The Culinary Imagination

Starred review from May 12, 2014
A rich stew of associations are served up in this rambling, flavorful survey of the cultural and literary meanings of food. Poet and critic Gilbert (Death’s Door) noshes from a vast buffet of eras and genres: scriptural eating, from Eve’s bite of the apple to the Last Supper; “food memoirs” that tell a life’s story through meals; abundant modernist fare, from Proust’s luscious madeleine to a Hemingway campfire cookout; kitchen-themed poems, mysteries, and movies, including the Pixar animated epic Ratatouille, which turns restaurant hygiene on its head; contemporary diet primers and bulimia confessionals. Sprinkled throughout are recipes, menus, and the author’s spicy recollection of her Sicilian-American family’s socio-gastronomic rites. Gilbert presents no particular thesis, but does tease out a theme: food’s role as the sine qua non of bodily reality, and thus intertwined with carnality, female eroticism, bourgeois pleasure, and, in Sartre’s Nausea, existentialist revulsion at virtually everything. The topics she covers are so many and wide-ranging that they sometimes feel shallow. But when Gilbert sinks her teeth into a subject—a vivid evocation of Julia Child’s magnetic personality, a skeptical take on slow-food romanticism—her evocative prose and shrewd analyses make for an intellectual feast. Photos.

June 1, 2014
A literary scholar investigates the cultural meaning of food.In this exuberant, wide-ranging look at what, how and why we eat, Gilbert (Rereading Women: Thirty Years of Exploring Our Literary Traditions, 2011, etc.) turns to poets and novelists, movies and art, food critics and celebrity chefs, memoirists and historians to consider the myriad and surprising ways that food reflects culture. She quotes Bill Buford in an epigraph that aptly sums up the book: "One of the great charismas of food is that it's about culture and grandmothers and death and art and self-expression and family and society-and at the same time, it's just dinner." Anyone who has ever written about food is likely to be found in these pages, including Proust, Woolf, Hemingway, Plath, Sartre, Homer and Shakespeare. Gilbert also looks at Wallace Stevens' "Emperor of Ice-Cream," William Carlos Williams' stolen plums, Gertrude Stein's many culinary references in Tender Buttons, and the Romantic poets, whose works frequently featured "magical or exotic foods" that heightened a sense of the fantastic. Julia Child takes center stage when Gilbert considers the popularity of food shows and the transformation of mainstream American cuisine; she also examines the influence of food critics (Ruth Reichl and others) and food memoirists. The genre called "foodoirs," writes Gilbert, "proliferate[s] like cookies and cupcakes...on bookstore shelves that used to be crammed with romance novels." These include celebrants, such as M.F.K. Fisher, and food avoiders, such as anorexic and bulimic women. Gilbert reveals her own rich food legacy from her Italian and Russian grandparents, making her early food experiences far different from that of her Jell-o-eating classmates. Although her mother prepared lamb chops and instant mashed potatoes, the author recalls a Thanksgiving turkey stuffed with a Ligurian recipe of spinach, mushrooms, sausage, parmesan cheese and garlic.Gilbert wears her scholarship lightly in this warm, lively inquiry into the social, political, ethical and aesthetic meanings of "food, glorious food!"

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September 1, 2014

It's no revelation that modern society is fascinated by food. Food writing is an increasingly popular genre, and food is a common theme in novels, art, movies, and on television. In this intensive social history, Gilbert (coauthor, The Madwoman in the Attic) questions why we meditate on food--its stories, history, and preparation. While the author doesn't provide a clear answer to this question, she traces the evolution of culinary imagination through history by examining myths, literature, memoirs, poems, children's books, art, and television. Going back to antiquity, the first section of the book examines the philosophical meanings of food and its lore, taboos, and practices. The second section demonstrates ways the invention of the "foodoir" or food memoir turned the act of thinking about food into a way of thinking about life. The final part of the volume examines related issues such as hunger, diets, and eating disorders. Gilbert's research is interspersed with bits of her own personal "foodoir," which makes for an uneven read but lightens the scholarly tone somewhat. VERDICT Extensively researched with a profusion of references, this work is appropriate for academic readers or the serious student of food literature.--Melissa Stoeger, Deerfield P.L., IL

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2014
Aesthetic endeavors interrelate at a profound philosophic level, and this masterful exploration of how gastronomy links with literary, pictorial, and performing arts ranges widely, displaying a very erudite and well-informed mind. Gilbert upends a classic theological assertion by meticulously demonstrating that food inspires literature and thus flesh is made word. Important themes derive from the writings of the incomparable M. F. K. Fisher, who indissolubly linked eating with sex. The advent of cooks, starting with Julia Child and the ever-entertaining Tony Bourdain, document contemporary celebrity culture. Other cultural phenomena, from Rabelais to Hemingway to The Simpsons, each have significant encounters with food. Gilbert tells how specific herbs summon up memories la Proust; in her own case, the aroma of tarragon recalls her mother, and oregano, her paternal grandfather. Philosophers whose stomachs hunger as much as their brains will find plenty to chew on here.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)