Eating Words: A Norton Anthology of Food Writing - Hardcover

Sandra M. Gilbert; Roger J. Porter; Ruth Reichl

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393239845 ISBN 13: 9780393239843

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015

Synopsis

Edited by influential literary critic Sandra M. Gilbert and award-winning restaurant critic and professor of English Roger J. Porter, Eating Words gathers food writing of literary distinction and historical sweep into one groundbreaking volume. Beginning with the taboos of the Old Testament and the tastes of ancient Rome, and including travel essays, polemics, memoirs, and poems, the book is divided into sections such as "Kitchen Practices"; "Food Memory: Identity, Family, Ethnicity"; "Eating: Delight, Disgust, Hunger, Horror"; and "Food Politics." Selections by Julia Child, Anthony Bourdain, Bill Buford, Michael Pollan, Molly O'Neill, Calvin Trillin, and Adam Gopnik, along with authors not usually associated with gastronomy-Maxine Hong Kingston, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Hemingway, Chekhov, and David Foster Wallace-enliven and enrich this comprehensive anthology. "We are living in the golden age of food writing," proclaims Ruth Reichl in her foreword to this savory banquet of literature, a must-have for any food lover. Eating Words shows how right she is.

About this title

Review:

This engaging compendium of taste is certainly designed to suit all palates. The extraordinary selections range from the delicacy of a madeleine to the macabre details of hog slaughters, from prohibitions to a celebration of international cuisines. At the heart of this array lies the vein of language, which only reinforces the multiple pleasures of the text. It leaves the reader both fulfilled and longing for more.--Sara Suleri Goodyear

About the Author:

Sandra M. Gilbert has published numerous volumes of criticism as well as collections of poetry and a memoir. She is coeditor (with Susan Gubar) of The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women and a recipient of the National Book Critics Circle's Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award. A Distinguished Professor of English emerita at the University of California, Davis, she lives in Berkeley, California. Roger J. Porter is a professor of English literature at Reed College. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0393239845
• ISBN 13: 9780393239843
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 544