In 1929, a newly married M.F.K. Fisher said goodbye to a milquetoast American culinary upbringing and sailed with her husband to Dijon, where she tasted real French cooking for the first time. The Gastronomical Me is a chronicle of her passionate embrace of a whole new way of eating, drinking, and celebrating the senses. As she recounts memorable meals shared with an assortment of eccentric and fascinating characters, set against a backdrop of mounting pre-war tensions, we witness the formation not only of her taste but of her character and her prodigious talent.
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
M. F. K. Fisher sees life stomach first. The New York Times said "She spit Puritan restraint out like a dull wine and made a life of savoring the slow, sensual pleasures of the table." And between meals, she savored the pleasures of men and travel, too. She recalls California in 1912, life in France in the 1930s, and traveling solo to Mexico in 1941. Her first oyster is a beautiful story, about adolescence and the glory of the briny mollusk, and her humor is as forthright as her taste at table.
Review
"I do not know of any one in the United States who writes better prose."--W.H. Auden
"Poet of the appetites."--John Updike
"Because The Gastronomical Me is autobiographical, following Mrs. Fisher from childhood to widowhood in different countries, we are able to see its food not only as a matter of personal taste, but as a perpetual emotional and social force within a life. Here are meals as seductions, educations, diplomacies, communions. Unique among the classics of gastronomic writing, with its glamorous but not glamorized settings, its wartime drama and its powerful love story, The Gastronomical Me is a book about adult loss, survival, and love."--Patricia Storace, The New York Review of Books
"She writes about fleeting tastes and feasts vividly, excitingly, sensuously, exquisitely. There is almost a wicked thrill in following her uninhibited track through the glories of the good life."--James Beard
"She writes about food as others do about love, but rather better."--Clifton Fadiman
"Poet of the appetites."--John Updike
"Because The Gastronomical Me is autobiographical, following Mrs. Fisher from childhood to widowhood in different countries, we are able to see its food not only as a matter of personal taste, but as a perpetual emotional and social force within a life. Here are meals as seductions, educations, diplomacies, communions. Unique among the classics of gastronomic writing, with its glamorous but not glamorized settings, its wartime drama and its powerful love story, The Gastronomical Me is a book about adult loss, survival, and love."--Patricia Storace, The New York Review of Books
"She writes about fleeting tastes and feasts vividly, excitingly, sensuously, exquisitely. There is almost a wicked thrill in following her uninhibited track through the glories of the good life."--James Beard
"She writes about food as others do about love, but rather better."--Clifton Fadiman
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
40 of 42 people found the following review helpful
By "annclpoet"
Format:Paperback
Do the former critics not read Tolstoy because he was a Count? I was born into a working class neighborhood in New York, and this is one of my favorite books. Being a gourmand is an enlightened point of view, a matter of personal taste. In my opinion this is Ms. Fisher's very best book. The writing, and the personality, are exquisite. Especially in the chapter about her Father and a childhood journey, and the discovery of her crush on a fellow boarding school student (female) and her love of oysters, at the same time! Am I the only one who feels that I've shared all of those wonderful meals with her when I put down this book? Great to pack along when you are traveling, even if you've read it before!
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
By "cloudia"
Format:Paperback
Fisher recounts her life through her intimate association with food, growing up, travelling alone to meet her formidable uncle (knowing when to order consomé,) eating blue point oysters at a sorority banquet, falling in love with her first husband, living with him in 1930s Dijon at a boarding house where the landlady made ananas au kirsch, divorcing him, nursing another sick husband, being wooed while still married, travelling on cruise liners, watching the rise of the Nazis in Europe, and finally travelling to Mexico in her widowhood. Fisher reveals food as a civilizing force, revelling in its sensual pleasure while remaining starkly aware of a world going wrong. She writes real characters; it's journalism in a short story style, using that technique of fiction. With remarkably serene prose, delicate and sensuous, Fisher shows herself to be a singular woman who understands all too well the foibles of humanity and gracefully counteracts them with an almost pious devotion to the riches and possibilities of elegant cuisine.
19 of 22 people found the following review helpful
By jumpy1
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
First I should admit I'm not a usual fan of MFK Fisher. I find her rambling and neurotic style a bit unsettling. Even in this book, one minute she's a snob and the next minute ... well I don't want to give it away. Nonethless, I loved it through and through. Much less neurotic or rambling than her other stuff. Marvelous stories. Wonderful points of view coming through. I really loved the story about that cook in her childhood who ... okay, I won't tell. If you like autobiography, this is a good one.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
"The baker had a fight with the chef soon after we left port, and the barber took over all the pastry making..."
Mary Frances had the perfect recipe for blending food writing and autobiography. Inimitable, and such a product of her era. Of all her books, this is the one most suitable for non-foodies. The Sensual Me might have been a better title. Food and drink (LOTS of drink) do get a lot of coverage, but that's only a slice of the book, not the whole pie. Along with the gastronomical, she offers up impressions visual, tactical, aural, and visceral.
The chapters are loosely connected snapshots of her life, roughly chronological but with large blocks of time unaccounted for.
She begins in 1912 at age four, with her first memory of an irresistible taste -- the foam on top of a kettle of strawberry jam. On through boarding school and her first live oyster, followed by a college gluttony phase, and then Dijon, France as a newlywed. Those early years in France brought the discovery that food was something to be relished and treated with reverence, and it set the course for her life as a gourmand and food writer. [A big chunk of this part of the book was lifted wholesale and plopped into a much later memoir, Long Ago in France, which I read a few months ago. Skip that one. This one's better.]
