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fran_gel's review
funny
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.75
Didn’t know what this book was about - it was v cool actually, introduced me to lots of fun books
torts's review
informative
3.0
I seldom write in my books, but something about the way Angela Carter was writing about other people's writing made me want to write around her writing...
My scattered thoughts:
I don't know if this print run had a page missing or if it was just my copy, but my table of contents cut off about halfway through, right after "Elizabeth David: <i>English Bread and Yeast Cookery</i>". Fitting, because that was perhaps the last piece in the book that I fully enjoyed... it kicked off with some navel-gazey puttering from Carter that included the statement that "I used to feel so womanly when I was baking my filthy bread." And it had this gem of a section on Virginia Woolf near the end: "Although otherwise an indifferent cook, Virginia could certainly knock you up a lovely cottage loaf. You bet. This strikes me as just the sort of pretentiously frivolous and dilettantish thing a Bloomsbury <i>would</i> be good at -- knowing how to do one, just one, fatuously complicated kitchen thing and doing that one thing well enough to put the cook's nose out of joint."
The Tomato Woman section was definitely the one I enjoyed the most. How could I not love a section that kicks off with a cheeky epigraph from Claude Levi-Strauss? ("To eat is to fuck.")
The absolute best part (in the Tomato Woman section, of course): at the end of "<i>An Omelette and a Glass of Wine</i> and Other Dishes" there are three pieces of "interesting correspondence" absolutely demolishing Angela Carter for her self-righteous takedown of Alice Waters. They call out Carter's "puritanical contempt for decently prepared food" and her "difficult to follow" argument against Waters's enjoyment of food/foodie identity. Something about these letters being presented as "interesting" without any further context tickled me. Like she almost wanted to admit they were right? Or she thought they were hilariously wrong? Or were they added after her death, by the "friend" who edited the selected writings? (Scare quotes around friend because what kind of friend would include those rebuttals after Carter no longer had the ability to snark back?) It also tickled me that the piece immediately after "<i>An Omelette and a Glass of Wine</i> and Other Dishes" was a piece where she lovingly described the history of the potato. As counter-evidence to those three correspondences? To show she'd taken their criticism to heart and spent the next two years learning to really appreciate potatoes the way a foodie should? To prove that she didn't hate food/food-writers, just the way Alice Waters positioned herself as a "foodie"?
Less thrillingly, Iaian Sinclair's response to what Angela Carter wrote about <i>Downriver</i> was included at the end of that piece. He does take issue with some of the points she makes, but he's much less confrontational and the response is therefore much less fun to read. And it wasn't in the Tomato Woman section, so I'd already lost interest.
This tiny book took me a decade to get through. I was really enjoying it at first! (Relishing it! Comparing Carter to Borges!) But then I put it aside and the Contents disappeared and so did my interest.
My scattered thoughts:
I don't know if this print run had a page missing or if it was just my copy, but my table of contents cut off about halfway through, right after "Elizabeth David: <i>English Bread and Yeast Cookery</i>". Fitting, because that was perhaps the last piece in the book that I fully enjoyed... it kicked off with some navel-gazey puttering from Carter that included the statement that "I used to feel so womanly when I was baking my filthy bread." And it had this gem of a section on Virginia Woolf near the end: "Although otherwise an indifferent cook, Virginia could certainly knock you up a lovely cottage loaf. You bet. This strikes me as just the sort of pretentiously frivolous and dilettantish thing a Bloomsbury <i>would</i> be good at -- knowing how to do one, just one, fatuously complicated kitchen thing and doing that one thing well enough to put the cook's nose out of joint."
The Tomato Woman section was definitely the one I enjoyed the most. How could I not love a section that kicks off with a cheeky epigraph from Claude Levi-Strauss? ("To eat is to fuck.")
The absolute best part (in the Tomato Woman section, of course): at the end of "<i>An Omelette and a Glass of Wine</i> and Other Dishes" there are three pieces of "interesting correspondence" absolutely demolishing Angela Carter for her self-righteous takedown of Alice Waters. They call out Carter's "puritanical contempt for decently prepared food" and her "difficult to follow" argument against Waters's enjoyment of food/foodie identity. Something about these letters being presented as "interesting" without any further context tickled me. Like she almost wanted to admit they were right? Or she thought they were hilariously wrong? Or were they added after her death, by the "friend" who edited the selected writings? (Scare quotes around friend because what kind of friend would include those rebuttals after Carter no longer had the ability to snark back?) It also tickled me that the piece immediately after "<i>An Omelette and a Glass of Wine</i> and Other Dishes" was a piece where she lovingly described the history of the potato. As counter-evidence to those three correspondences? To show she'd taken their criticism to heart and spent the next two years learning to really appreciate potatoes the way a foodie should? To prove that she didn't hate food/food-writers, just the way Alice Waters positioned herself as a "foodie"?
Less thrillingly, Iaian Sinclair's response to what Angela Carter wrote about <i>Downriver</i> was included at the end of that piece. He does take issue with some of the points she makes, but he's much less confrontational and the response is therefore much less fun to read. And it wasn't in the Tomato Woman section, so I'd already lost interest.
This tiny book took me a decade to get through. I was really enjoying it at first! (Relishing it! Comparing Carter to Borges!) But then I put it aside and the Contents disappeared and so did my interest.
nearit's review
3.0
A collection of non-fiction writing that is carefully curated to make an argument for the sort of fiction its author values - in this case, something post(/pre)-literary, something genuinely pleasurable but yet ugly enough to illuminate something about the world that produces and consumes it.
Some phrases repeat across reviews ("All life is here") but its the broader themes that grow louder as they echo.
Some phrases repeat across reviews ("All life is here") but its the broader themes that grow louder as they echo.
earlgreybooks's review
3.0
I definitely would have enjoyed this more if I'd actually read or even heard of the books she was reviewing, but it's still Angela Carter and she's just incredible. The piece in here on Jane Eyre was amazing and definitely made me want to read it.
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