Ohhh this is so delicious! (Pun intended 😉) I LOVE what you have done in this piece exploring the differences between taste, hunger, and appetite.
I haven't met a book/memoir by a food journalist that I didn't want to read. 🍛🥟🍩🍨🎂🫛
I guess the language of food as well
as growing, harvesting, preparing, serving, and eating the food is native to me and endlessly interesting! I really enjoy those kinds of books. 👩🏻🍳👩🌾
I am so glad this piece spoke to you! I think it's such a beautiful experience when you find a metaphorical lens through which you can analyze your life. I think a lot of people who run find the parallels between running and life meaningful. So do people who practice yoga or people who read. I am total novice into thinking about food in this way but I have been a devout Alicia Kennedy reader for a couple of years now and I think it's beautiful.
These are great questions. It is hard to describe taste, and education may help develop it, but that's not the only way, I don't think. Observing the natural world and its patterns and relationships is another education and offers plentiful examples of proportion, pacing, balance, and so on. It is helpful to know the agreed upon terms for things, as naming always refines, and I find it makes a difference to write about what you read, as you do who well here. Why is something good? Why doesn't everyone see it the same way?
I think that's the conflict I wrestle with a lot -- if I didn't get "it" through formal education, is all lost? I love a third way solution that doesn't make me choose between rigor and intuition.
I don't think most/many people get it from formal education. For years I thought that my formal education was personally/specifically disappointing to only me. But, I think most people feel this way.
Education is what we do for others (getting our tickets stamped, etc.), learning is what we so for ourselves.
This is so thought-provoking for me this morning. When you write of reading for pleasure as an act of defiance, I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way. If I’m not enjoying a book, I’m unable to make my brain focus on it to read it. I definitely went through several years during college and law school where I had zero capacity for reading for pleasure. But once I finished, I began to read voraciously. And whatever interested me. I continue that to this day. I have such a hard time describing what my taste in books is, but I have largely narrowed it to female writers in the 20th century. That being said, I’m currently reading a trilogy set in Hungary in the lead up to WWI that was written by a Hungarian man in the 1930s, but, as I said, I read what I want. I have found this so incredibly freeing in the years since finishing school. Perhaps there is a bit of defiance in there, but I’ve just never thought of it that way. Great post, and as I also do love food-related memoirs (MFK Fisher, Julia Child), I will totally check this one out!
Wonderful article. I don't worry about my place in things, anymore. I love to learn, and am grateful to anyone who writes or has written books that make my life richer. Happy to be alive and with people I love. Perspective. Calm.
It is exhausting to live and constantly evaluate yourself against an imaginary standard that may or may not be serving you. It's a very current moment kind of thing to deal with... to not only deal with the difficulty of DOING work but also worry about how you are being PERCEIVED as someone who is doing the work.
Thank you, Petya, but I think you are on your way. You've identified the problem and you don't like it! The next step is realizing that none of this is your fault: we've all been programmed to worry and suffer. You can jam that system and work your own way. Please don't let a terrible life event have to happen to give you perspective. It's so restful to work as a free spirit. Every word comes out stronger and better with that unmistakable ring of conviction. Irresistible. If this sounds difficult, well, it may be. You have to cut through years of it all.
Someone once said, "Just jump, and build your wings on the way down." I forgot who it was, but I thank them every day anyway.
As founder of A Chacun Son Gout ('everybody have taste'), I feel personally concerned by the first question! And after reflection (that to say my answer was not necessarily obvious...), I have the feeling that the preference has an active and decisional dimension, the appetite has a very empirical or pragmatic dimension, and the taste has a passive and contemplative dimension.
Hi! Love the post (as always). Hoping you can help me.. a long time ago you made a post discussing how you read (or something like that) and you made 3 magazine/literary journal recommendations. Yale Review of books and two others. What were they? Where is that post? Did I make this up?! Help!!
Good memory!!! I wrote about literary journal subscriptions in my gift guide post back in December. At the time I mentioned The Yale Review, The Sewanee Review and BookForum. Since then I have also subscribed to The Paris Review and Frieze.
Gosh you write beautifully Petya! This prompted me to think of Ira Glass's quote about 'the taste gap' - have you come across it? I think about it often in the context of writing:
"All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it's like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not that good.
But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit."
Beautifully written Petya…and one phrase leapt out a me…
“ she doesn’t manage herself into smallness”
School and I did not get on well, I did well in the subjects I liked..primarily English…
I have learnt so much more in my 69 years since leaving school and having a whole smorgasboard of books to read….how lucky are we to live in these times….( book wise, not anything else!)
Gosh so good. Especially the smallness we women put upon ourselves. I am preparing an application for a photographer portfolio review I would dearly love to be chosen for. This landed in such a way that I will stand in my desire. Can’t wait to read the book.
Very interesting writing, big fan of Alicia's work here, and cannot wait to read her new book.
For me it's been a liberation to feel the freedom to choose my own reads without a purpose, just for the sake of it, because I love to spend time with a book. After many years of education in which all the books recommended were to do with the canon, it's a joy to be able to create my personal canon according to my own interests and preferences.
She is so good.
Ohhh this is so delicious! (Pun intended 😉) I LOVE what you have done in this piece exploring the differences between taste, hunger, and appetite.
