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Consider the Oyster
M.F.K. Fisher, whom John Updike has called our "poet of the appetites," here pays tribute to that most delicate and enigmatic of foods---the oyster. As she tells of oysters found in stews, in soups, roasted, baked, fried, prepared à la Rockefeller or au naturel--and of the pearls sometimes found therein--Fisher describes her mother's joy at encountering oyster loaf in a girls' dorm in the 1890's, recalls her own initiation into the "strange cold succulence" of raw oysters as a young woman in Marseille and Dijon, and explores both the bivalve's famed aphrodisiac properties and its equally notorious gut-wrenching powers. Plumbing the "dreadful but exciting" life of the oyster, Fisher invites readers to share in the comforts and delights that this delicate edible evokes, and enchants us along the way with her characteristically wise and witty prose.
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1941
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About the author
M.F.K. Fisher
85 books502 followersMary Frances Kennedy Fisher was a prolific and well-respected writer, writing more than 20 books during her lifetime and also publishing two volumes of journals and correspondence shortly before her death in 1992. Her first book, Serve it Forth, was published in 1937. Her books deal primarily with food, considering it from many aspects: preparation, natural history, culture, and philosophy. Fisher believed that eating well was just one of the "arts of life" and explored the art of living as a secondary theme in her writing. Her style and pacing are noted elements of her short stories and essays.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 206 reviews
September 25, 2011
This exceedingly modest book (a mere 77 pages) presented me with some modest, unexpected dilemmas. Seeing it in a book swap and recalling, from an encounter years ago, that I was determined to read one of her volumes someday, I picked it up, thinking I'd breeze through it and return it to the swap--I'm trying to pare my library. But I find I don't want to let go of it. Now the question is whether it belongs in my kitchen with the cookbooks (because it does contain recipes) or somewhere among the more serious nonfiction. Though I can hardly call myself a cook, I'm tempted at least to try the oyster stuffing in a turkey someday. On the other hand...
A good portion of human life in the more indulgent cultures these days is devoted to gastro-porn: a form of life-out-of-balance in which too much time, money, and attention is expended on increasingly fine points of restaurants, recipes, ingredients, schools of thought on nutrition, and the like. Pay attention to sex this way and you may be labeled an addict. M. F. K. Fisher was apparently never susceptible to this kind of excess, because food was apparently never the main point. Like an ellipse (if you remember your high-school geometry), she has two focal points: one is food, the other is, to put it simply, the romance of people and places--i.e., the rest of life. Here, her account includes the curiously bi-gendered life of the oyster itself, an imaginative reconstruction of a dining delight from her mother's boarding-school days, the tale (fanciful but still true in its way) of a nervous collegian hoping to bolster his virility, and the only funny recipe I've ever read, as recounted to her by "a cadaverous old man who had reigned at various times in the kitchens of all the crowned heads and banker-princes of fin-de-Hapsbourg Europe."
Because she has restored the balance to my sense of the place food may have in our affairs, in a way that's positively classical--something that no mere cookbook or food-magazine article has ever done--I think I know which shelf I'll put this on.
A good portion of human life in the more indulgent cultures these days is devoted to gastro-porn: a form of life-out-of-balance in which too much time, money, and attention is expended on increasingly fine points of restaurants, recipes, ingredients, schools of thought on nutrition, and the like. Pay attention to sex this way and you may be labeled an addict. M. F. K. Fisher was apparently never susceptible to this kind of excess, because food was apparently never the main point. Like an ellipse (if you remember your high-school geometry), she has two focal points: one is food, the other is, to put it simply, the romance of people and places--i.e., the rest of life. Here, her account includes the curiously bi-gendered life of the oyster itself, an imaginative reconstruction of a dining delight from her mother's boarding-school days, the tale (fanciful but still true in its way) of a nervous collegian hoping to bolster his virility, and the only funny recipe I've ever read, as recounted to her by "a cadaverous old man who had reigned at various times in the kitchens of all the crowned heads and banker-princes of fin-de-Hapsbourg Europe."
Because she has restored the balance to my sense of the place food may have in our affairs, in a way that's positively classical--something that no mere cookbook or food-magazine article has ever done--I think I know which shelf I'll put this on.
June 4, 2017
A delicious morsel of a book.
"It should be opened at street temperature in a cool month, never iced, and plucked from its rough irregular shell at once, so that its black gills still vibrate and cringe with the shock of the air upon them. It should be swallowed, not too fast, and then its fine salt juices, more like the smell of rock pools at low tide than any other food in the world, should be drunk at one gulp from the shell. Then, of course, a bite or two of buttered brown bread must follow, better to stimulate the papilles...and then, of course, of course, a fine mouthful of a white wine."
Must read for oyster lovers, food writers/readers, and those who like subtle humor.
"It should be opened at street temperature in a cool month, never iced, and plucked from its rough irregular shell at once, so that its black gills still vibrate and cringe with the shock of the air upon them. It should be swallowed, not too fast, and then its fine salt juices, more like the smell of rock pools at low tide than any other food in the world, should be drunk at one gulp from the shell. Then, of course, a bite or two of buttered brown bread must follow, better to stimulate the papilles...and then, of course, of course, a fine mouthful of a white wine."