After they leave Dijon things get a little hazy, and I suspect some deliberate vagueness. Mary Frances started a new relationship while in the process of divorcing her husband. She never explains exactly how things developed between herself and Chexbres, the new man. They seem to have led a near-idyllic life in Switzerland until the coming war forced them to flee in the 1930s.... Read more ›
Mary Frances had the perfect recipe for blending food writing and autobiography. Inimitable, and such a product of her era. Of all her books, this is the one most suitable for non-foodies. The Sensual Me might have been a better title. Food and drink (LOTS of drink) do get a lot of coverage, but that's only a slice of the book, not the whole pie. Along with the gastronomical, she offers up impressions visual, tactical, aural, and visceral.
The chapters are loosely connected snapshots of her life, roughly chronological but with large blocks of time unaccounted for.
She begins in 1912 at age four, with her first memory of an irresistible taste -- the foam on top of a kettle of strawberry jam. On through boarding school and her first live oyster, followed by a college gluttony phase, and then Dijon, France as a newlywed. Those early years in France brought the discovery that food was something to be relished and treated with reverence, and it set the course for her life as a gourmand and food writer. [A big chunk of this part of the book was lifted wholesale and plopped into a much later memoir, Long Ago in France, which I read a few months ago. Skip that one. This one's better.]
After they leave Dijon things get a little hazy, and I suspect some deliberate vagueness. Mary Frances started a new relationship while in the process of divorcing her husband. She never explains exactly how things developed between herself and Chexbres, the new man. They seem to have led a near-idyllic life in Switzerland until the coming war forced them to flee in the 1930s.... Read more ›
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Having read this years ago -- and many other of M.F.K. Fisher's works over the years -- I found The Gastronomical Me to be a bit of a mixed bag, and a bit of a disappointment upon re-reading it in 2009.
Mrs. Fisher's work is like a maddening jigsaw puzzle, with bits of stories glossed over in one book, only to be written about again and fleshed out in more detail in another. Here, for instance, just when we're getting interested in her life with Chexbres (Dillwyn Parrish) we turn the page and read he's died -- the entire thing and his reasons for committing suicide glossed over, and in fact much of their life together glossed over. Then the book ends with a sequence in Mexico, the entire Crying Game-like reveal of which is too small to justify so much space in the book (hence I found it a weak ending, and terribly tedious to trudge through).
While initially charmed with the descriptions of life as a young couple in Dijon and the historical details of what that life was like (communal bathrooms and showers for the village people, making due with little more than a gas ring for a kitchen, some of the characters met along the way, and so on), upon re-reading this and acknowledging these elements (often referred to as the "travel memoir" genre today), what's left beyond seems a collection of sometimes pointless reminiscences that are sometimes maddeningly compressed while at other times maddeningly drawn out (and usually in the exact opposite places you want them to be).
Overall, one senses that while making her living as a writer who essentially shared her reminiscences with the world for money, Mrs.... Read more ›
Mrs. Fisher's work is like a maddening jigsaw puzzle, with bits of stories glossed over in one book, only to be written about again and fleshed out in more detail in another. Here, for instance, just when we're getting interested in her life with Chexbres (Dillwyn Parrish) we turn the page and read he's died -- the entire thing and his reasons for committing suicide glossed over, and in fact much of their life together glossed over. Then the book ends with a sequence in Mexico, the entire Crying Game-like reveal of which is too small to justify so much space in the book (hence I found it a weak ending, and terribly tedious to trudge through).
While initially charmed with the descriptions of life as a young couple in Dijon and the historical details of what that life was like (communal bathrooms and showers for the village people, making due with little more than a gas ring for a kitchen, some of the characters met along the way, and so on), upon re-reading this and acknowledging these elements (often referred to as the "travel memoir" genre today), what's left beyond seems a collection of sometimes pointless reminiscences that are sometimes maddeningly compressed while at other times maddeningly drawn out (and usually in the exact opposite places you want them to be).
Overall, one senses that while making her living as a writer who essentially shared her reminiscences with the world for money, Mrs.... Read more ›
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
MFK Fisher lives!
This is a replacement for a book I lost in moving. I love, adore MFK Fisher! There are 2 essays in the book that I have read and re-read and will read again: one called "Define... Read more
Published 20 days ago by Zoe
2.0 out of 5 stars
terrible
Maybe this book got better after the first half, but I couldn't get past it. This book is badly written, uninteresting and has no structure. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Wendy E
5.0 out of 5 stars
Splendid sketches of the making of a food writer
This is a great read for food lovers and francophiles. It isnt really a travel book at all, but Fisher's highly personal and frequently witty account of the experiences that... Read more
Published on January 10, 2010 by northkona
4.0 out of 5 stars
Way ahead of her time!
This is a terrific piece of history with lovely insights into food and love. She was naive, but eventually wise and always wonderful. A great read.
Published on August 19, 2009 by Judith
5.0 out of 5 stars
who else?
no one could have turned the culinary world into literature. she shames these narrow consumer-oriented marketeers like martha stewart. Read more
Published on July 23, 2001
3.0 out of 5 stars
liked it but had mixed feelings
like many of the other reviewers, i found that ms. fisher's account of some events exquisite while others were confusing. Read more
Published on February 15, 2001 by Yukari K. Matsuyama
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Bit Muddled
Despite moments of extreme beauty in this account of M.F.K. Fisher's life, the privelege of her life keeps a casual (re:poor) reader out. Read more
Published on January 4, 2000
2.0 out of 5 stars
For those with an appetite for snobbery
I could not finish the book because I felt as if I could not relate to her snobbery. Her life of privilege. Read more
Published on November 23, 1999
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