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Literary Lunch provides plenty of food for thought

by by Jeanne McDonald

Ecclesiastes says it best: "[A] man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, than to drink, and to be merry"—but a new anthology from the Knoxville Writers' Guild expresses the sentiment almost as well. Literary Lunch is a mouth-watering collection of poems, essays, and stories about food and drink.

First, here's the caveat: I also have an essay in this book, which makes reviewing this volume a little sticky (no pun intended), but my editors have nevertheless graciously consented to let me talk about it. The contributions are joyous, sometimes outrageous—from Jeff Daniel Marion's homage to a chocolate pie that was "so good it'll make you want to slap somebody," to adulterous love affairs with peanut butter and murder by bread loaf. Interjected throughout are luscious paintings and photographs of food by Emily Taylor, Sarah McCarty, Sarah Kendall, Lindsay Kromer, and Margaret Scanlan. Even the cover, a painting called "Talk over Coffee," by Elizabeth Johns, has an element of hunger in it, both literal and sexual.

In Knoxville writer Judy Loest's exemplary opening essay, "Memory's Table," she establishes a theme that recurs throughout these pieces, "food as metaphor, as the catalyst of narrative and memory, and as a symbol of spiritual transformation. It delineates history, social hierarchies, and economic class. It often acts as the catalyst for the memory to surface from the long heap of history, much the way Proust's madeleine sent him off on a 14-year-long reminiscence."

In these selections from 68 writers, nearly every one has a love affair with food. "Food, glorious food," exults editor Jeannette Brown; and Deborah Scaperoth, in "Starving in Kroger's," remarks that "Women go around hungry all the time;/no wonder Eve took the first bite."

Readers will recognize many local contributors: Jack Neely, with "Ciudad de Los Tamales;" Flossy McNabb, with a nostalgic reminiscence about Long's Drug Store in Bearden; Marilyn Kallet, Don Williams, and Allen Wier. Even renowned Knoxville native Nikki Giovanni serves up a new, unpublished poem. In "the train to Knoxville," she relates a love affair between her parents-to-be that began in 1935: "[S]o you smile when you meet a girl with very long hair and a bit of a haughty air and you ask her out to share a cigarette which you smoke and vanilla wafers with marshmallow fillings which she eats and you tell her in no uncertain terms that you are the person for her and she will marry you."

Here, even reluctant cooks have their say. In Kay Newton's poem, "Julia Child's Kitchen," she observes that "They've hauled it to the Smithsonian, walls and all:/ the junk-drawer's flotsam: thumbtacks, tangled ball/ of rubber bands, scotch tape, and hiding in a dark/and linty corner, a souvenir wine cork/ saved from a special vintage she once shared/ with a friend who'd come to cook with her/James Beard?/. . . The thought of my own crannies makes me shudder/ would I want someone snooping through my clutter?/ Antique Hamburger Helper past its date,/ Moroccan sardines no one ever ate,/ Kraft Macaroni Dinner, cans of Spam/ reveal the sorry sort of cook I am./ Perched at cross-hatched Formica as I dine,/ I'm glad they took her kitchen and not mine."

In this fine collection there is endless food for thought and more than one prayer. Again, Loest expresses it best: "Bless all the sustainers, amateur and expert alike, for they nourish us, not just with food but also with memories, the sweet impossible blossoms that bloom again and again for us in unexpected moments, that remind us who we are and where we have been."