Balzac's Omelette : A Delicious Tour of French Food and Culture with Honore'de Balzac.

ISBN:

9781590514740

Title:

Author:

Muhlstein, Anka.

Personal Author:

Muhlstein, Anka.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (150 pages)

Contents:

Intro -- Other Books by This Author -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Map -- Chronology -- Introduction -- I Balzac at Mealtimes -- II Paris at Mealtimes -- III Great Occasions -- IV Family Life -- V The Misers and the Food Worshippers -- VI A Young Peach, a Soufflé, and a Towering Dessert -- Notes -- Credits -- About the Author.

Local Note:

Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2023. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.

Subject Term:

Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850--Criticism and interpretation.

Gastronomy in literature.

Food habits--France--History.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view book

Publication Date:

2011

Publication Information:

New York :

Other Press,

2011.

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
843.7	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ON-DEMAND	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

"Tell me where you eat, what you eat, and at what time you eat, and I will tell you who you are. "This is the motto of Anka Muhlstein's erudite and witty book about the ways food and the art of the table feature in Honoré de Balzac's The Human Comedy . Balzac uses them as a connecting thread in his novels, showing how food can evoke character, atmosphere, class, and social climbing more suggestively than money, appearances, and other more conventional trappings.
Full of surprises and insights, Balzac's Omelet invites you to taste anew Balzac's genius as a writer and his deep understanding of the human condition, its ambitions, its flaws, and its cravings.

Author Notes

Anka Muhlstein was born in Paris in 1935. She has published biographies of Queen Victoria, James de Rothschild, Cavelier de La Salle, and Astolphe de Custine, a study on Catherine de Médicis, Marie de Médicis, and Anne of Austria, and a double biography, Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart. She is currently writing a volume on Proust as a reader. She has won two prizes from the Académie Française and the Goncourt Prize for Biography. She and her husband, Louis Begley, have written a book on Venice, Venice for Lovers. They live in New York.

Adriana Hunter studied French and Drama at the University of London. She has translated nearly forty books including works by Agnès Desarthe, Amélie Nothomb, Frédéric Beigbeder, Véronique Ovaldé, and Catherine Millet, and has been short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize twice. She lives in Norfolk, England.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Felicitous phrasing, a scholar's sage scope, and enormous fondness for Balzac's panoply of characters mark this charming, intimate look at the French novelist's depiction of the highs and lows of 19th-century French society, as reflected in its culinary offerings. Muhlstein (Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart) explains how Balzac, boarded as a youth at schools by his busy, distracted parents, and for whom food had been a source of humiliation rather than pleasure, grew to love the pleasures of the table as a way to infiltrate "domestic dramas"; personally, he acquired near ascetic habits while writing 12 hours a day. He could throw himself into a bacchanal feast once the manuscript was finished (and charge the bill to his publisher), procuring a famous rotund belly as a result. From the publications of Les Chouans (1829) onward, the culinary rituals of the French were undergoing transformation. Restaurants flourished and lunch was prized by the young and insouciant, such as at Flicoteaux, frequented by the youth in Lost Illusions, for example, or meals at unsavory boarding houses like Madame Vauquer's cacophonous 18-seat dining room of Pere Goriot or at banquets of the newly rich, such as Taillefer's, in The Magic Skin, where feasts were presented like an elaborate stage play and usually ended in a debacle. Muhlstein delves lovingly into Balzac's characters, misers and gluttons alike, and finds the presentation of food an important indicator of social status, and well-cooked food equal to a woman's love. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Library Journal Review

Delicious is right; who could turn down the opportunity to revisit French food and French culture with the Goncourt Prize-winning Muhlstein, noted biographer of folks like Queen Victoria and Cavelier de La Salle? Grounded in Balzac, this meditation works via the motto, "Tell me where you eat, what you eat, and at what time you eat, and I will tell you who you are." (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Excerpts

The most astonishing illustration of Balzac's taste for ephemeral luxury is the meal he had delivered to him in prison; yes, Balzac was in prison for a spell, not for debts but for evading--several times--his duty to serve in the National Guard. Every citizen who lived in Paris had to spend a few days a year on guard duty, and those who failed were condemned to a day's incarceration. Deeming this constraint intolerable, Balzac succeeded in avoiding it on numerous occasions, most often by claiming he was traveling or by simulating a house move: he would stay with a friend for a few days and wait for the danger to pass. Sometimes he did not escape in time but wriggled out of the tight spot by offering a few gold coins or a couple of good bottles of Vouvray to the arresting agents…until the day when he eventually had to submit to the law and was unceremoniously dumped at the Hôtel des Haricots, the National Guard's own prison. Once he was settled in his third-floor cell, he sent his valet to his publisher, Werdet, with a note asking him to send money.Werdet complied immediately, and went to the prison armed with two hundred francs. To his considerable surprise, Balzac thought the sum miserly but invited him in to dine. He had arranged to have a meal delivered from Véfour, and explained to Werdet that he had deliberately chosen one of the most expensive restaurateurs in Paris because, on his release, he wanted to leave behind memories of "every tradition in the art of fine living." So, down they went to the refectory at the agreed time and, at one end of a long table, they saw a magnificent meal set for two. It was theirs. The two friends enjoyed a succulent dinner; Balzac proved in excellent humor when, at about seven o'clock, the door opened and another draft-dodger came in: Joseph-François Michaud, editor-in chief of La Quotidienne, a royalist newspaper to which Balzac gladly contributed. Michaud eagerly accepted the invitation to share in Balzac's "modest" meal, and the evening ended in very high spirits. Excerpted from Balzac's Omelette: A Delicious Tour of French Food and Culture with Honore'de Balzac by Anka Muhlstein 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.