept the nation in the late 1980s and beyond.
I am very glad to have read this book, beyond Child's influence on American cookery; her life story in itself is extraordinary enough to deserve a book.
I decided I wanted to read this after watching Julie and Julia, where the character of Julie left me pretty cold but Julia Child left me wanting to know more. So obviously I went to the big biography of Julia Child, which this is. It's been quite interesting reading it over the course of the last few weeks because of the obviously lengthy sustained narrative interest in food and the nature of eating in the United States, especially given the surprising popularity of posts with my cooking tag and the beginning of my first ever CSA share.
Julia Child, for those who don't know (and I didn't), was a big American celebrity whose main claim to fame was teaching America how to do French cooking in a way that they could manage given their own resources and kitchen equipment. Her first book was Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which went into a second volume; there were also assorted books to tie in with television programs, where she got her real publicity and became a much-loved face for America, made mainly for PBS and public television rather than commercial stations. This book tracks her story from her birth in Pasadena, California, in 1912 to what must be shortly before the book's publication in 1997; Child died in 2004 a few days before her 92nd birthday.
Her life was... extraordinary, there's no other word for it. The first 30 years were standard West Coast rich girl, private school, Smith College, living at home with her father after her mother's death. With the Second World War she volunteered in the military, and ended up, of all things, as one of the key administrators in the spy network in Ceylon and China. This is where she met her husband-to-be, Paul Child, although neither of them quite realised what a love affair was going to spring out of their comfortable companionship and shared interest in local cuisine.
After the war, Paul continued in government service, and Julia went with him to Paris - where she got into French cooking and the rest is history. She had French collaborators on Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and fought for a new type of cookbook - one which gave home cooks who didn't know what they were doing clear enough instructions to recreate the sort of things one might eat at a restaurant. It's quite stunning to see the contrast between Child's meticulous recipes and the kind of basic 'knowledge assumed' list that passed as a recipe in cookbooks previously - and that's without mentioning the kind of cooking that mainly involved Jello that her countrymen happily snacked on at the time.
Anyway, the book tracks the growth of Child's career beyond her husband's, as well as the horribly heartbreaking end of their marriage through Paul's health and failing memory. I have to say that I did cry when he eventually passed away - Fitch does a great job in bringing out the love story as well as the business relationship between them. In fact, the two do rather intertwine - you couldn't have had one without the other.
There are a couple of failings to the book which seem to be peculiar to the biographical genre (and it was a bit strange to be identifying the same issues with The Poison King, given the contrasting subject matter). There's often unnecessary glossing of people, and repetition of events and information. The book comes in at a weighty 500 pages, so I see the point in not wanting people to get lost, but it does occasionally get a bit irritating. However, Fitch does do a good job of putting Child in her cultural context, and how her attitude to food seemed constantly to be fighting against either the 'scientific' cooking method (which favoured canned and frozen rather than fresh produce) or the hyper-healthy, no fat, no taste, diet-crazy style which swept the nation in the late 1980s and beyond.
I am very glad to have read this book, beyond Child's influence on American cookery; her life story in itself is extraordinary enough to deserve a book.
