Food writing, Memoir, and fearful fiction....

Well, I like to write things on my own in my blog, but when I find someone else's writing I like, I'm inclined to share.    I'm in a master's program for fiction, but recently I find myself drawn very strongly to certain types of non-fiction - especially the kind that uses food as the hook, line and sinker to draw us into personal stories.   I found one today, by food writer, restaurant owner and, I think, MFA fiction graduate Gabrielle Hamilton.   (link at the bottom of this entry).  



.  But first, a little bit about this fiction - non-fiction dividing line.   The New Yorker, of which I am a religious bathroom reader (as long as my mom keeps me in a subscription), draws my attention often with its first-person narrative-style non-fiction stories.    A lot of the investigative reporting is written in the suspenseful, engaging style of a spy novel - the narrator, intrepid journalist will put his or her own life on the line, ferreting through layers of Brazilian street gang leaders, or petty art con-men, or surly Siberian smugglers, just to get the story.   The climax, often pulse-raising, usually involves an interview with a notorious (or notoriously arrogant) figure: public official, criminal, world leaders accused of war crimes, etc. (from which we assume the narrator escaped unscathed to write this article).    It makes for exciting (if paid by the word) reading. 

Weirdly enough, compared to the reporting, the fiction just seems totally limp. Flaccid.  The narratives are spare and internal, the emotions muted, the landscapes incredibly familiar, the outlooks bleak.  Set in Britain, or suburban America, or New York, the conflicts are about failed marriages, or coming of age in upper-middle class households.   Of course, not all of them are like this, but the stories are so small, so quiet,  I can't remember a recent one well enough to try to describe the noiseless "thud" it made landing on my consciousness.    Compared to the Brazilian street gangs, the brilliant sociopathic doctors, the modern-day ATV-riding, gun-toting New Jersey Native Americans, and the North Korean starvation survivors, the fiction seems incredibly limited, so focused on the smallness of internal moments that it has become unwilling to engage the world.   After all, what are we looking for when we read, if not stories?   Are we really to believe that fiction is out of new stories to tell?

What has engaged me even more than the reporting has been some of the non-fiction memoir-type writing, especially around food.  I don't know if this has simply become a chic theme or what, but I can't stop reading the articles that are written as memoirs based around food (or, in fact, all the other little truth-based vingettes done by professional writers).   I mean, who could resist some of Nora Ephron's little notes about almost inheriting a fortune, or Chang-rae Lee's disgusting-yet-tasty description of his mother's lasagna?    And sometimes they combine:  Elif Batuman's profile of a Turkish chef's home-cooking revolution also details his (her?!) own tears at the nostalgic memories the food produced in him (her?).  And in a recent issue, Gabrielle Hamilton's story of her father's lamb roast.   I've got to say, this is memoir at my favorite.....sure, what she's describing is pretty interesting to me (I mean, come on, who doesn't want to know about a family where the dad roasts five lambs every spring - in New Jersey) - but wrapped up in the food is story of her family's divorce and wayward, semi-self destructive adolescent years.   As someone who is still learning to write about myself and my family, I find these diversions into the personal (and self-revelatory) territory to be completely satisfying.    These are stories - meant to inform, entertain, and reveal.   For some reason, these stories, in their (we assume) honesty do not feel compelled to resist emotion, and sentimentality.  They know that this is the meat of the story.   I think the New Yorker fiction (and I suppose by this I mean the editors who choose the stories) are afraid of publishing stories with too much emotion - as though they'll be accused of not being "real writers."  Or something. 


Anyway, I don't mean to indict all contemporary fiction (although it is a trend I find troubling).   I know this is just one venue for fiction, but it certainly is a venerable one, and one that young writers look up to.    So for young writers, I would encourage you not just to peruse the fiction, but to draw your inspiration from all kinds of writing - all kinds of stories.   I mean, in the end, that's what we're in the business of, right?   Stories.  Whether or not they happen to be true.


A few other articles by Gabrielle  Hamilton:

http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/a-rogue-chef-tells-all

http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/a-mentor-named-misty