Erin's pick for May

"Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage" by Alice Munro, her 10th collection of short stories.

From Publisher's Weekly: "All of the stories share Munro's characteristic style, looping gracefully from the present to the past, interpolating vignettes that seem extraneous and bringing the strands together in a deceptively gentle windup whose impact takes the breath away. Munro has few peers in her understanding of the bargains women make with life and the measureless price they pay."

I suggest that we begin discussion on June 1. Because it is a story collection, we may be able to read along as we discuss, as we are with Christy's pick.

"F is for family"

One of my favorite quotes from the series:

"The cold truth is that family dinners are more often than not an ordeal of nervous indigestion, preceded by hidden resentment and ennui and accompanied by psychosomatic jitters."

"E is for Exquisite"

Fisher writes: "In my private lexicon of gastronomy, I continue to see the word 'exquisite' ringed with subtle vapors of perversion."

What is the difference between exquisite and debauchery in the sense of eating? Or entertaining?

Also, does exquisite eating, as Fisher suggests, require the outlay of a lot of money?

Have you eaten an exquisite meal you can recall? Or what would be on the menu?

"D": Dining out

It's not my favorite essay, but I liked what Fisher had in this segment. She continues to link dining with celebration and sensual pleasure, and she frowns upon those who see "dining out" as a chore or routine habit.

"Dining out" is usually special to me just because it's too costly. I wonder how it would be different to work in an industry with regular business lunches and dinners. Just combining work and business etiquette with eating would, I think, steal away the sense of anything special.

She goes on to recount how she entertained a bigwig by choosing just the right restaurant, ordering the meal and arranging for the bill and tips in advance.

I found this a trifle braggy and wondered what everyone else thought. I suppose she was seen as a leading figure in entertaining, and so her personal anecdotes were welcome advice. And ordering for others in a dining-out scenario seemed archaic.

On the other hand, as a woman, she may have been displaying her own power, as the host who could commandeer the best table, service, pick the food and wine -- traditional men's roles in the time she speaks of.

"C" correct vs. careless

Fisher also uses “C” to point out that cook with the right books and references, whose sauces follow a reputable recipe to a science, and assigns them the dubious title of “Cautious.” Don’t you think that’s applicable to people in a lot of arts and skills? They take a mechanical approach to learning about art or music or another subject like they’re studying for a final exam where there are only some “right” answers, which don’t take their own tastes into account.

Or you have people who profess an interest in a subject but learn nothing about it. Did anybody see Woody Allen’s “Hannah and her Sisters” and remember the artist who was irate that some rock musician wanted to buy something to complement his furniture?

Ben is a great example of how not to be either. He knows a tremendous amount about music but will tell people exactly what he likes or doesn’t like without worrying about what they think, because he’s confident in his own taste. I could envision him critiquing Beethoven or Bach when most people would be too cowed by what they’re told is “good” to speak up. And if he didn’t know much about another subject, he would just say so rather than bluff his way through a conversation.

I’m getting away from the book, here, but think it’s applicable -- a “correct” host just isn’t as much fun. They have their own party but don't trust their own tastes to please friends.

"C": enthusiasm

I also like how Fisher critiques hosts for their enthusiasm over taste or skill.

She describes a host: “... with no innate good taste, whose meals are incredibly and coarsely and vulgurly overlaborate and rich, but present them with such high spirits that they are unfailingly delightful.”

"C is for cautious"

This essay explores the idea of how much ambience contributes to a meal -- as important as the main dish.

A host's caution can be charming, but usually it's contagious, like a tangy vinaigrette that's been indiscriminately squirted all over a meal. It makes a guest nervous for the host, unless you're impervious to the mood. (Sometimes I wish I were one of those people -- people who talk loudly and crack their gum and walk around work barefoot -- they must be happy to be so indifferent to everyone around them.)

Fisher calls it them "the inescapable vapors of timidity and insecurity," and I think they manifest themselves most strongly at bridal and baby showers. This may be because nobody ever really wants to go to one of these things, and the nervous hostess must rally the troops anyway. The women choke down frosted cakes and Sugary, Vile Punch (I contributed a Sugary, Vile Punch to the last shower I attended, on mistaken faith in my mom's recipe), but the sweet cannot overcome the sour mood stemming from the need to break into insincere applause every time the guest of honor opens another Diaper Genie.

