Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste

Luke Barr can write circles around most of his competitors. An expert on the construction of succulent sentences, he is equally good at the paragraph, and he's able to conjure up an entire lost city with the deft ease he expends on evoking a vintage cocktail or the exact level of asperity of each of Richard Olney's typically barbed comments. He can draw character, the doughty adventurousness of his great-aunt, or the trapped Gothic tragedy of poor little rich girl Eda Lord. Barr contrasts the California wine culture of Sonoma County, where his mother would take him to visit her aunt, food writer MFK Fisher, to the old world Provencal landscapes, enriched by three thousand years of continual cultivation. The very flowers and trees of old France seem to spring to life around him, as they do to Snow White as she moves through the groundbreaking Disney cartoon of the late 1930s.In general, I would say, the heterosexual characters in Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard et al come off best--Julia Child and her husband, Judith Jones the top food editor, MFK Fisher herself, with her outspoken claim on female agency and sexuality so head of her time. They're all great. (Well, maybe Judith Jones is a little colorless here.) On the opposite side of the spectrum, and the Kinsey scale, lurk the polyglot European monster Sybille Bedford (posing as a Brit, but a freakish combination of two Axis cultures) and her frightened and downtrodden girlfriend, US-born novelist and trust fund baby Eda Lord, and then there's Richard Olney, who is such a cat in this book--sucking up to the US foodie market while despising all Americans beyond those in his own family. Olney seems to have made a career, in Barr's depiction of him, of biting the hand that feed him. That's plain. It's true that Barr never, that I noticed, identifies Olney positively as homosexual, but he has painted the ugliest picture of a pissy queen since Clifton Webb played Waldo Lydecker in Laura.Somewhere in the middle we find openly gay James Beard, apparently the anti Olney in personality and a man beloved by all, but Beard is plagued by physical ailments which render him as monstrous as Olney--alcoholism and obesity--pleasure perverted into overindulgence.Barr has researched every day of November and December 1970 and gives us menus of the most dramatic meals; not only that but he tells us the tiniest details of the conversations of the principals while they cook and eat and drink together. And after awhile I began to feel like I was being had. Barr;s notes indicate that every syllable is accurate and based on a contemporary diary entry or letter, but something inherent in Barr's stratagem of constructing a total "you are there" narrativization of the events just about sits up and lure you into doubt. "He couldn't have known this," I said aloud, time and again. Like for example how was he able to construct every hideous thing Bedford and Olney have to say about their US visitors during one particularly vicious conversation? Did one or the other of them record all the slurs afterwards? They're evil, like the European decadents Gilbert Osmond and Madame Merle who make poor Isabel Archer's existence such a living hell in Henry James' 1881 masterpiece The Portrait of a Lady. Meanwhile in Barr the smart, visionary Americans all come to their senses and turn away from the nostalgia for prewar France that had threatened to moor them in shallow waters, and they return to a youthquake America, feeling the energy of something new happening on these shores.In every paragraph Barr drills this theme, as Child or Fisher or whoever stirs restlessly in the elaborate haunted French chateaux of Lord and Bedford. Yes, a change was coming in the food world ad it was coming from America and only these women (and James Beard) were canny enough to feel it.... but do we have to hear this a good three or four hundred times? I got it somewhere in chapter two.... no, on the book jacket copy, right up front.

Readers who enjoy France and the food of France will enjoy reading this book. Readers who are familiar with the writings or cookbooks of Julia Child (Mastering I-II), James Beard, Richard Olney and MFK Fisher will learn a bit more about them from this book. Readers who are now 'of a certain age' (just past middle age and older) will respond most favourably to 'Provence, 1970.' Do not fear that this material will seem 'dated:' I spent six weeks in France in 2013 and the insights into the national cuisine are still current. Partly, this is due to a rediscovery of the value of local and seasonal and artisanal ingredients and a recognition that tradition and modernity should enjoy a continuous dialog.Luke Barr writes with a clear and articulate voice. Moreover, he combines a journalist's instincts with the careful research and analytic turn of mind of a cultural historian. The work has its 'chatty' moments and its moments of 'appreciation' of each of the major authors' takes on food and how it worked as an integral part of their personal and professional lives. It is organized around a few days of shared experiences in Provence in 1970. Key menus and dishes are described and sometimes discussed. While Mr. Barr is related to MFK Fisher, he was not there and his carefully evoked account is based on research in diaries and letters written by one or more of the participants. This is not a detailed account of 'what went on' or 'what was said' or even of 'what we ate.' Basically this is the story of major egos and people of large accomplishments and 'large appetites' for life as well as for food. Neither is this any more than the most general discussion of 'what was changing' in the food world or even in the approaches to food and food writing that these authors were contemplating at that time.This is also an account of people who know how to enjoy living and life and are, mostly, having a jolly good time doing so. In socio-economic terms, they come from privileged backgrounds. Jim Beard's mother was a wealthy businesswoman; Julia Child's father was a newspaper publisher. MFK Fisher enjoyed an upper-class upbringing and seldom lacked for the patronage of well-to-do friends and admirers. Everyone here has had the strength of personality to 'grab life by the horns and to live life by their own terms,' as closely as they could manage it. Part of that story is clear from this book, too. I have read biographies of Julia Child and Beard's autobiography 'Delights and Prejudices' and almost all of the cookbooks referred to in the book. Readers who also have those books in their collections will want to read this overview to their heart's desire--be it to skim through or to savour page by page.Some readers will find the book to be repetitive or 'stretched out' in places and many of us will long for a bit more detail and depth to replace that content. I found much to like here and do not regret having read it.

This book is written by a grand-nephew of M.F.K. Fisher and is the story of the conjunction of the stars: Fisher, James Beard and Julia Child. They meet in Southern France and they go back and forth across the Atlantic, changing how Americans viewed and cooked food, expanding our horizons and also struggling with editors, wayward marriages, bad health and difficult partners and a life as a TV celeb. It's all great reading, and Barr does a superb job. Barr had access to the family records, which were boxes upon boxes of papers in a storage unit. Stacked--he said, to the ceiling. He went through them with patience and assiduity--and we are rewarded with this book, which has tidbits and stories, as well as information that you may never have read about M. F. K. Fisher. She was her own biographer in her essays, but her writing is veiled in many cases, so the view from the outside is one that adds perspective. We see much more about Julia (and Paul Child) as well as Simca (Simone Beck, co-author of Child) and sister Norah, Mary Frances' traveling partner. We even see more about "Chexbres" or Dillwyn Parrish, the love of her life and a painter. She was always oblique about "Chexbres" but we see him in the distance, true, but more directly.I'm a huge admirer of M. F. K. Fisher's essays, of which Auden said were the best of American literature. I so agree. So a funny moment: I'm acquainted with someone who was friends with Fisher and often spent time at the house in Glen Ellen. I asked her one day "Oh, so you knew M. F. K. Fisher. How I envy you--wish I had visited her when she was alive. I LOVE her writing." Blank stare from Fisher friend: "She...wrote?"

very interesting history of cultural influence and the way tastes are changed by a few forward thinking people.

good reading