In a recent article in the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik states that there are four kinds of food in books:
- food that is served by an author to characters who are not expected to taste it;
- food that is served by an author to characters in order to show who they are;
- food that an author cooks for characters in order to eat it with them; and, last (and most recent),
- food that an author cooks for characters but actually serves to the reader.
The whole article makes for a pleasant reading with plenty of examples of the different categories. We may or may not agree with Gopnik's classification, but we may have a dish that is associated in our mind with a novel.
In recent weeks Lisa of Champaign Taste and myself have been talking about food mentioned in the Montalbano novels and Lisa came up with the idea of launching a food in novels event. We are co-hosting it and look forward to hearing interesting literary and culinary stories.
Here are the rules for the event:
- Prepare a dish of your choosing that has a connection to a novel.
- Post it on your blog by midnight on September 21, 2007.
- Send an e-mail to either Lisa (webrina AT gmail DOT com) or myself (simosite AT mac DOT com) and include your name, blog name and blog address, and a link to your post.
We will do a roundup the following weekend.
