My Kitchen Wars

Rating:
Summary: from another era
Review: As I read this book, my mouth dropped open more and more---not so much because of all the mouth-watering food descriptions, as because it seems like a tale from another time, as remote from my own as Chaucer's stories. Betty Fussell is original and engaging; her work is detailed and sensuous like that of the medieval bard. At one point she quotes an even more famous bard, Shakespeare, "An expense of spirit in a waste of shame," referring to the obsessive amount of time and energy she and her faculty-wife peers spent on their elaborate party meals.

One doesn't have to be overly perceptive to realize how good food became such a priority in her life, as she tells us how all the food was "mush" in her childhood; or to realize that, however odd it may seem, she was relieved, even "euphoric"(her own word) at the loss of her third and last baby, since from an early age, she lacked a loving mother herself.

Most of her book is about the postWWII era, an anomaly in American life, a time of great prosperity when even English professors made very good money and were able to acquire large, lovely houses and to make frequent trips to live for months at a time in Europe. Denied a career of her own in those pre-feminist times, she poured her efforts into cooking and became an "amateur" expert. (She even moaned the invention of the Cuisinart food processor, which made obsolete all those whisks and grates and sieves she had worked so hard to collect.) In an era of outwardly conservative conformity, she tells us of the troubled marriages and casual adulteries that seemed to be the norm in her circle. She had her heart broken twice: By a writer with whom she carried on an affair that lasted years, and by her husband, whom she caught in a homosexual encounter with one of his students.

I love my Cuisinart. I have been a "faculty wife" now for as long as she was, and, like all my friends, my time has been taken up with wider causes than gourmet wooden spoons and garlic presses. Yet my heart goes out to this articulate woman, born less than twenty years before I was, whose life was so constrained and frustrating. There is a wrenching sadness about this book, despite the easy and prosperous era of its setting.

Rating:
Summary: Food is a metaphor for . . . well . . . everything
Review: Betty Fussell is truly a veteran of numerous "Kitchen Wars" in this well-told, fond yet sharp memoir. From the most modest hot plate and the blandest diet of her Presbyterian upbringing to the kitchen of her mature years so grand it was profiled in the New York Times and capable of producing feasts a la Julia Child, she has always been in the thick of it. Food is an analog to sex and sometimes a substitute for sex. And certainly a substitute for career, as the last generation of housewives found, to their dismay; so they took to the burners, the whisks, the ramekins, the all-but-unpronounceable French casserole dishes to vent their competitive fervor and produced dinner parties of orgiastic splendor, consummately detailed here. (And the trick was to look as if no effort at all was involved!)

Food is also the tenor for travel, as the strong 1960s dollar renders France one big kitchen and Greece an enormous tavern. Food--as well as liquor--seems to be not only an enhancement but the very reason that friends stay friends and husbands and wives stay together. Readers who are familiar with Betty's academician ex-husband Paul Fussell from such works as "The Great War and Modern Memory" and "Class" will find him presented here in less than nostalgic terms.

Betty is very much a person of her generation--not a strident feminist--and all the more reason to cheer for her when she sets out on her own and becomes a writer specializing in (what else?) food. In retrospect her affair with food even parallels the arc of American history: the naievete of the 1940s giving way to the imperialism of the Fifties and Sixties, the hedonism of the Seventies, the disillusionment of the Eighties and the regrouping of the Nineties. A very worthwhile book, but not to be read on an empty stomach.

Rating:
Summary: Wars of a Generation
Review: Betty Fussell published her first book, a biography of actress Mabel Normand, in 1982 at the age of 55. Now 72, she has just released her 10th, a memoir titled My Kitchen Wars. In between, she has produced a highly respected body of work in the fields of food and cooking -- two vastly different subjects, as readers of her hands-on cookbooks and her scholarly food histories will testify.

My Kitchen Wars, a soul-baring, major departure from her earlier books, is sure to become a favorite among her current fans, and likely to reap a new crop of admirers. The compact 238-page volume skillfully weaves American history, food lore, literary anecdotes, motherhood, and an unsparing look at the discriminatory, male-dominated world of academia in the postwar U.S. The theme of food runs through the book like a golden thread, and there are even a few recipes sewn into the fabric. My Kitchen Wars is at once instructive, entertaining, heart-rending, and eventually uplifting.

The book begins rather slowly, with a tracing of Fussell's family roots back to the 18th century. The tempo picks up when Fussell describes her emotionally scarred childhood in Southern California during the Great Depression, and the narrative becomes truly absorbing when Fussell recounts her teenage years in World War II. From that point on, the book traces a familiar theme -- the coming of age in the 1940s and '50s -- but does so with rare insight and brutal honesty, letting us glimpse the era through new eyes. Fussell's experiences, despite their remarkableness, were paralleled by those of a whole generation of American women, and many will identify with her struggles to raise a family and boost her husband's career, while living an intellectual life of her own, against constant obstacles.

At an estimated 70,000 to 75,000 words, the book's only disappointment is that it is too short; one can easily imagine it twice as long, with no letdown in quality. From what Fussell tells of her writing habits, it seems likely that she DID write a book twice as long, and that it was whittled down by editors. But with Fussell in her writing prime, we can expect more gems from her prolific pen before long.

Almost as an afterthought, I should mention for those unfamiliar with Fussell's background that she was married for more than 30 years to Paul Fussell, the noted historian, writer, and social critic. His 1975 work, The Great War and Modern Memory, is often considered one of the finest nonfiction books written by an American this century. Betty Fussell reveals him in all his contradictions and complexities, and he does not come off well. To her credit, she is hardly kinder to herself, unabashedly describing her long- standing adultery that speeded the marriage breakup.

