The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand

Rating:
Summary: Very Personal and Very Erudite Amateur's take on Food
Review: `The Raw and the Cooked' by poet, playwright, and novelist Jim Harrison is quite properly subtitled `Adventures of a Roving Gourmand'. The author makes a very careful point of saying that he is not a very good cook, and his involvement in writing about cooking is definitely not his primary occupation. His `day job' is creative writing of poetry, drama, and narrative fiction, so his choice of words can be expected to be especially careful. His role as `roving gourmand' is a case in point. The first meaning of `gourmand' in my Merriam-Webster unabridged dictionary is `a greedy and ravenous eater'. This is definitely not the same as `gourmet', a secondary meaning of the word, and it is much more appropriate to the author's style than the more genteel `gourmet'.

As a writer on culinary matters, Harrison seems to be in a class by himself. He is quite definitely not in the same class as the students of cookery such as Jeffrey Steingarten, John Thorne, and Jim Villas. He is also not in the same class as professional observers of the culinary world such as Calvin Trillin, Robb Walsh, and Alan Richman. The most similar writer who comes to mind is R. W. Appel whose culinary writing is secondary to his news writing at the New York Times. But, even Appel is more of a professional journalist, so his food writing is part and parcel of his `day job'.

As an amateur writer on eating, Harrison has a deep respect for all these writers plus the great cookbook authors of the day such as Paula Wolfert, Marcella Hazan, and Julia Child, upon whom he depends for his recipes. His greatest respect seems to be reserved for M.F.K. Fisher, who also seems to earn the respect of every other major culinary journalist.

In a nutshell then, Harrison writes about less about food and food preparation than he does about eating and the enjoyment of food, wine, spirits, and hunting. And, he spends a lot of time writing about the writing about food, with a level of reflection you do not find in any writer I have read (with the caveat that I have not yet spend a reasonable amount of time with the writings of M.F.K. Fisher to compare Harrison and Fisher). This writing is done with an eye to the careful selection of words that may be unmatched among modern food writers. One example of this circumspection is his questioning the description of a pork chop with superlatives. The problem with this practice is that if the chop is praised with effusive adjectives, what is left to describe Bach or Rembrant or Shakespeare. Can a pork chop really measure up to `Hamlet'?

One of the consequences of this careful language is that Harrison may be difficult to read when he uses unfamiliar locutions. Contrary to an anti-intellectual complaint about erudite discourse, it is not the `big words' on which one may choke, but the statements which are so packed with meaning that we actually have to stop reading and take some time to parse the words to be sure we have gotten the full sense of the writer's words.

This means that Harrison may not be for everyone. As a writer who is entirely aware of his amateur status, his writing is almost entirely based on his personal experiences and his own choices and reactions to food, and his relating reactions of others to specific culinary situations. This has the advantage of avoiding making false generalizations about the food world. It has the weakness of being essays that are much closer to fiction than they are to journalism.

As almost all essays in this book have been published elsewhere in major periodicals, major editors with a good knowledge of their audience's taste have vetted almost all essays in this book. Therefore, I personally have found almost all essays quite enjoyable to read. It is no accident that the only pieces I found wanting were previously unpublished.

If you simply enjoy reading about food, especially writings by Fisher, Trillin, and Walsh, the chances are very good that you will find this book very entertaining. To all of you with these tastes in words, I heartily recommend this book.