Archive for January, 2011

Literary Mileage
Telex from the Key West Literary Seminar

Monday, January 17th, 2011

January 13

Even today well-brought-up English girls are taught by their mothers to boil all veggies for at least a month and a half, just in case one of the dinner guests turns up without his teeth. Calvin Trillin

With a mouth-watering theme like “The Hungry Muse: An Exploration of Food in Literature,” I was expecting a feast of commentary, readings, panelists, and descriptions of elegant food at this year’s Key West Literary Seminar. I was not disappointed.
Besides the intellectual banquet, Calvin Trillin, Roy Blount, Jr., and Julia Reed were among the roster of food luminaries who provided comic relief for an audience of 350, keeping us indoors despite the seductive sunshine of the Keys.
I learned that, as much as I love eating and some adventurous cooking, I am not a ‘foodie.’ These folks KNOW food and wine. It is in their DNA. They scoff at prepared foods. One panel did an hilarious riff on Kraft macaroni and cheese (remember that garish orange dried cheese?), a staple of my diet when I was younger. I am sure that fish sticks and hotdogs have never crossed the lips of Ruth Reichl, Madhur Jaffrey, or Judith Jones.
Besides mouth-watering descriptions of Indian food and spices, varieties of mushrooms, homemade mayonnaise, and making baklava, we heard the ‘real’ story behind the movie, “Julie and Julia” by Judith Jones, the editor that convinced Alfred A. Knopf to publish Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Several panelists talked about the historic role of food in the U.S. and other countries, as well as the politics of food production in America and the obesity epidemic.
The entire seminar explored why people today love reading and writing about food (or watching TV shows about it). A session titled “Cultural Stew: Spicing up Language and Life” began with food descriptions, but panelists soon turned to food as a metaphor for love, heart, relationships, and its power to evoke memory. Joy Harjo sums it up in the final line of “Perhaps The World Ends Here”: Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.
***
Read about the speakers at: http://www.kwls.org/lit/2011/speaker_list_2011.cfm

An audio archive of the presentations will soon be available at www.kwls.org.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

 

| Newer Entries »

Copyright © 2011 Judy Leaver. All rights reserved. Design by Adam Sweeney Creative.