The Gourmet (2000, English edition 2009) is set in
Paris – mainly in the bedroom of an apartment on rue de Grenelle.
Pierre Arthens is France’s most famous food critic.
He would say, “I am the greatest food critic in the world.” He enjoys the
“headiness that comes from inspiring fear” over the finest restaurants in
France.
He is an ailing 68 year old and his doctor tells him
he has about 48 hours left to live. So on his deathbed he wants to recall the
most delicious food he’s ever had so he can savour the moment again – at least
in his memory if not in his tastebuds.
Pierre recalls his grandmother’s cooking, his
journeys around the world in fine restaurants, his aunt’s garden brimming with
vegetables, raw Japanese food, and unexpected home cooking by strangers. He
recalls meat, seafood, vegetables, bread, alcohol, dressings, sorbets and
deserts. He’s looking deep into his mind for that “original, marvellous dish
that predates my vocation as a critic” – “a forgotten flavour.” But in fact his
memory “may merely be associated with some mediocre dish, and it is only the
emotion attached to it that remains precious” but it might reveal to him a “gift
for living that I had not previously understood.”
Throughout the novel are the voices of people in his
life recollecting the famous critic, thinking of him in his life and on his
deathbed: his wife, his children, his nephew, the cleaner, a young food critic,
his doctor, his grand-daughter, his mistress or two, his cat and a statue in
the hallway.
He has a revelation that “tasting is an act of
pleasure, and writing about that pleasure is an artistic gesture, but the only
true work of art, in the end, is another person’s feast.” And yes, in the end,
he does get an “illumination” of the food that he thought was the best he’d
ever tasted.
The novel has short evocative chapters with oodles of
descriptions of food – not just the taste, but also the smell, the appearance,
the feel, and the sound. He recalls the food, of course, but also the setting,
the service, the table, and the plate – all before the eating. And all the
emotions that food can conjure come to the surface. But I always feel a little
disappointed when animals and inanimate objects speak (with the exception of Mikhail
Bulgakov’s novel, The Master and Margarita, in which Behemoth the black cat
speaks*). There’s a myriad of voices that don’t add to the experience of food –
just the experience in knowing this arrogant, self-absorbed man.
* Written between 1928-1940, published in 1967
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