EAT MY GLOBE

M.F.K. Fisher:

“The Founding Mother of the American Food Memoir”

Simon Majumdar (“SM”):

Hey, April.

April Simpson (“AS”):

Yeah, Simon.

SM:

What happened when the past, the present and the future walked into a bar?

AS:

I don’t know, Simon. What happened when the past, the present and the future walked into a bar?

SM:

It was tense.

[Laughter]

AS:

Oh my goodness.

SM:

[Laughter]

INTRO MUSIC

Hi everybody.

And welcome to a brand-new episode of Eat My Globe, a podcast about things you didn’t know you didn’t know about food.

TRIGGER WARNING: The following contains discussions about suicide.

Today, on Eat My Globe, I’m going to dedicate an entire episode on an author whose books were really not that well known in the United Kingdom, but I came across them when I worked at the Penguin Bookshop in the Department store of Liberty’s in London.

The first book I encountered was this author’s work on the life of Brillat-Savarin's “The Physiology of Taste: Or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy,” which Brillat-Savarin published in 1825 and which the subject of this episode translated in 1949.

From then on, I began to seek out other titles from this author. After the translation of Brillat-Savarin's, I then found myself reading other titles that were all about food. My favorite topic, “The Art of Eating,” was a book that contained five of this author’s most popular works. They were “Serve It Forth,” “Consider the Oyster,” “How to Cook a Wolf,” “The Gastronomical Me,” and “An Alphabet for Gourmets.” 

I found myself reading and re-reading these and soon went on to many other books.

There were books like “Among Friends,” “With Bold Knife and Fork,” and “The Cooking of Provincial France.” In the U.K., I felt like I had “discovered” a new friend because the books were not well-known as they were in the United States. I loved them and I think they stoked my own need to write my own – admittedly very different – memoirs on food.

The poet, W.H. Auden, described this author as

Quote

“America’s greatest writer.”

End quote.

The great Julia Child described this author as  

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“sensuous writer.”

End quote.

And the renowned chef, James Beard, called this author a mythological god or goddess

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“who descends to earth now and then.”

End quote.

So, who is this writer? Her name is M.F.K. Fisher.

University of North Carolina-Wilmington Professor Barbara Frey Waxman identifies M.F.K. Fisher as

Quote

“the founding mother of the American food memoir.”

End quote.

Which is where we get the title of this episode.

Mary Frances Kennedy was born in Albion, Michigan on July the 3rd 1908 into an Episcopalian family. It was another reason for me to like her because I had just graduated from an Anglican/Episcopalian Theological College just before I started to work at Liberty’s book store. Although that is, as they say, another story.

Mary Frances’ father, Rex Kennedy, would have named her “Independencia” if she had been born on the Fourth of July. Her mother, Edith, apparently, and I don’t blame her, did not like the name so according to Mary Frances herself, Edith encouraged her doctor to

Quote

“hurry things up a bit, in common pity. I made it on July 3, with about 11 minutes to go.”

End quote.

I wonder whether Mary Frances Kennedy – or M.F.K. – would be the same writer she would become if her parents named her “Independencia Kennedy”? Because as a relative would later say,

Quote

“I.K. would not have suited her well.”

End quote.

Anyway, her parents named her Mary after Mary Frances’ maternal grandmother.

Mary Frances’ early life was seemingly happy. Her father, Rex, owned a share of a newspaper and was a volunteer firefighter in Albion. Her mother, Edith, sang in the choir.

She had one brother, David, unfortunately who died by suicide in 1942. And two sisters, Anne, who died in 1965, and Norah, who died in 2014. Norah was a writer herself, although according to the Napa Valley Register, Norah thought that her family never really cared about her writing at all.

By the time Mary Frances was around four or so years old, in 1912, she and her family moved to Whittier, California, after her father sold his share in the newspaper back in Albion, and bought the Whittier News at what Mary Frances would later describe as quote, “suspiciously low price,” end quote.

