In these pages, M.F.K. Fishers letters are made public for the first time. Selected and compiled by her younger sister, her longtime secretary, and a close family friend, these personal pieces reveal some of Fishers most private moments over six decades, giving ample display to her sharp wit and affectionate humor, her ongoing reflections on loss and the power to change. Years before she embraced writing as a profession, M.F.K. Fisher wrote letters. From early childhood to the end of her long life, Fisher corresponded with friends and family, in the process developing and refining the distinct style and voice that can be found in each of her twenty-six books.In these pages, Fishers letters are made public for the first time. Selected and compiled by her younger sister, her longtime secretary, and a close family friend, these highly personal pieces reveal some of Fishers most private moments, giving ample display to her sharp wit and affectionate humor, her ongoing reflections on loss and the power to change. Letters to her intimates--particularly her sister Norah Kennedy Barr and her lifelong friend Lawrence Clark Powell--illuminate the sensibilities and lifestyle of a woman who lived ahead of her time, a woman who juggled the demands of career and family long before the age of the liberated women.Six decades of correspondence sketch the story of a young adult who shouldered enormous domestic responsibilities as mother, wife, and daughter--a woman who managed to find success as a writer despite a paucity of money, time, and occasionally, spirit. These letters give voice to the self-doubt that lingered behind her strong public persona and tell of her long struggle to find a place in the world--not only as a writer but as a person. M.F.K. Fisher: A Life in Letters features an introduction by Anne Lamott, and includes thirty-two pages of photographs from Fishers family collection. Standing alongside her nonfiction, fiction translation, and journals, this collection represents an important addition to the oeuvre of one of Americas great literary talents.
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Amazon.com Review
What is the spell that M.F.K. Fisher casts over enchanted readers who, privileged, dip into her timeless culinary masterworks and occasional fiction? With this volume of never-before-published letters, fans who know M.F.K. only by such gustatory marvels as The Art of Eating and How to Cook a Wolf may now draw closer to the life--the loves and loves lost, the travails and travels--that inspired this woman of unique appetites, wit, and tastes.
In 1929, shortly after she turned 21, Mary Frances Kennedy married Alfred Young Fisher, and together they sallied forth to France. There her senses were freed, her artist's eye and culinary tastes refined, and she began a correspondence with family and friends that would become the raw material for many books to come; those first three years in southern France sharpened her eye for the telling moment, the curious detail.
This compendious collection of letters (which includes 32 pages of photos from her family collection) is divided into chronological blocks, introduced by brief biographical synopses. But nothing relates Fisher's rich life as poignantly as the voice that graces her letters: "Things go well here," she wrote in February 1950, having returned to the decrepit family ranch in California to care for her dying father and support her two daughters, "and the new cook, a quiet firm motherly farm-woman, promises to be just about what we need (...although I am still shuddering at one of our opening remarks, when I told her we all like to eat lots of fresh vegetables and she said, 'Oh, ja... t'ings like potato pancakes and sauerkraut...')."
Anne Lamott's tender forward to A Life in Letters is a panegyric in recognition of M.F.K. Fisher's shameless delight in and worship of earth's bounty, a balm to our fat-phobic, diet-dazed sensibilities. "She was," Lamott writes, "just about the last of the food people who did not get caught up in any modern madness, insisting instead on staying in the luxuriousness of taste and texture and communion." As these letters prove, it was a good recipe for a long life, filled with grace and gratitude.
From Library Journal
Jointly selected and edited by cultural/food critic Fisher's younger sister, a longtime secretary, and a personal friend and published here for the first time, these letters?literally hundreds of them?were written from either California (Whittier, Sonoma, and Napa) or Europe (mostly France). Frequent correspondents include Julia Child, librarian and scholar Lawrence Clark Powell (who contributed a preface), and various family members, among many others. Brief section introductions and photographs provide what little context is needed. At the onset, Fisher's writing is accomplished; the letters are brimming with details not only of food but clothing, surroundings, people, and the like. Fisher produced 26 books, and this volume should accompany them in almost all libraries.?Janice E. Braun, Mills Coll., Oakland, Cal.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
MFK Fisher's letters are a feast for the spirit...,
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This review is from: M.F.K. Fisher: A Life in Letters : Correspondence 1929-1991 (Hardcover)
If you love M.F.K. Fisher (and her writing, of course), don't miss this collection of her letters, compiled and edited by her sister, Norah Barr, and her long-time assistant, Marsha Moran. M.F.K. Fisher's books are a feast of words and ideas, and her letters are no exception. It's easy to see how she used letters to warm up to her other writing, and to think out loud. And what she might only allude to in one of her books is often explained in more detail in a letter to her close friend Lawrence Powell, or to her Aunt Grace, or to her sister Norah, known affectionately as Noni. Mary Frances' letters give us some answers to our many questions about her personal life. For instance, what really went wrong between her and her first husband, Al Fisher? How did she handle the pretense surrounding the birth of her daughter Anne? Who was her life's truest love? These and other questions are answered, although the answers may surprise you.... One of many striking things about her letters is that in them she is always herself, at turns loving, irreverent, bitchy, confident. Another is that, when read chronologically, the letters give us a good look at Mary Frances' feelings about the aging process, and her own part in it. Through her letters we feel a sense of her awareness and hope, even as she is inconvenienced by the infirmities of age; we can see that her spirit remains youthful and unscarred, and this gives us hope for ourselves. Yes, many questions have been answered for me after reading M.F.K. Fisher's letters, yet many questions remain. I'm glad I don't know everything there is to know about her; I treasure her complexity and the fact that she cannot easily be explained, even by herself! The letters collected here will be read for years to come in an attempt to understand the whys and hows of her life. The book will continue to offer us a great deal of satisfaction, and definitely another chance to feast at the table of her life. Her letters say many things to many people, but above all, they say it honestly.
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