Les apéritifs

In the opening of A Room of One's Own (1929), Virginia Woolf reflects that it is “a curious fact that novelists have a way of making us believe that luncheon parties are invariably memorable for something very witty that was said, or for something very wise that was done. But they seldom spare a word for what was eaten.” This volume of essays titled Gastro-Modernism: Food, Literature, Culture aims to “spare” a few words not only for what was “eaten,” but also to highlight how gastronomy suffuses the literary landscapes of global modernisms from the specific to the broad from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century.

This introduction to Gastro-Modernism functions as a five-course French menu, which serves up a range of dishes clarifying how this collection theoretically and historically intervenes in the fields of modernism, gastronomy, and food studies, followed by a description of the chapters. For this opening portion of le menu, taking a few moments for l’apéritif, I want to begin with a brief anecdotal analysis. My own clarifying moment about the critical relationship between food studies and modernism occurred during one of many readings of James Joyce's epic novel Ulysses (1922).

In Ulysses, “Lestrygonians” has frequently been characterized as an episode pertaining to food, taste, and digestion.2 It is in this hour of the novel when Leopold Bloom wanders through what he refers to as “the very worst hour of the day” (1:00 p.m.), with constant reminders of food and eating. Bloom eats his lunch consisting of a Gorgonzola sandwich and Burgundian wine at Davy Byrne's Pub. Although taste appears to be the most redolent sense for Bloom, as well as for readers, another sense is at work concurrently: both vision and taste intertwine. Bloom muses, “Sardines on the shelves. Almost taste them by looking.”

“Synaesthesia,” which is the experience when multiple senses occur simultaneously, often ignites memory response. Our senses generate affective channels that produce memory. As Brian Massumi contends, “Affects are virtual synaesthetic perspectives anchored in (functionally limited by) the actually existing, particular things that embody them.” Is there a better substance to evoke the process of synaesthesia than Burgundian wine? As Joyce writes, “Feel better. Burgundy. Good pick me up.”