Last House in backlight

Yet another benign defeat of

ambition redeems Luke Barr's

new book on his great-aunt,

M.F.K. Fisher and her franco-

phile peers in gastropublish-

ing, Provence, 1970. Mr Barr

is involved in the hedonism

business with Travel & Lei-

sure, and Clarkson Potter set

the bar accordingly low, to

his effort to identify a his-

toric turning point in Amer-

ican culinary culture, as if

there could be any to sift in

the wake of so many first-per-

son accounts from the victors.

It helps, that Barr wasn't ac-

tually there, and that a night

of long knives, ultimately lib-

erating American cuisine from

francophilia, was never so con-

centrated in one place or time

as it is his project to declare.

M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, 

James Beard, and The Reinvention

of American Taste - he means to

include Olney, but it would have

thrown the meter - his subtitle,

gives a robust but partial cast,

as enlistment by Sybille Bedford

and Elizabeth David clarifies,

tending toward a reinvention

which remains anarchic to this 

day.

They dined together, warily, and

with a sectarian bitchiness wor-

thy of Jeremiah Tower, boiling

water. Their quibbling egos make

for tiresomely familiar reading,

to which Barr nevertheless brings

an arresting impartiality as the

foundation for a sharp anatomisa-

tion of snobbery. Ignore the pre-

tense, that the book is a neces-

sary history. It's a provocative

and sensitive scrutiny of rules. 

I've read most of the books by all 

his protagonists, Child excepted;

and like other San Franciscans of

such interests, I was fortunate

to visit one of them in Sonoma.

Now, Barr's survivorship of their

influence is all one has wished

for oneself. He has a gift for
sharing hunger without claiming
it, and taste without regulating
it. A fundamental understanding

the generosity of the casual, 
within the spheres of equable

competence and sympathy, places

him estimably close to two polar

opposites in his text, to expose

ego as the only quality dividing

them into putative factions. His 

gift for characterising their vir-

tues, for restoring their company,

is distinguished, and greatly to

be prized. His understanding ex-

ceeds his own awareness, and this

is a fine failure of ambition in

a field where it flocks intermin-

ably. If he could laugh, he might

be Liebling. 

Luke Barr

Provence, 1970

  [etc]

Clarkson Potter, 2013©

ii  Engraving from Pauillac