Where to File?
Monday, May 4th, 2009The NYT has a fun essay by Geoff Nicholson about food and eating in literature.
I’ve realized that the moments of literary eating I like best are the ones in which the characters suffer because of their food. In “Gravity’s Rainbow,” for instance, there’s an early scene in which the wartime inhabitants of a London maisonette enjoy bananas served in myriad forms, including mashed bananas “molded in the shape of a British lion rampant.” This is good stuff, but the truly magnificent scene in the book has Tyrone Slothrop sampling various hideous English candies, flavored with the likes of quinine, pepsin, eucalyptus, tapioca, until, choking, he’s offered a Meggezone, “the least believable of English coughdrops.” This is a real product, a nasty little black lozenge, still available, and if my childhood memory is reliable, Pynchon’s description of its effects — “Polar bears seek toenail-holds up the freezing frosty-grape alveolar clusters in his lungs” — gets it about right.
The article led me to Nicholson’s blog, Psycho-Gourmet. Very funny, indeed. But I read my blogs with Google Reader – now stylishly updated by mr. twoumbrellas with Helvetireader. I have a folder for food blogs and a folder for literary blogs. Where, oh, where should I file this one? I think I’ll put it with the food blogs; but I love when literature and food collide.