An Extravagant Hunger: The Passionate Years of M.F.K. Fisher

by Anne Zimmerman

Overview

In An Extravagant Hunger, time slows and is relished, and the turning points and casual strolls of M.F.K. Fisher’s life are unwrapped and savored. From the Berengaria that washed her across the sea to France in 1929, to Le Paquis, the Swiss estate that later provided a backdrop for some of the most idyllic and fleeting moments of her life, Zimmerman exquisitely captures the breadth and stories of Fisher’s love for food and her love for family and men. Exploring Fisher’s lonely and formative time in Europe with her first husband; her subsequent divorce and re-marriage to her creative sparkplug, Dillwyn Parrish, and his tragic suicide; the story of M.F.K. Fisher’s life becomes as vibrant and passionate as her prolific words on wine and cuisine.
Letters and journal entries piece together a dramatic life, but An Extravagant Hunger steps further, bridging the gaps between personal notes and her public persona, filling in the silences by offering an engaging and unprecedented intuitive commentary. With a passion of her own, Anne Zimmerman is the cheerful witness, lingering beside M.F.K. Fisher through her most dramatic and productive years.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781582438047
Publisher:	Counterpoint Press
Publication date:	01/24/2012
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

Editorial Reviews

Zimmerman, a contributor to Culinate.com, explores the privileged yet emotionally turbulent world of the pioneering American food writer Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher. In her sympathetic yet critical biography of the life behind Fisher's celebrated writings, Zimmerman finds a passionate woman defined by "lifelong hungers." Using access to Fisher's private letters and with help from the family, Zimmerman paints Fisher's emotions and discoveries that she realized in those moments where her personality and adventurous palette intersect. "Her desire for food, for love and for attention of any kind, was relentless," writes Zimmerman. "Food helped her understand the world." In turn, Zimmerman's carefully crafted narrative urges readers to connect Fisher's expanding self-awareness to the literary career she built. It also maps the unique tastes Fisher found, then sensuously described along her way from a California childhood to her European (mostly French) and Mexican odysseys; three marriages; and the suicides of her second husband, Tim Parrish, in 1941 followed by that of her brother David a year later. This focused, smart, and engaging view serves MFK Fisher as both culinary writer and cultural icon. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for An Extravagant Hunger

"Zimmerman has captured the passionate apprenticeship and wandering years, with all their turmoil and pleasure interwoven with pain, which created such a marvelous writer and such an enduringly luminous woman." —The Washington Post

"In her sympathetic yet critical biography of the life behind Fisher's celebrated writings, Zimmerman finds a passionate woman defined by 'lifelong hungers' . . . Focused, smart, and engaging." —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher