The following interview is with a colleague from Texas who is Professor of English at Texas Tech University. I read something she wrote -- and there, hidden in some of the footnotes, were some really interesting ideas about food and fiction. And so. . . this interview with Mary Jane Hurst.
Bibliochef:
So, let’s begin with the basics! I know that you are a professor of English who
works on a variety of issues – and that you have written about food-related
themes occasionally. Let’s begin
with how you came to write about food.
Mary
Jane: Oh, my. Is there anyone who
doesn’t love to think about food?
One of my very first publications grew out of a graduate school paper I
wrote on food in the ingenious Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus. My
essay topic probably related (1) to being a hungry graduate student and (2) to
recognizing from an early age, as did Carlyle, that material culture, spiritual
culture, and intellectual culture all rely on the same essential building
blocks, and food is about as essential as you can get.
Bibliochef: Your more specific work is, I think, in linguistics. Can you say a
bit about what that means ? and then, how do you see the topic of food as
connected to your work as a linguist per se? Do you see food as a language?
Mary
Jane: Linguistics is, at heart, the study of language. Most of my own research has centered on
language in literature and on gender and language, but I teach on a range of
topics in linguistics. Your
question is very perceptive as there are innumerable connections between
language and food. When you study language, you study people, and food is a
crucial part of the lives of people individually and socially.
Historically, for example, we can connect languages and
the peoples who spoke those languages through the record of written documents
and texts. Words for body parts,
numbers, family relationships, and *food* are often such core words that they
can aid in tracing the relationships of languages back to common ancestors. Through
borrowing, modern languages can all have words for non-native species of plants
and animals (=food), but we can draw some conclusions about the native origins
of various languages and peoples based on the kinds of plants and animals in
the earliest lexicon (palm tree
versus oak tree, bear versus lion, rice versus wheat, for example).
Even, prehistorically, that is, before the use of writing
systems, we can infer relationships between languages and peoples from non-linguistic
evidence, and distinctive information about (and later words for) plants and animals
and varying kinds of cookware and storage methods provides strong evidence
about human migration and development.
This kind of prelinguistic evidence is very important in exploring the
history of languages and of peoples before writing.
From a sociolinguistic perspective, there is even more
transfer between language and food.
For example, some food names immediately suggest ethnic and linguistic
borrowing into English (as in enchilada, yam,
masala, beignet, or kolache),
while other food names suggest regional dialects (a cabinet versus a milkshake
or a generic coke versus a soda or a pop). Also, meals
often set the stage for conversations, and so food and talk often go
together. The first book of noted
gender and language researcher Deborah Tannen, for instance, is based on conversation
at a Thanksgiving dinner.
Food vocabulary and how food words change could be the
topic of a very large book. To
give a few interesting examples from English, the word starve once meant to die (by
any means) and only later narrowed semantically to mean to die from lack of food. The word bread in Old English (450-1066) meant a bit or a piece, often used in conjunction with the word hlaf, which in Modern English means loaf, but in Old English referred more
the bread itself. Cooking was
right in the middle of language change in the Middle English era (1066-1499),
as French cognates enriched the Old English vocabulary at every turn: chicken
and cook (English) vs. poultry and chef (French), to give just two examples.
You can tell a lot about people by the language they use
and by the food they eat!
Bibliochef: Amazing. Did I just learn a lot! You teach and do scholarship in Women’s Studies as well. How do you see food as
related to that? That is, do you
see food as particularly connected to our understanding of women? Following up
on that, would you say food is about gender? Feminism?
Mary
Jane: Wow, what is the length restriction on your blog interviews? This is a giant question, worthy of
book-length answers (plural). My
answer is yes. To give a little
more detail, ideas about food and about nurturing roles and providing roles are
very much tied into assumptions about gender. Your question, though, deserves a fuller and more nuanced
answer – maybe we should put together a conference panel on the topic and see
what others think.
Bibliochef: Hmmmm. . . I know you have written about food and food imagery in
various works of American literature. How do you think that theme illuminates
what it means to be “American”?
(Issues of regionalism? Of hyphenated Americans and/or identity? Of
American pluralism?)