Mary Frances found her love of food as a young child. In her book, “Among Friends,” for example, she fondly recounted the time a gentleman – who ended up living with her family when she was about 6 years old – showed up, showed her and her sister how to make butterscotch and lollipops. Sounds great. The problem, unfortunately, was that the gentleman sourced the sticks for the lollipops on the ground of the nearby school, and that his secret to not burning his hands while making the excellent butterscotch was to spit on his hands to cool it. Yikes.

[Laughter]

Mary Frances also loved to cook even as a child even though, as she told Emmy Award winning broadcast journalist Bill Moyers, she never considered herself a cook.

Just as with her love of food, Mary Frances’ love of writing also started at a young age. She told famed journalist and food critic, Ruth Reichl, that she wrote her first novel when she was just nine years old – apparently, a love story between a nurse and a sailor, a subject she admittedly knew nothing of.

[Laughter]

But Mary Frances started getting paid for her writing when she was around 23 years old. But, more on that later.

She studied at Illinois College, Whittier College, UCLA, and Occidental College. In 1929, she married her first husband, Alfred Fisher, when he was a PhD student. He was beginning a journey to Dijon, in France, as part of his doctorate, and she went there with him. There, she began to find herself immersed in the cooking of France. And, during her stay there, she had a meal what was to change her life and her thoughts on her career. Marin Living Magazine notes,

Quote

“[T]he inspiration for all that prose started after she savored a life-changing nine-course meal at Aux Trois Faisans restaurant in Dijon, France (the restaurant still advertises the fact that Fisher and her first husband discovered French food there).”

End quote.

After Alfred received his PhD, they returned to the United States in 1932 where Alfred began to get a job with Occidental University.

In Laguna Beach, where they settled, Mary Frances began to submit stories to a local magazine. Her first published story was known as “Pacific Village,” which was a fictional account of her time in Laguna Beach.

This was around the time she changed her name. One story goes that she first submitted articles with the name M.F.K. Fisher – using her initials and her married last name – because she supposedly did not want her father, Rex, to know about it. Another story goes that a publisher told her to use her initials because

Quote

“Women don’t write this way.”

End quote.

Whatever the reason, by 1937, M.F.K. Fisher, as she was now known, began sending her first book called, “Serve It Forth” to publishers. She chose the name M.F.K. Fisher, because it did not draw attention to her gender. Remember, around this time, other famous male writers used their initials when they published their work – like D.H. Lawrence’s, “Sons and Lovers,” in 1913, T.S. Eliot’s poem, “The Waste Land,” in 1922, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s book, “The Hobbit,” in 1937 – as well as some female writers like L.M. Montgomery’s novel, “Anne of Green Gables,” in 1908. So, yes, it made sense that using her initials did not bring attention to her gender particularly during that time when she’d probably not be taken seriously because she was a woman and a woman writing about food.

People who read her work thought that she was a man. A fact that led the first publishers of the book, Harper & Brothers, to become rather confused.

As Marin Living Magazine put it after an interview with Gregory Mark Bezat, who was making a documentary about M.F.K.,

Quote

“They were expecting a man and in walks this elegant — she was very beautiful — tall, lanky woman and they were just flabbergasted.”

End quote.

This is a fact that I can give some credence to, as when I read my first encounter with her on the life of Brillat-Savarin, I was convinced she was a man until I read the translation page.

Her first book, “Serve It Forth,” received glowing reviews such as this, from the New York Times:

Quote

“This is a book about food; but though food is universal, this book is unique. The first adjective for ‘Serve It Forth’ must certainly be ‘different.’ And as one reads on the mind takes note again and again of that different quality, and is charmed and shocked and entertained by it, in what the author has to say and in the way she says it. . . . This is a delightful book. It is erudite and witty and experienced and young.”

End quote.

Despite reviews like this, she did not make enough to be financially set. Indeed, even her freelance work for magazines did not prove to be very lucrative.

Unfortunately, M.F.K. and Alfred had now come to a point where their marriage was ending. They divorced in 1937.

And in that same year, she married Dilwyn Parrish, their Laguna Beach neighbor who was also a painter and an author.

