“Bread is the staff of life.” This English idiom, coined in
the 17th century, continues to haunt writers of fiction.
No one would argue that food is unimportant, but how much to
insert or include in fictional stories is another matter. Another
post on this can be read here.
Way back, when a friend read my novel THE VOICE OF THUNDER, she
commented that she wished there were more references to food, “because I like
that.” This same friend had an expensive subscription to a newspaper “just for
the recipes,” so I counted this as her peculiarity.
But something of her comment stayed with me, and when I write
anything longer than a picture book text (and occasionally even then) I include
vivid descriptions of meals and characters’ experience of food.
Somewhere, this comment from long ago just landed right. I honestly
think it improves characterization, or at the very least belongs as part of
such.
Are we what we eat? I don’t go there. I eat what there is
when offered, and sometimes it is decidedly not “me.” Even when I choose, there
are plenty of questionable choices I refuse to think of as fundamentally “me.”
But the food experience for humans is more than just sustenance.
It belongs to the auxiliary aspects of our being in the choices (when we have
them, which for most Americans is often) ways of presentation (aesthetic
sensibilities) and religious or philosophical orientations.
Food offerings, whether fancy or few, belong in stories,
period.
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