Mary Jane:
Again, I think the food we eat, the language we use about food, our
relationships with food – these are all parts of our personal identities. Our food heritages tend to stay with
us, maybe even longer than our language heritages. Most strands of my family were in North America long before
the Revolutionary War, but still traces of their German cooking traditions are
quite strong. Of course,
patriotism, national identity, regional attachments, and heritage homelands are
parts of all our identities, as are many features of our complex selves. I just today read a column in Texas Monthly in which someone describes
getting into an argument with a “Yankee” co-worker who claimed he hosted a
barbecue that did not involve anything other than hamburgers and hotdogs. Texanists take offense at what is to
them sloppy language, given that you can grill
anything but barbecue in Texas
requires brisket and sausage.
Bibliochef:
You have written on children’s
voices in American literature. Does the topic of food come up in that regard as
well?
Mary
Jane: Yes, many pivotal scenes in fiction and drama occur in the kitchen or at the
dinner table, the site of food preparation, basic nurturing, and social bonding. This is true for children as well as or
even more so than adults. Think of
To Kill a Mockingbird, for instance,
and the loving scenes of Scout with Calpernia in the kitchen where things that
matter get talked about honestly.
Remember, also, how Scout learns tolerance when she brings a poor boy
home for lunch and has to be reprimanded for bad manners when she criticizes
him for pouring molasses all over his food. Finally, recall that Bob Ewell tries to kill the children
with a kitchen knife – a classic example of true horror in an incident that
symbolically and literally takes away the children’s blithe innocence as a
domestic object is turned into a weapon.
Bibliochef:
Thanks -- that may lead me to a re-reading! I originally encountered your
interest in food in your work on late twentieth century fiction. Do you think
this is an era-specific theme or would you think it appears in other periods of
American literature as well?
Mary
Jane: I really think the late twentieth-century was a hungry era. There was material plenty for most people
in the United States but not necessarily intellectual or social or spiritual
fulfillment. I think the prevalence
of food images suggests that basic needs were not being met.
Also, turn
of the century/turn of the millennium eras tend to have elements of nostalgia,
a wispy kind of looking back with longing at the absent something. In terms of increasingly multicultural
populations, that longing can be expressed as a home food (kimchi, for
instance) that is not readily accepted in the mainstream culture. Another example would be in various
kinds of Mexican foods, which are very popular now, but not too long ago were
treated by some people as an embarrassment; I heard a memorable paper at a conference,
for example, in which a woman described covering up as a child how her families
ate tortillas at breakfast, telling the kids at school her family always had an
All-American breakfast of bacon and eggs.
In some
ways, as I tried to describe above, this gets back to food being associated
with one’s basic identity.
Of
course, food and food imagery are universal symbols, so they occur everywhere.
Bibliochef:
In addition to being a scholar (and administrator), you also teach. Have you considered a course on food
and literature? If you imagined one, what might you include? If you imagined
someone – alive or dead, -- as a guest speaker for the course, who might that
be? Why? If you could take a field trip with students anywhere in the world
(and maybe any time in history) where would you go? Why?
Mary
Jane: You’ve given me a great idea!
Wouldn’t “Food and Literature” be a fun class? We could plan a Great
Gatsby gala, have a Christmas Carol
dinner (can you buy a goose these days?
FYI, wassail is my favorite holiday drink!), pass around ginger nuts
(“Bartleby the Scrivener”), take a field trip to Oxford, Mississippi
(Faulknerian southern cooking), attempt blancmange (Little Women), eat fry bread while reading Sherman Alexie, arrange
a tea party (Passage to India),
create a madeleine memory (Proust), sample mead as we discuss about Beowulf…. The class could be arranged around American geographies and
ethnicities, it could be a transatlantic comparative literature seminar, or it
could be set in a particular time period – the possibilities are endless.
My dream
speaker would be Leo Tolstoy because of his deep understanding of the human
soul. My husband and I have
published an article on Anna Karenina,
and I love to teach Resurrection. Tolstoy was such an exquisite writer
and complicated man, a person in whom the sensual and the spiritual, the sacred
and the profane competed constantly.
He could speak to us of the finest royal dinners, describe hearty
peasant fare, report on military officers’ dissolute drinking, detail the
seduction of dinner in the boudoir, recount the orthodox Easter foods, depict the
scarcity and filth of prison fare, describe a woman nursing a newborn or giving
tea to the sick, and then offer an impassioned speech on the moral imperative
of vegetarianism. His ability to
convey abstract meaning through rich descriptions of literal details of life
was a sublime gift.
Bibliochef:
I can’t resist asking: has living and working in Texas affected your interest
in food? If so, how?