Shortly after she married Dilwyn, whom she called Timmie, they learned that he suffered from Buerger’s disease, a rare disease that blocks blood vessels in the arteries of the limbs. The disease caused him unimaginable pain, and an amputation of his leg. This did not alleviate the pain and it led him to die by suicide in 1941.

When the journalist Bill Moyers asked her in an interview if Timmie was her, quote, “only true love,” end quote, she responded in the affirmative.

She later wrote a fictionalized story of their time together, called “The Theoretical Foot,” which was not published until after she died.

Jack Shoemaker, the editorial director of the publishing imprint, Counterpoint, described the book as

Quote

“a fictionalized version of the love affair of her life, and that’s why it is so important to see it into print.” 

End quote.

After this period, in May 1942, M.F.K. began to work as a writer for Paramount Pictures, which lasted for the best part of a year. She rented a small apartment near the studios.

In December 1942, she become pregnant. She did not reveal the father’s identity. She gave birth to her daughter, Anna, in 1943.

In the same year, she published “The Gastronomical Me,” which Ruth Reichl points to as the genesis of food memoirs. In one of the essays, M.F.K. describes a touching moment with her father Rex, and sister, Anne:

Quote

“It was a big round peach pie, still warm from Old Mary’s oven and the ride over the desert. It was deep, with lots of juice, and bursting with ripe peaches picked that noon. . . . . And we ate the whole pie, and all the cream . . . and then drove sleepily toward Los Angeles, and none of us said anything about it for many years, but it was one of the best meals we ever ate.”

End quote.

I love that. Oh.

I, too, remember the first time eating alone with my Baba and eating alone with my mum. And this passage spoke to me. It did. Whenever I read “The Gastronomical Me” it was just one of the best books I ever read. It really was. Oh. I must go and read it again actually.

The New York Times Book Review, on November 21, 1943 says of the book, “The Gastronomical Me”:

Quote

“Mrs. Fisher in searching for the truth about her gastronomical self has uncovered a good deal of humor and perception about human beings which lift her story considerably above table level.”

End quote.

And Kirkus Reviews wrote in 1943 that the book is

Quote

“true sophistication and subtlety, an acutely sensory appreciation and approach to autobiography – this life in which food and love have played paramount parts.”

End quote.

In 1945, she married Donald Freide, a publisher. She described this marriage as

Quote

“a short, dumb but good marriage.”

End quote.

And, indeed, M.F.K. and Donald shared lovely home meals using fresh ingredients during their marriage. He reasoned

Quote

“You are not likely to argue if you know that you will sit down to a lunch of lentil soup, with savory traces of onion and tomatoes and bay-leaves and bits of smoked sausages and toasted sour dough bread both flavored by and flavoring the soups served piping hot.”

End quote.

I agree, Donald. I agree.

M.F.K. and Donald had a daughter, Kennedy, in 1946.

Donald encouraged M.F.K. to translate Brillat-Savarin’s “Physiology of Taste,” which she says she did

Quote

“under duress.”

End quote.

Under duress or not, I’m glad she did it because as I said earlier, it was my first introduction to her work.

She and Donald divorced in 1948, although it was amicable. He would later publish her 1954 book, “The Art of Eating,” which, as I mentioned earlier, is a compilation of five of her earlier works.

In 1958, M.F.K. and her daughters moved to St. Helena in Northern California, where they hosted visitors and served them fresh vegetables, fruit punch, cheeses, charcuterie, bread and fresh butter. Oh. They moved to Switzerland and France for a few years, where they mostly ate out since they did not have a kitchen.

In fact, she was once described by Molly O’Neill of the New York Times as being

Quote

“A peripatetic writer and cook.”

End quote.

In 1964, her children had left home. It was also during a fraught time dubbed as the “Freedom Summer” in Mississippi, which was when a Black activist and two white civil rights activists were found murdered. This was the time she had decided to move to Piney Woods, Mississippi where she taught English literature at a school where the students were Black, and the teachers were half Black and half white. The students apparently enjoyed some of her classes. Although, she was angry when a librarian refused to loan out books to her students. Elsewhere in Mississippi, she observed frightened children, and a very noticeable police presence among an influx of civil rights activists.

