CultureWatch: Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste
Books
Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste
By Luke Barr
Published by Clarkson Potter, 2013; 322 pp.,
hardcover, paper, ebook, audio CD and download
Reviewed by Jill Norgren
In Provence, 1970 Luke Barr gives readers a thoughtful contemplation of post-World War II cooking history along with a delicious slice of foodie gossip. As the sub-title of the book suggests, he is primarily interested in cookbook and food writers M.F K. Fisher, Julia Child, and James Beard. The lesser known, but important American expat Richard Olney also makes an appearance.
Simone Beck, Julia Child and Louisette Bertholle cooking fish at L'École Des Trois Gourmandes © The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts
Barr argues that the 1970 meeting of these gastronomes, in their beloved Provence, stimulated a change in their culinary philosophies or, in the case of Beard, an opening to argue on behalf of the importance of American cuisine. Before their meeting Child, Fisher, and Olney had quietly deliberated the appropriate place of classic French cooking.
Formerly advocates of the rich, heavily sauced French haute cuisine, in 1970 these iconic American culinary gods met, cooked, and ate in the kitchens of their south of France homes and helped to usher in a new culinary era by articulating the problems and limits of formal French cooking. By considering whether haute French cooking was too complicated, "rarified," and snobby, and ultimately agreeing that it had these qualities, these luminaries pushed along a revolution in the middle class American food experience. Mastering Mastering the Art of French Cooking slowly yielded to a less snooty, healthier, and more democratic approach to good eating by Americans. As Barr writes, the moment and the meetings were about "American food and cooking finding its way from beneath the shadow of France."
Barr opens his story with Fisher who had begun visiting, and then living, in France well before World War II. She studied French literature and was photographed by Man Ray. By the 1940s the smart, beautiful American from California had "alchemized life, love, and food in a literary genre of her own invention." In the United States her readers experienced the pleasures of La Belle France, as understood by Fisher, in well-received books such as The Art of Eating and With Bold Knife and Fork. Her witty books along with a column in The New Yorker made her a founding member of the American "Food Establishment," a doyenne of food and love. And yet, by the late 1960s Fisher, who was in sympathy with the Vietnam antiwar movement and West Coast student movements began questioning how French culture fit in the changing, less formal world of the United States.
Later to the food scene than Fisher, Julia Child — co-author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking (I and II), Time magazine cover subject in 1966, and host of The French Chef on PBS — was the face of sophisticated cooking in the United States. Barr brings her into the circle of his story along with Richard Olney, a less well known but nevertheless important mind in the world of cookbook writing. At six foot three and three hundred pounds James Beard completed the group which met in Provence. Barr describes Beard as "the original modern American food icon ... a public figure since the 1940s — a relentless popularizer, author, and columnist."
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