"FOOD HISTORY" A BOOK I’M WRITING

Decades ago in my San Francisco apartment, Allen Ginsberg quoted from Thomas Hardy. “The road to a true philosophy seems to lie in humbly recording diverse readings of its phenomena.”

I was not sure then or now what he meant, but I have been writing this book ever since.

All the while I have felt that it is not so much that food by itself is boring, it is just that it is more fascinating and illuminating is the seriously funny things we get up to when dining. As in, for example, what people wore, while doing so.

I have decided to lay bare Western culinary history using:

FASHION

FLOWERS: for table décor

SWORDS: for the ruling class who either paid for or took the hospitality by the sword.

MICE: more culinary than a flea but sharing the best view of what was going on under the table (see England’s most glorious sexual novel, The Flea).

As well as the food, of course.

HONORABLE MENTION:

What gets more than honorable mention is the delightful fact that Western spirituality springs out of food and d…