Must read for oyster lovers, food writers/readers, and those who like subtle humor.
March 13, 2014
This book both introduced me to and sparked my love of oysters and also of MFK Fisher, whom W. H. Auden called "America's greatest writer...."http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/01/18...
"An oyster leads a dreadful but exciting life. Indeed, his chance to live at all is slim, and if he should survive the arrows of his own outrageous fortune and in the two weeks of his carefree youth find a clean smooth place to fix on, the years afterwards are full of stress, passion and danger. . . ."
"Men have enjoyed eating oysters since they were not much more than monkeys, according to the kitchen middens they have left behind them. And thus, in their own one-minded way, they have spent time and thought and money on the problems of how to protect oysters from the suckers and the borers and the starvers, until now it is comparatively easy to eat this two-valved mollusk anywhere, without thought of the dangers it has run in its few years. Its chilly delicate gray body slips into a stew-pan or under a broiler or alive down a red throat, and it is done. Its life has been thoughtless but no less full of danger, and now that it is over we are perhaps the better for it."
"The point about her, as Ms. Ferrary notes in "Between Friends: M. F. K. Fisher and Me," is that Mrs. Fisher is not just a food writer. If she writes better than anyone about tangerines, it's because "underneath it all, she's not writing about tangerines." The tangential nature of the tangerines is confirmed over and over in Mrs. Fisher's writing. Witness this parenthesis to an assertion about the crisp flesh of oysters, for example, in one of her early books, "Consider the Oyster" (1941): " Crisp is not quite right, and flesh is not right, but in the same way you might say that oyster is not right for what I mean."
So what is M. F. K. Fisher writing about? Desire, neediness, solace, comfort, satisfaction. Ms. Ferrary finds her sensual rather than sexual. Coming to the writing for the first time, I would dare to disagree. Lots of it seems to me to be about sex. But you cannot be sure. http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/11..."
"An oyster leads a dreadful but exciting life. Indeed, his chance to live at all is slim, and if he should survive the arrows of his own outrageous fortune and in the two weeks of his carefree youth find a clean smooth place to fix on, the years afterwards are full of stress, passion and danger. . . ."
"Men have enjoyed eating oysters since they were not much more than monkeys, according to the kitchen middens they have left behind them. And thus, in their own one-minded way, they have spent time and thought and money on the problems of how to protect oysters from the suckers and the borers and the starvers, until now it is comparatively easy to eat this two-valved mollusk anywhere, without thought of the dangers it has run in its few years. Its chilly delicate gray body slips into a stew-pan or under a broiler or alive down a red throat, and it is done. Its life has been thoughtless but no less full of danger, and now that it is over we are perhaps the better for it."
"The point about her, as Ms. Ferrary notes in "Between Friends: M. F. K. Fisher and Me," is that Mrs. Fisher is not just a food writer. If she writes better than anyone about tangerines, it's because "underneath it all, she's not writing about tangerines." The tangential nature of the tangerines is confirmed over and over in Mrs. Fisher's writing. Witness this parenthesis to an assertion about the crisp flesh of oysters, for example, in one of her early books, "Consider the Oyster" (1941): " Crisp is not quite right, and flesh is not right, but in the same way you might say that oyster is not right for what I mean."
So what is M. F. K. Fisher writing about? Desire, neediness, solace, comfort, satisfaction. Ms. Ferrary finds her sensual rather than sexual. Coming to the writing for the first time, I would dare to disagree. Lots of it seems to me to be about sex. But you cannot be sure. http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/11..."
August 24, 2008
MFK Fisher is my new girl crush. Just look at her. This book really is just about oysters and I wish there was more. Fisher is sharp, snobby and super funny. She has included several recipes. My favorite is To Make a Pearl. In the list of ingredients, 1 diving-girl.
July 28, 2023
"Cicero ate oysters to nourish his eloquence, and the ancients used them with a startlingly cold-blooded combination of gastronomy and pure hygiene."
May 24, 2025
this goes out to all of us that find tremendous joy at the happy hour of our local oyster bar. delicious little book that explores the bigendered hero’s journey that is an oysters life, and inserts human stories of how much joy has been brought from this little creatures
February 24, 2025
MFK Fisher.
An all-time ponderer. I think it’s safe to consider, like she often does, that few have pondered as thoughtfully and throughly about crustaceans as her.
76 pages of oyster-laden inquiries cracked open from Fisher’s cranium, slurped up (I’m so sorry) during a 4 hour plane ride (Chicago to Miami) and then closed again to leave me with even more to consider about these slimy little guys than I had ever previously imagined.
Oyster Stew? Clam Chowder sure, not during my Nebraska up-bringing but I’d heard, later sampled and even poorly made it.
Now on this sweaty mid-February afternoon in South Beach I’m thinking of a frigid winter in, I don’t know, Rhode Island, in a colonial era cabin on the shores of the Atlantic, with a pipping hot bowl of this (fishy? Definitely creamy) stew.
