A book, for me, always went well with food. There is some close connect between the act of chewing a tasty morsel and that of reading. Fiction serves the best experience. And poetry at wine tastings is not unheard of.
If you ask me about food in fiction, I instantly recall that I could manage to up my son's appetite a notch, when he was feverish as a child, by reading a picnic scene from an Enid Blyton aloud to him.
If you ask me about food in fiction, I instantly recall that I could manage to up my son's appetite a notch, when he was feverish as a child, by reading a picnic scene from an Enid Blyton aloud to him.
The food of Enid Blyton is often the first thing people remember about her books, and with good reason.
“A large ham sat on the table, and there were crusty loaves of new bread. Crisp lettuces, dewy and cool, and red radishes were side by side in a big glass dish, with great slabs of butter and jugs of creamy milk…”
“There were great chunks of new-made cream cheese, potted meat, ripe tomatoes grown in Mrs Lucy’s brother’s greenhouse, gingerbread cake fresh from the oven, shortbread, a great fruit cake with almonds crowding the top, biscuits of all kinds, and six jam sandwiches!”
This page rocks as food porn:
"A large ham sat on the table, and there were crusty loaves of new bread. Crisp lettuces, dewy and cool, and red radishes were side by side in a big glass dish, great slabs of butter and jugs of creamy milk" – Five Go Off in a Caravan.Simply put:
“You can’t have adventures on an empty stomach,” reasoned Dick.
“Lettuce, tomatoes, onions, radishes, mustard and cress, carrot grated up – that is carrot, isn’t it, Mrs. Penruthlan?” said Dick. “And lashings of hard-boiled eggs.” There was an enormous tureen of new potatoes, all gleaming with melted butter, scattered with parsley. There was a big bottle of home-made salad cream. “Look at that cream cheese, too,” marvelled Dick, quite overcome. “And that fruit cake. And are those drop-scones, or what? Are we supposed to have something of everything, Mrs Penruthlan?”
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| C.S. Lewis’s Greatest Fiction Was Convincing American Kids That They Would Like Turkish Delight |
The first chapter explores animal welfare and meat and the power dynamics between humans and animals in The Magic Finger (1966), Danny the Champion of the World (1975), and Fantastic Mr Fox (1970). Sweets and the notion of cautionary consumption form the focus of the second chapter, which will examine Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), Boy (1984) and The Witches (1983). The third chapter considers the effects of convenience food on mealtimes and notions of proper consumption in The Twits (1980), The BFG (1982), and Matilda (1988). The thesis concludes with an analysis of the representation of futuristic foods in James and the Giant Peach (1961), George’s Marvellous Medicine (1981) and Willy Wonka’s factory in Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972).
Be it Seuss and his Green Eggs and Ham or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, there exist lashings of food fiction for the young.
However, children grow up and grown-ups also need feeding. Tomorrow, we shall sample the various themes in food fiction for the adult.
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