An Extravagant Hunger [electronic resource] : The Passionate Years of M.F.K. Fisher

ISBN:

9781582438696

Title:

Author:

Zimmerman, Anne.

Personal Author:

Zimmerman, Anne.

Publication Information:

Berkeley : Counterpoint, 2011.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (273 p.)

General Note:

Description based upon print version of record.

Contents:

Contents; Foreword: Honeymoon; 1 A Growing Appetite; 2 The Art of Knowing Yourself; 3 Ready, At Last, to Live; 4 A Charmed Gastronomic Circle; 5 Letters and Loneliness; 6 The Pain of Absence; 7 Depression; 8 Unspeakable Thoughts; 9The Edge of Ripeness; 10 A Pendulum of Desire; 11 Landscape of Love and Sorrow; 12 The Color of Mourning; 13 A Place in the World; Epilogue; Acknowledgments; Author's Note; Bibliography and Sources; Notes; Index

Subject Term:

Authors, American - 20th century.

Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography.

Fisher, M. F. K.

Fisher, M. F. K. (Mary Frances Kennedy), 1908-1992.

Food writers - United States.

Food writers -- United States -- Biography.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view book

Publication Date:

2011

Publication Information:

Berkeley : Counterpoint, 2011.

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
641.092	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ON-DEMAND	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

In An Extravagant Hunger , time slows and is relished, and the turning points and casual strolls of M.F.K. Fisher's life are unwrapped and savored. From the Berengaria that washed her across the sea to France in 1929, to Le Paquis, the Swiss estate that later provided a backdrop for some of the most idyllic and fleeting moments of her life, the stories of Fisher's love for food and her love for family and men are meticulously researched and exquisitely captured in this book. Exploring Fisher's lonely and formative time in Europe with her first husband; her subsequent divorce and re-marriage to her creative sparkplug, Dillwyn Parrish, and his tragic suicide; and the child she carried from an unnamed father, the story of M.F.K. Fisher's life becomes as vibrant and passionate as her prolific words on wine and cuisine.

Letters and journal entries piece together a dramatic life, but An Extravagant Hunger steps further, bridging the gaps between personal notes and her public persona, filling in the silences by offering an engaging and unprecedented depth of intuitive commentary. With a passion of her own, Anne Zimmerman is the careful witness, lingering beside M.F.K. Fisher through her most dramatic and productive years.

Author Notes

Anne Zimmerman was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. She holds a BA from Linfield College and an MA from San Diego State, where her thesis was a biographical study of the life of M.F.K. Fisher. She has spent extensive time researching Fisher at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College and is a food enthusiast and contributor to Culinate.com. She lives in San Francisco, California.

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Zimmerman, a contributor to Culinate.com, explores the privileged yet emotionally turbulent world of the pioneering American food writer Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher. In her sympathetic yet critical biography of the life behind Fisher's celebrated writings, Zimmerman finds a passionate woman defined by "lifelong hungers." Using access to Fisher's private letters and with help from the family, Zimmerman paints Fisher's emotions and discoveries that she realized in those moments where her personality and adventurous palette intersect. "Her desire for food, for love and for attention of any kind, was relentless," writes Zimmerman. "Food helped her understand the world." In turn, Zimmerman's carefully crafted narrative urges readers to connect Fisher's expanding self-awareness to the literary career she built. It also maps the unique tastes Fisher found, then sensuously described along her way from a California childhood to her European (mostly French) and Mexican odysseys; three marriages; and the suicides of her second husband, Tim Parrish, in 1941 followed by that of her brother David a year later. This focused, smart, and engaging view serves MFK Fisher as both culinary writer and cultural icon. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

The hunger for more and more insight into the life of M. F. K. Fisher continues unabated. Zimmerman draws on the archives of Fisher's papers for this detailed account of the early years of the great gastronome and food writer. Although information on Fisher's youth in Whittier, California, is sketchy and incomplete, the aesthetic pleasures of good eating attracted her early on, and she was able to focus herself on the details of tastes, smells, and colors of just about everything she put in her mouth. College, first in Illinois, then back in California, introduced her to a host of new friends and to her first husband, Al Fisher. Embarking on a honeymoon abroad, they eventually ended up in Dijon, France, which proved to be her spiritual home. Zimmerman details the marriage's breakup, Fisher's remarriage, her second husband's suicide, and her contrarian attitudes about life and love.--Knoblauch, Mark Copyright 2010 Booklist

Library Journal Review

Zimmerman, a San Francisco-based food and wine writer, reveals the personal life of American food writer M.F.K. Fisher (1908-92) in this well-researched and absorbing biography. Nearly half of Zimmerman's investigation covers Fisher's eight-year marriage to her first husband, Albert Fisher. Although this marriage brought M.F.K. Fisher to France from 1929 to 1932 and introduced her to culinary delights unheard of in her family's Whittier, CA, home, the relationship severely lacked intimacy and zeal. It was during her adulterous affair with Dillwyn Parrish, and their tragically short-lived marriage, that Fisher's passion bloomed. Indeed, Zimmerman's telling of Fisher's story moves from entertaining to exhilarating with the appearance of Parrish near the midway mark. While weaving the influence of food throughout the entire narrative, Zimmerman discusses Fisher's publishing career, her immediate family, and the birth of her first daughter to an unnamed man. She rightfully presents Fisher as an independent spirit who did not acquiesce to the domestic duties she despised but found the strength to follow an inner voice that desired more. Verdict Fans of Fisher and readers in women's studies will want to pick up this compelling biography.-Stacy Russo, Chapman Univ. Libs., Orange, CA (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Excerpts

Excerpt from An Extravagant Hunger In the introduction to the British version of The Art of Eating , W.H. Auden said, "I do not know of anyone . . . who writes better prose." His words about M.F.K. Fisher are perhaps the most authentic analysis of her style. Although many people write about food and hunger, there are few who write about it well. Rarer still is a writer who composes prose with the precision and grace of M.F.K. Fisher. Her lines are imbued with poetry and philosophy that could make the greatest of writers weep. M.F.K. Fisher had many literary successes and experienced a significant rise in fame as the United States began to appreciate the highest quality of food and wine. Her later writing was collected and well-loved, but it is often her early works-- Serve it Forth , Consider the Oyster , How to Cook a Wolf , The Gastronomical Me , and her translation of Brillat-Savarin's The Physiology of Taste --that are adored, dog-eared, stained with the deep red imprint of the base of a wine glass, kept on the favored part of the shelf, and returned to again and again. It was her early works that established food writing as a genre and named M.F.K. Fisher as its queen. But it is the strength of her writing that keeps her from being dethroned. Simply put, there's still no one today who writes about the transcendental experience of eating and drinking better than M.F.K. Fisher. She forever changed how the world thinks, and writes, about food. Excerpted from An Extravagant Hunger: The Passionate Years of M. F. K. Fisher by Anne Zimmerman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.