Despite her crucial support of her husband's career -- typing and correcting his manuscripts, offering improvements, and freeing him from worldly chores so that he could excel as a college professor and writer -- she got only discouragement from him when she decided to pursue writing on her own. Not until after their 1981 divorce could her career get off the ground. In view of her success, Mr. Fussell's credibility must be seriously challenged.

Perhaps in some parallel universe, their roles were reversed, and she became the famous academic and he the late-blooming author. With a few changes in their personalities -- not their intellects -- it could have happened that way. Fortunately, we still have both Fussells with us, both crafting fine books that reflect a lifetime of learning.

(Written December 1999. Email: [e-mail])

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, but mean-spirited
Review: Fussell's book is entertaining. Her chapter title can make you laugh out loud. I think she might be fun to have as a guest at a party, but that's as close as I would want to get to her.

In this book, Fussell recounts her life story -- leading up to her successful career writing about food. Mostly it's a story of how people did her wrong, from the wickedest of wicked stepmothers who readers could easily envision wielding an axe -- to her atrocious husband, Paul Fussell. Betty Fussell, according to her version of the story, has been surrounded by mean, vicious, cruel people whose main purpose in life was to smother her spirit. Even innocent bystanding neighbors and party guests are not spared her sniping.

The people are so unremittingly awful in her story, that I quit believing a word she had to say about them before I was half way through the book. However, it did get me to read Paul Fussell's memoir as an antidote. It truly was an antidote -- with greater honesty and integrity and more human kindness, compassion and decency.

Rating:
Summary: Exhausted.
Review: I finishesd this and am exhausted. She lived a lifestyle I had vaguely read about, like the Maoris or Amazon Indians or Eskimos, and all I can think of is, how did she do it 20 or 30 years ago? Life among the "intelligensia", heavy drinking and wifeswapping and cooking the entire gourmet Julia Child repetoire, copper pots and truffles and pate...parties, parties, parties, from 4 to 75. Elaborate French dishes painstakingly prepared from scratch. She even sewed her own dinner gowns, for crying out loud! Trips to France on ocean liners, eating their way through France...studying, writing, intellectual discussion of Shakespeare, adulterous canoodling with a neighbor. I thought the husband was a professor but he must have made a mint - where did she get all the money for all the wine, the exotic ingredients? Where did she get the time, the energy? I am in awe and wonder at this slice of I-don't-know-who's-life. (By the way, the marriage broke up for good when she found her husband with another man, which I saw coming from her very first description of him.) Real food for thought, somesthing like reading farm journals of the pioneer ladies who had to make their own soap, churn the butter, and sew all the family's clothes....how did she do it all? Where did all those guests come from, to all those parties, in costumes yet! How could she possibly raise two children in the midst of this madness, and how did they turn out? (They are given short shrift.) She does not get my sympathy, but I found this book fascinating. I give it four stars for presentation, but am mystified as to what the ingredients are and how they got there.

Rating:
Summary: Relentlessly Honest, Utterly Engaging
Review: The three reviews which precede mine are superb and capture the essence of this startling and engaging autobiography. Having once been starry-eyed about the groves of academe, I thank my lucky stars that I did not invest more money and energy in order to gain access to a realm so pretentious and shallow, despite the number of books read per person.

As an undergraduate at Lehigh University, in 1980 I sat across from Paul Fussell at a luncheon in his honor (he was a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar). I was sleep-deprived, whiny, impatient, and highly critical of the conversations at my table, which were neither erudite nor particularly (it seemed to me) honest. "Mr. Fussell, what do academia and pastoral poetry both have in common?" I finally asked him. "They're both filled with crooks" was my snotty answer.

After reading MY KITCHEN WARS, I am, in retrospect, not particularly pentitent about my adolescent insolence.

Rating:
Summary: AN ACADEMICAL AUTHOR WHO LIKES TO PARTY
Review: This author and her husband are bright people with untold years of schooling, obviously. First half of the book was more interesting to me as it described her formative years in California. I stopped reading at page 191 because it started reading more like a textbook than a memoir. There is no doubt this lady is supremely talented, particularly as to food preparation and giving parties. The last fourth of her book has about 25% French words due to the gastronomic nature of the narrative. There were so many of them they were like land mines and it became too dangerous to wade through the French vernacular. I quit; that's all.

Rating:
Summary: Best served cold
Review: This is a terrific memoir, intelligent and bitchy and gripping.

Rating:
Summary: My Kitchen Wars is for not for cream puffs!
Review: This is a war story of a different sort where the warrior is a woman & the battleground is her kitchen. Her weapons evoke a lifetime's need to make dinner, love & war. Betty Fussell has pried open the past, giving voice to a generation of women whose stories were shaped & silenced by an era of domestic strife & global conflict, the Elysian Fields between World War II & Vietnam.

Fast, frantic & often tartly funny, where the author will snap your funny bone & suck out the marrow even as she prepares you a satisfying feast!

Rating:
Summary: My Kitchen Wars is for not for cream puffs!
Review: This is a war story of a different sort where the warrior is a woman & the battleground is her kitchen. Her weapons evoke a lifetime's need to make dinner, love & war. Betty Fussell has pried open the past, giving voice to a generation of women whose stories were shaped & silenced by an era of domestic strife & global conflict, the Elysian Fields between World War II & Vietnam.

Fast, frantic & often tartly funny, where the author will snap your funny bone & suck out the marrow even as she prepares you a satisfying feast!