She left Piney Woods in 1965, although she notes that the school did not ask her to return because she was

Quote

“a trouble maker.”

End quote.

When Ruth Reichl asked her about her time there, she said

Quote

“I wasn’t planning on writing anything about it. And I didn’t go there to fight anything. I just went. . . . I don’t like to talk about it.”

End quote.

By 1971, she’d moved to her final home. She described it as “The Last House” on Bouverie Ranch in Glen Ellen in Sonoma Valley, California. It was a two-room house which had been built on the grounds of a friend’s ranch.

And, it is where one of her biographers and friends, Ruth Reichl, described as being filled with,

Quote

“Piles of books, rivers of books, are everywhere.”

End quote.

In fact, this “Last House” had room for nearly 2000 books.

In the 1970s and 80s, she had finally become very well known in the United States for writing about food. A subject that, before her, had not been taken seriously.

It was as Ruth Reichl said about the time

Quote

“It is, I think, impossible for people raised in our food-obsessed culture to understand the contempt Americans had for food and cooking when I was growing up. Newspapers of the 1950s banished food to the ‘women’s pages,’ offering pleasant little recipes for ham cooked in Coca-Cola and tips for cleaning your kitchen.”

End quote.

But M.F.K. was one of the first, if not the very first, to start writing about cooking as a memoir. Nowadays, we think about the “Food Memoir” as being a very definite genre in book publication. Books like “Kitchen Confidential” by Anthony Bourdain, “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert, and even my own memoirs, “Eat My Globe,” “Eating for Britain,” and my recent book, “Fed, White, and Blue,” which I can definitely trace back to my reading of M.F.K. Fisher’s even though they are very different books to the ones that she wrote.

As Encyclopedia Brittanica says about her

Quote

“Fisher created a new genre: the food essay. Seeing food as a cultural metaphor, she proved to be both an insightful philosopher of food and a writer of fine prose.”

End quote.

What a shame then that so many people now seem to have forgotten about her. I anecdotally checked out listings of the top food memoirs and it does seem that too many people have forgotten M.F.K. Fisher despite the fact that she was the person that was the impetus behind it all.

But, those who do follow her, will know that she wrote around 35 books, she had hundreds of articles published, as well as thousands of letters. She was a close friend of Julia Child’s, Craig Claiborn and James Beard – of whom I have written about in other podcast episodes. And she was the subject of many biographies and essays and interviews about her work, including a documentary I talked about earlier by Gregory Mark Bezat.

In 1991, she was elected to the “American Academy of Arts and Letters,” which is an institute founded in 1898 to advance art and literature. By this time, she had been suffering from arthritis and Parkinson’s Disease. Yet, she kept on writing until her sight began to disappear. And even then, she had assistants that came in to help her. She spent her last days at the “The Last House” on Bouverie Ranch in Glen Ellen.

She passed away at 83 years old on June the 22nd, 1992.

M.F.K. Fisher will be remembered not just as a food writer. As journalist and New York Times critic, Raymond Sokolov, put it in The New York Times Book Review,

Quote

“In a properly run culture, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher would be recognized as one of the great writers this country has produced in this century.” 

End quote.

And I suspect, this century, too.

So, let’s remember M.F.K. and her enormous contributions to the food world. Cheers, M.F.K.

See you next week folks.

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OUTRO MUSIC

SM:

Make sure to check out the website associated with this podcast at www.EatMyGlobe.com where we will be posting the transcripts from each episode, along with all the references and resources we used putting the episodes together, in case you want to delve deeper into each subject. There is also a contact button, so please do let us know if there are any subjects that you would like us to cover.

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Thank you and goodbye from me, Simon Majumdar, we’ll speak to you soon on the next episode of EAT MY GLOBE: Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know About Food.

CREDITS

The EAT MY GLOBE Podcast is a production of “It’s Not Much But It’s Ours” and “Producer Girl Productions.”

[Ring sound]

We would also like to thank Sybil Villanueva for all of her help both with the editing of the transcripts, and essential help with the research.