Lately have been suffering from a bout of food aversion. For once in my life, not only have I not felt like eating, I haven’t even wanted to think about food. This has made me a little sad. The not wanting to eat hasn’t been so bad really, but I realize that I do actually spend a fair amount of time entertained by thinking or reading about food and I’ve missed it.
Luckily however, it seems that this is passing and one of the factors in precipitating this change has been the book As Always, Julia, a collection of letters between Julia Child and her close friend, Avis DeVoto. The book is a collection of the two women’s correspondence, beginning with the admiring letter to Avis DeVoto’s husband Julia Child sent, along with a French cooking knife, after he wrote an article complaining about the state of the knives in the United States in the 1950′s. The book spans the period during which Julia, championed by Avis, worked on her classic, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Though I credit the book for creating a craving for asparagus with hollandaise sauce which I still haven’t been able to take care of (no eggs in the house), it’s really not a book about food. What it is, is a fascinating source of information on the social history of the United States in the 1950′s. The letters start in 1952 and continue until 1961. The letters often focus on food and the recipes that Julia has sent to Avis. There are interesting discussions of the increased dependence on “convenience” food in the United States as well as discussions on the difference in the taste of produce in France vs the United States (The US was starting to increasingly produce hardier produce that would last in the supermarket, but that didn’t always have the delicacy of flavour of French produce). There’s a particularly fascinating passage in one of Avis’s letters about MSG and how packets of it were sold in packages of spinach to help with flavour. While most people are likely to pick up the book because of an interest in food, and there’s lots in here about food and more specifically the incredible work that goes into creating a cookbook, some of the most interesting parts of the book have to do with the insight it gives into the politics of the 1950′s, and even more interestingly, the status of women in the US at that time in history.
DeVoto and her husband were fairly influential Democrats and Paul and Julia Child were of the same political leanings. Both women were of the upper middle class, well-educated, intelligent and very well-connected with the academic and intellectual class of the period. Much of the book covers the two women’s despair and anger over the actions of Senator McCarthy. I think often, in the current political climate in the US, we tend to think things have become more vitriolic and extreme than they ever have been, but these letters reminded me very much that the more things change the more things stay the same. The political corruption that is alluded to in the book, and the inability for people from different political parties to see eye to eye seemed very familiar. Avis and Julia’s frustration over the democratic party’s inability to combat the egregious actions of Senator McCarthy will seem oddly familiar I think to a contemporary audience.
While politically the situation of the ’50′s seems very reminiscent of today’s politics, what was very different was the position of these two women in society and in their families. Avis DeVoto worked tirelessly as her husband’s secretary and as a society fundraiser for various political candidates, but despite obviously being an extremely capable and intelligent woman, doesn’t see herself much outside the sphere of her husband’s career. Both women have a devotion to their husbands that feels very different from the sort of relationships that exist today. It’s not that these women are downtrodden or restricted in any obvious sense, but it’s clear that they view their position as wives as a vocation.
Julia Child’s husband encouraged her in her “cook bookery’ as she called it, and after he retired worked to support her (by which I mean he did such things as washing dishes behind the scenes when she did cooking demonstrations etc., rather than that he contributed money) in her efforts to promote the book and French cooking throughout the United States. We see both Julia and Avis come into their own as the years progress and it’s hard to tell if this is a shift in attitudes towards women’s roles in society or more a function of circumstance (Avis’ husband died suddenly creating a need for her to work outside the home and Julia’s husband retired right at the point that her cookbook was published and she became a runaway success). Neither woman is what we might think of as a typical 1950′s housewife and it’s hard to imagine that their lives would have taken a similar path if they had been born a few decades later. Still, it is interesting to note that in a relationship such as the one shared between Julia and Paul Child, the division of labour and the assigned roles that were so common in marriages of the past takes on a kind of sweetness and strength that somehow makes sense, despite the whiff of romantic nostalgia that view brings with it.
The strongest bond in the book is of course between the two women who wrote these letters and who were so completely supportive of each other over the years and it was a pleasure to feel the genuine warmth of their exchanges with each other.
The book has me enthusiastic about food again and I’ve pulled Mastering the Art of French Cooking off the shelf again and will be getting to work on that hollandaise just as soon as I can find some decent asparagus.