Mary
Jane: I don’t think so in a professional sense, but definitely in a personal
way: Tex-Mex is wonderful! I must
admit, though, to a sense of (food) loss being in far West Texas for
twenty-five years, because we live so far way from our families and also
because we are far away from the multitudes of diverse restaurants found in
metropolitan areas. But there is a
very distinct ethos in Texas and in West Texas. Molly Ivens used to say that Texas is hell on women and
horses. You have to be strong
here.
Bibliochef:
Do you eat differently – at home or in restaurants – as a result of the thinking
and writing you have done about food related themes?
Mary
Jane: No, strangely, I don’t think so.
The main constraint on my eating is time. I feel that I rarely have time to cook properly or to eat a
leisurely meal. Now that you have
drawn me to reflect on this, though, I think I need to change my ways. Life is too short to rush through it.
BIbliochef:
Do you cook? would you share a recipe?
Mary
Jane: Sadly, as I said, I am far more expert at eating than at cooking. However, I do have a couple of recipes
posted at www.linguistlist.org, where readers can find many
interesting and some exotic recipes: http://linguistlist.org/cookbook/index.cfm or http://linguistlist.org/cookbook/view-all.cfm. Below I’ll share
an easy recipe that I really, really like for lemon pie. It is tart and sweet at the same time
and has loads of vitamin C.
Lemon Pie
2
Large Lemons
2 cups Sugar
4
Beaten Eggs
Slice
well-washed lemons paper thin, rind and all. Pick out seeds.
Combine with sugar and stir well.
Let stand 2 hours or more, stirring occasionally.
Preheat
oven to 450 degrees. Add the
beaten eggs. Pour contents into pie
crust. I prefer an oil crust
(below). Cover with top
pastry. Cut several slits in
top. Bake for 15 minutes at 450. Reduce heat to 375 and bake for 20 more
minutes or until inserted knife comes out clean.
Oil
Pie Pastry (Double Crust)
2
cups sifted
flour plus 4 tablespoons of flour
1 teaspoon
salt
2/3
cup vegetable
oil
3 tablespoons
cold
water
In
a bowl, combine flour and salt.
Add oil. Mix until
grainy. Sprinkle with water,
adding enough to moisten. Form
dough into a ball. Use immediately
or chill until ready to use.
Divide approximately in half, with one part slightly larger for the
bottom crust. Roll out each half
between two sheets of waxed paper.
Turn and peel waxed paper, then flip onto paper just removed. Peel top,
then flip into pie pan and carefully peel off paper. Trim, leaving an overhang for sealing and fluting.
Bibliochef: And now for some of the questions I ask all of the people I “speak”
with! What’s the absolutely best meal you have ever had? What made it the best meal? (And no, I have no idea why the font has gone weird. Hold it against TYPEPAD!)
Mary
Jane: Hmm. A hard question. I’ve had the good fortune to travel to many
places in the US and around the world, and I can think of many amazing meals,
some in fine restaurants and some in more humble locations, but…
My
parents were both wonderful cooks, as were my aunts. I think any Sunday dinner they made was a superior meal, and
I really miss the delicious roasts, potato salads, yeast rolls, rice puddings,
egg custards, and other wonderful dishes that I never learned how to make
properly. Part of it was the
loving fun of having family members to talk with and then, later in the
afternoon, to talk about. Part of
it was the freshness of the food.
(Really, why are there no tomatoes or carrots or watermelons or corn or
green beans or apples – even homegrown ones today – that taste and smell like
the ones I grew up with?) The
wonderful smell of real food cooking in a real kitchen is something I miss very
much. To come home from church on
Sunday and smell a pot roast with potatoes and carrots and onions that have
been simmering together in the oven all morning – oh, what a heavenly
thought. Good times and good food. I’m Exhibit A on food nostalgia.
Bibliochef: I know we have focused on literature in many ways throughout this
interview, but I always ask: What music, films or books related to
food would you recommend? Why?
Mary
Jane: Since we've talked a lot about literature I am going to focus on movies here, ok? Maybe because of its Southwestern themes and because I like tortilla
soup, I like the 2001 movie Tortilla Soup. I love the attention the camera gives
to the food preparation and the way the father so lovingly prepares the soup every
Sunday for his family, and then everyone sits down and talks about what is
important while they eat.
Also, I
like the scene in the 1998 movie Pleasantville
when Reese Witherspoon is transported back to the 1950s and is expected to
eat gigantic meals with heaps of butter and cream, bacon, eggs, biscuits,
pancakes, milkshakes, ice cream, desserts each day. That is absolutely how I grew up – hearty family meals
with enormous portions. It’s hard
to believe, but my mother had whole milk or hot chocolate and just-baked
cookies waiting for me every afternoon after school. And not one person I knew then was overweight; I guess
all the walking and physical activity kept things in check.