I haven't met a book/memoir by a food journalist that I didn't want to read. 🍛🥟🍩🍨🎂🫛
I guess the language of food as well
as growing, harvesting, preparing, serving, and eating the food is native to me and endlessly interesting! I really enjoy those kinds of books. 👩🏻🍳👩🌾
I am so glad this piece spoke to you! I think it's such a beautiful experience when you find a metaphorical lens through which you can analyze your life. I think a lot of people who run find the parallels between running and life meaningful. So do people who practice yoga or people who read. I am total novice into thinking about food in this way but I have been a devout Alicia Kennedy reader for a couple of years now and I think it's beautiful.
Yes I think you are right about all of this! It is super interesting to think about and discuss so thanks for tugging on that thread.
These are great questions. It is hard to describe taste, and education may help develop it, but that's not the only way, I don't think. Observing the natural world and its patterns and relationships is another education and offers plentiful examples of proportion, pacing, balance, and so on. It is helpful to know the agreed upon terms for things, as naming always refines, and I find it makes a difference to write about what you read, as you do who well here. Why is something good? Why doesn't everyone see it the same way?
I think that's the conflict I wrestle with a lot -- if I didn't get "it" through formal education, is all lost? I love a third way solution that doesn't make me choose between rigor and intuition.
I don't think most/many people get it from formal education. For years I thought that my formal education was personally/specifically disappointing to only me. But, I think most people feel this way.
Education is what we do for others (getting our tickets stamped, etc.), learning is what we so for ourselves.
This is so thought-provoking for me this morning. When you write of reading for pleasure as an act of defiance, I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way. If I’m not enjoying a book, I’m unable to make my brain focus on it to read it. I definitely went through several years during college and law school where I had zero capacity for reading for pleasure. But once I finished, I began to read voraciously. And whatever interested me. I continue that to this day. I have such a hard time describing what my taste in books is, but I have largely narrowed it to female writers in the 20th century. That being said, I’m currently reading a trilogy set in Hungary in the lead up to WWI that was written by a Hungarian man in the 1930s, but, as I said, I read what I want. I have found this so incredibly freeing in the years since finishing school. Perhaps there is a bit of defiance in there, but I’ve just never thought of it that way. Great post, and as I also do love food-related memoirs (MFK Fisher, Julia Child), I will totally check this one out!
Wonderful article. I don't worry about my place in things, anymore. I love to learn, and am grateful to anyone who writes or has written books that make my life richer. Happy to be alive and with people I love. Perspective. Calm.
It is exhausting to live and constantly evaluate yourself against an imaginary standard that may or may not be serving you. It's a very current moment kind of thing to deal with... to not only deal with the difficulty of DOING work but also worry about how you are being PERCEIVED as someone who is doing the work.
YOU are how I aspire to be.
Thank you, Petya, but I think you are on your way. You've identified the problem and you don't like it! The next step is realizing that none of this is your fault: we've all been programmed to worry and suffer. You can jam that system and work your own way. Please don't let a terrible life event have to happen to give you perspective. It's so restful to work as a free spirit. Every word comes out stronger and better with that unmistakable ring of conviction. Irresistible. If this sounds difficult, well, it may be. You have to cut through years of it all.
Someone once said, "Just jump, and build your wings on the way down." I forgot who it was, but I thank them every day anyway.
As founder of A Chacun Son Gout ('everybody have taste'), I feel personally concerned by the first question! And after reflection (that to say my answer was not necessarily obvious...), I have the feeling that the preference has an active and decisional dimension, the appetite has a very empirical or pragmatic dimension, and the taste has a passive and contemplative dimension.
Hi! Love the post (as always). Hoping you can help me.. a long time ago you made a post discussing how you read (or something like that) and you made 3 magazine/literary journal recommendations. Yale Review of books and two others. What were they? Where is that post? Did I make this up?! Help!!
Good memory!!! I wrote about literary journal subscriptions in my gift guide post back in December. At the time I mentioned The Yale Review, The Sewanee Review and BookForum. Since then I have also subscribed to The Paris Review and Frieze.
This is the original post:
https://petya.substack.com/p/everything-but-the-book-a-gift-guide?utm_source=publication-search
I absolutely adored reading this! And now desperately need this book in my life! So many of the struggles you mention are so familiar to me as well!
Gosh you write beautifully Petya! This prompted me to think of Ira Glass's quote about 'the taste gap' - have you come across it? I think about it often in the context of writing:
"All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it's like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not that good.
But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit."
Beautifully written Petya…and one phrase leapt out a me…
“ she doesn’t manage herself into smallness”
School and I did not get on well, I did well in the subjects I liked..primarily English…
I have learnt so much more in my 69 years since leaving school and having a whole smorgasboard of books to read….how lucky are we to live in these times….( book wise, not anything else!)
I’ll have to check this book out, I always trust your Recs.
You’ve inspired me to read less contemporary literature, too! Your taste is a+
Gosh so good. Especially the smallness we women put upon ourselves. I am preparing an application for a photographer portfolio review I would dearly love to be chosen for. This landed in such a way that I will stand in my desire. Can’t wait to read the book.
Oh, Sara!!! I am so glad this resonated!!! We are rooting for you and I will make sure Alicia sees your note!!!
I bought the audio version yesterday! Can’t wait.
Very interesting writing, big fan of Alicia's work here, and cannot wait to read her new book.
For me it's been a liberation to feel the freedom to choose my own reads without a purpose, just for the sake of it, because I love to spend time with a book. After many years of education in which all the books recommended were to do with the canon, it's a joy to be able to create my personal canon according to my own interests and preferences.
Thank you for this article Petya k. Grady. Lots of new words and rabbit hole style reading for me in the future. 🤗🔥🔥