Still, at that shower, the hostess did a great job because she was in her element -- her natural thoughtfulness, graciousness and good taste didn't make the handmade, pink and baby-blue mints seem pretentious. Yet other friends who would carouse about Westport in our younger days would, upon taking a hostess turn, turn into automotons and hand me a glass of weak sangria and dash off to the kitchen to reheat the mini-quiches. It's not growing up, it's conforming to a vague idea of what a proper hostess will do.

Maybe the difference is the motive of the hostess: Whether she wants everybody to have fun, or whether she wants everybody to approve.

"B" and men cooking

As in the quote from the last post, Fisher regards men's cooking as synonymous with seduction and not from the pleasures of gastronomy. The idea of a man making a home-cooked meal sounds charming and antiquated to me, but that could be the company I've kept in the past.

We ran a wire story (I wish I could find the full version) on the food industry taking an interest in men who viewed cooking beyond what you could slap on the grill with a Pabst in hand. Here's the article, but note the sex element still comes into play:

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2007/mar/21/food_industry_reaching_out_men/

'B is for Bachelors'

Fisher writes of bachelors .... "Their approach to gastronomy is basically sexual, since few of those under 79 will bother to produce a good meal unless it is for a pretty woman."

This was one of the most enjoyable essays in the series and represents of the reasons I like Fisher so much; she's not only knowledgeable about food, she understands the motivations that lie beneath the sum of a meal.

I love her rules for conduct in this piece, too, that she considers it her honest duty to ascertain said bachelor's "direct or indirect" approach and then let him know ahead of time of his chances at bedding her. It makes her a frankly appealing woman of the world, not the type to toy with a man's feelings through a three- or five-course courtship and then leave him cold.

(As in "A," she notes her ability to hold her liquor in a self-conscious manner. Did she drink a great deal in the context of a gourmet diner? Is it a postwar cocktail-hour kind of norm? Or did you get the feeling she wrestled with the bottle on a personal level?)

'A' continued

"It took me several years of such periods of being alone to learn how to care for myself, at least at table."

Fisher seems to come full circle with dining alone to realize that she's worth more than a meal of soup and crackers if nobody has "chosen" her as a dinner companion. Again, this may be more of an issue for women, but it seems like the norm for adults is to put their life on hold until somebody agrees to complete them. They don't buy houses, don't take vacations, don't have children, like the things that give them satisfaction and/or stability require the sanction of another human being who agrees to go along the same path.

I am guilty on all counts mentioned there, and I think my interest in cooking that began at age 31 was finally that exact sense of "care of myself, at least at table." I was worth more than a plastic Lean Cuisine entree or McValue meal even if I was eating alone. Mine may have been a case of arrested development, but it reminds me of a co-worker asking whether I'd been on a cruise before (prior to the one I took last week with my mother). And I just answered no, but thought, "Right, why would I? My friends go with their husbands, and nobody else has asked me." And that's the beginning of something new -- to strike out on new ground without somebody's invitation.

Is it harder to take care of ourselves, at table or elsewhere, without someone by our side?

I'm moving on to "B" but dont' mean to narrow the discussion to these two posts. I'm interested in what else you got from this telling first chapter.

'A' is for Dining Alone

One of the admirable aspects of this series of essays is how much M.F.K Fisher is willing to share with her audience right off the bat -- and her loneliness and self-consciousness are vital parts to her first essay.

In the time period she spoke of in this chapter, the author seemed to be at a crossroads -- not wealthy, but successful enough with her writing that her fame also isolated her, at least from traditional social gatherings that involved food. She writes: "But, for the most part, to the lasting shame of my female vanity, they have shied away from any suggestion that we might dally, gastronomically speaking." And so her unsuspecting acquaintances send her home to a can of tomato soup and box of crackers.

So she wills herself to begin eating out alone with a complicated and self-conscious set of rules -- where she can eat, how to befriend the wait staff, how to head off misperceptions about her willingness for company or her ability to handle her liquor, to a point where she realizes her outings are more a test of self-endurance than an enjoyable treat.

Has this changed much today? Why is it difficult to go places alone, and is it tougher for women? I have experienced varying degrees of discomfort trying to go it alone, though it's lessened as I've become older.