Sustenance & Desire: A Food Lover's Anthology Of Sensuality & Humor [Hardcover]

Bascove (Author, Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 30, 2004

This is a book-lover's book about food: about taste, smell, touch, appetite, and all the pleasures of the table. It features 77 poems and prose pieces by some of the world's finest writers, from Basho to Betty Fussell, Colette to Calvin Trillin - all selected and complemented with illustrations by artist/anthologist Bascove, the creator of the best-selling Where Books Fall Open. The witty selections are complemented by fifteen full-color paintings by the editor, paintings whose "gently voluptuous figuration [is] beautiful...Their most deeply felt quality is a kind of animating tendresse all too rare today" (Gerrit Henry, Art in America). Beautifully conceived and lovingly produced, here is the perfect book for the most discriminating literary gourmet on your holiday gift list.

Some of the authors represented in Sustenance and Desire: Diane Ackerman · Roy Blount Jr. · Anne Caston · Lucille Clifton · Billy Collins · Robertson Davies · Michael Dorris · M.F.K. Fisher · Betty Fussell · Allen Ginsberg · Donald Hall · Jane HirschWeld · Langston Hughes · Jane Kenyon · Barbara Kingsolver · Maxine Kumin · Stanley Kunitz · Jhumpa Lahiri · Primo Levi · Audre Lourde · Elizabeth Macklin · Czeslaw Milosz · Vladimir Nabokov Pablo Neruda · Joyce Carol Oates · Mary Oliver · Marcel Proust · May Sarton · James Seay · Diane Wakoski · Derek Walcott · Richard Wilbur

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her 2002 anthology Where Books Fall Open, Bascove (a single-name Manhattan painter) juxtaposed writings about reading with her sensual artwork. Now she turns her eye to food, presenting works of prose and poetry, humor and history, along with her own paintings, divided into four sections: nourishment, desire, hunger and sustenance (each introduced by several quotations on comestibles). The artwork and writing are vibrant, witty, thoughtful and often a bit saucy. M.F.K. Fisher's musings on why she writes about food ("our basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled... we cannot think of one without the others") rub shoulders with a pithy poem by Les Murray ("vegetarians eat sex, carnivores eat violence"), while Jhumpa Lahiri's lyrical and lovely essay "Indian Takeout" is a curious contrast to Margaret Visser's discourse on the history of cannibalism. Donald Hall's "O Cheese," a paean to cheddar, Gorgonzola and Roquefort, is fabulous fun. The book offers fulsome praise of the experience of eating: an appreciation of its sybaritic nature, gratitude for its plenty, consideration of its place in society. Sustenance is thought provoking as well; for example, Primo Levi's "Last Christmas of the War," set in Auschwitz, reminds us that hunger is also closely linked with survival.
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Review

The artwork and writing are vibrant, witty, thoughtful and often a bit saucy. --Publishers Weekly

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 222 pages
• Publisher: David R Godine; First Edition edition (November 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1567922775
• ISBN-13: 978-1567922776
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #621,921 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WHAT A DELICIOUS FEAST!!, November 19, 2004

By 

Carol Weston "bookclubmom" (U.S.A.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sustenance & Desire: A Food Lover's Anthology Of Sensuality & Humor (Hardcover)

Sustenance and Desire is a wonderful book to savor by yourself and to give as a gift. Bascove's paintings are luminous, haunting, sensual, and fascinating. Nick and Cinnamon, p 208, is an incredible portrait of a boy with a bird, and the paintings of tomatoes, artichokes and peaches are lush, inspired and yes, erotic! Bascove also gathered a rich variety of poems and prose pieces that range from Jhumpa Lahiri on spices to Nabokov on mushrooms to Proust on madeleines and memory (how many of us have actually read that passage?). There are articles about aphrodisiacs and vegetarianism and cannibalism (!) as well as Barbara Ehrenreich's take on waitressing for tiny tips. Basho, Woolf, Kimic, Milosz, Kingsolver, Oates, Langston Hughes... It's as if Bascove threw a dinner party for the ages, and everyone came dressed in different styles and offering different treats. It's a smorgasbord you'll love and I offer you this taste, a short poem by Les Murray (p 9):
"A fact the gourmet euphemism can't silence:
vegetarians eat sex, carnivores eat violence."