The feast
scenes in Harry Potter are great
fun. Oh, the food looks delicious,
and I appreciate the fantasy that the food magically appears on the table: the
hard work of cooking and cleaning is invisible, at least until Hermione begins
to agitate for recognition of the house-elves. Also, I like the scenes on the Hogwarts Express where the
young wizards on their way to school eat chocolate frogs and other sweets from
the trolley. If you watch the
special features from the Ultimate DVD Edition, Volume I, you can listen to the
producer and directors talk about what a good time the young actors had eating
all that food. When you read the Harry Potter books, as opposed to
watching the movies, you notice that chocolate is administered whenever someone
has experienced trauma, a detail that makes me love J.K. Rowling even more.
Bibliochef:
What do you eat for comfort food?
Mary Jane:
Pancakes!!! I love pancakes. With just a very tiny amount of butter
and little or no syrup. One of my
happiest childhood memories is of my father making pancakes on Saturdays. Also, my delightful son-in-law makes really good blueberry
pancakes. And, if any of your
readers have migraine headaches, I recommend the pancake cure administered as
soon as possible after the onset of a pounding head: a hearty serving of pancakes
and a cup of strong coffee or tea, followed by an hour or so of quiet in a dark
room. Probably the symptoms are
alleviated by the combination of carbs and caffeine, but there must be a happy
memory/comfort food component for me as I’ve never found another carb that
worked as well as pancakes in alleviating headaches. My husband, who is a neurologist, concurs with the pancake
remedy unless contraindicated (as by allergies to wheat, eggs, etc. or by other
medical conditions).
For the
most part, maybe because of allergies, I am a little tentative when eating
out. Unfortunately, my immediate
family members all have different allergies – one person is deathly allergic to
nuts, another deathly allergic to shellfish, one is an occasional vegetarian
but another can’t eat most vegetables, and one is allergic to beef…. It gets complicated. As long as there are no nuts involved,
though, pancakes work for everyone.
Bibliochef: Have you ever been to the Finger Lakes? If so, do you have a
favorite restaurant in the Finger Lakes? If not, what restaurant would you
recommend to others?
Mary Jane: Alas, I
have not had the pleasure of visiting the Finger Lakes, but if you ever find
yourself in West Texas, let me know and I will help you follow your nose to the
nearest mesquite-burning grill where fajita meat is cooking and tortillas are
being steamed. Add a frozen margarita
and some warm tortilla chips with fresh guacamole and queso. Perfection.
We also
have a home in Daytona Beach, Florida, and one restaurant in that area that I
highly recommend is The Garlic in New Smyrna Beach. Great food, great service, but the ambience is why you must
go. On a cool winter night, get an
outside table near one of the open fireplaces and sit under colorful Christmas
lights. Bliss!
Oh, and
back to pancakes: when in
Nashville, hurry to the Pancake Pantry next to Vanderbilt University. At peak times, the waiting line can
wrap around the block, even in winter, but it is worth the wait. Try the Caribbean pancakes or the sweet
potato pancakes. Yum! And check out this site.
I could go
on and on, but it wouldn’t be fair to stop without mentioning two of my
lifetime favorite restaurants: The Golden Lamb in Lebanon, Ohio, in
operation continuously since 1803, host to Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and
many literati over the years, and also the site of my wedding dinner many
decade ago and, finally,
· Mrs. K’s Toll House in Silver
Spring, Maryland, always gracious and just off the Washington, DC beltway.
Biblochef:
Well, those add to my travel plans! What am I not asking that I should? What question have you never been asked
that you have always wanted to be asked? What's your answer?
Mary
Jane: I’ve been asked a lot of questions I didn’t want to answer (not here, of
course), but one question that has never been raised here or elsewhere is why I
love pancakes so much. The
answer—like the answer to “Why do you rob banks?” Or “Why did the
chicken cross the road?”—is completely obvious: because pancakes are SO GOOD.
Seriously, thank you for letting me think and talk about
one of my favorite subjects, food.
Oh, and I did I mention that I really love pancakes?
Bibliochef: So, I guess you love pancakes? And seriously: I have not learned so much in an interview in ages. Thanks so much for doing this and I am sure readers join in saying a big THANK YOU as well. (and apologies for the font trouble. Every once in a while, typepad seems to have this oddity!)