I’ll be so for real, Fisher recalling the oyster stews of her childhood may be some of my favorite writing ever. Timeless.
It makes sense a short book stuffed with seemingly semi-conscious considerations would take on a dreamlike character but like any good book, it took me to a semi-conscious state as well. My reading pleasure steeeeeeeeadily at simmer. I finished it with two modelos at a little table outside below my hotel on Espanola Way and just thought, my god, now that is how you reflect. No one ponders like Fisher.
An all-time ponderer. I think it’s safe to consider, like she often does, that few have pondered as thoughtfully and throughly about crustaceans as her.
76 pages of oyster-laden inquiries cracked open from Fisher’s cranium, slurped up (I’m so sorry) during a 4 hour plane ride (Chicago to Miami) and then closed again to leave me with even more to consider about these slimy little guys than I had ever previously imagined.
Oyster Stew? Clam Chowder sure, not during my Nebraska up-bringing but I’d heard, later sampled and even poorly made it.
Now on this sweaty mid-February afternoon in South Beach I’m thinking of a frigid winter in, I don’t know, Rhode Island, in a colonial era cabin on the shores of the Atlantic, with a pipping hot bowl of this (fishy? Definitely creamy) stew.
I’ll be so for real, Fisher recalling the oyster stews of her childhood may be some of my favorite writing ever. Timeless.
It makes sense a short book stuffed with seemingly semi-conscious considerations would take on a dreamlike character but like any good book, it took me to a semi-conscious state as well. My reading pleasure steeeeeeeeadily at simmer. I finished it with two modelos at a little table outside below my hotel on Espanola Way and just thought, my god, now that is how you reflect. No one ponders like Fisher.
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April 22, 2020The cover bears her photograph, a woman, young enough to be attractive in the eyes of society but old enough to possess some bit of wisdom. She wears a shimmery knit top, the kind one would wear to a cocktail party not a potluck picnic. Her hair is pulled back into a chignon and her eyebrows plucked within an inch of their life or perhaps gone all together and merely drawn on with a pencil to present the illusion of interest.
Yet even without this photograph, I would have had a similar mental picture of MFK Fisher simply by her voice in, Consider the Oyster, her collection of essays on, you guessed it, the subject of oysters. I would have imagined her in pearls with a martini in her hand describing her recipes of oyster- or ---in a plummy diction reminiscent of Martha Stewart before jail, before she became friends with Snoop Dogg and an old Hollywood actress that graced the films for the 30’s or 40’s. Her accent, of course, would be neither British or American in origin, but somewhere that hovers over the Atlantic for those who can afford to spend time in both places frequently enough.
Fisher begins this tone right from the beginning in her first essay, “Love and Death Among the Molluscs.” “Almost any normal oyster never knows from one year to the next whether he is he or she,” Fisher explains in her droll sort of way letting us know that “American oysters differ as much as American people, so that the Atlantic Coast inhabitants spend their childhood and adolescence floating free and unprotected with the tides…while the Western oysters lie within special brood-chambers of the maternal shell.” She tells us right off the bat her preferences for both oysters and people. Of course, Fisher believes “the Easterners seem more daring.” (3-4)
The essay “R is for Oyster” begins with an epithet, which in this case, is a marker from a grave stone,
C. Pearl Swallow
He died of a bad oyster.
Fisher says, “The man’s name was good for such an end, but probably the end was not.” I see her take the olive out of her martini to nibble upon, giving her guests enough time to laugh heartily. She goes on the describe the long and miserable death but as one would give a dry cocktail party anecdote, “And, God, he was thirsty, thirsty…I’m dying, he thought, and even in his woe he regretted it, and did not believe it. But he died.” (15)
This conversational tone makes even recipes interesting as the preface to the recipe for Dried Oysters with Vegetables shows.
“Dried oysters, which can be bought at almost any Oriental grocery store in the is country and are very much like the smoked oysters people give you now at cocktail parties, excellent little shrived things on toothpicks which make your mouth taste hideous unless you drink a lot, which may also make your mouth taste hideous. “(34)
Fisher teaches both the writer and the conversationalist that you can never exhaust your subject, if you add a bit of yourself in the content.
Yet even without this photograph, I would have had a similar mental picture of MFK Fisher simply by her voice in, Consider the Oyster, her collection of essays on, you guessed it, the subject of oysters. I would have imagined her in pearls with a martini in her hand describing her recipes of oyster- or ---in a plummy diction reminiscent of Martha Stewart before jail, before she became friends with Snoop Dogg and an old Hollywood actress that graced the films for the 30’s or 40’s. Her accent, of course, would be neither British or American in origin, but somewhere that hovers over the Atlantic for those who can afford to spend time in both places frequently enough.
Fisher begins this tone right from the beginning in her first essay, “Love and Death Among the Molluscs.” “Almost any normal oyster never knows from one year to the next whether he is he or she,” Fisher explains in her droll sort of way letting us know that “American oysters differ as much as American people, so that the Atlantic Coast inhabitants spend their childhood and adolescence floating free and unprotected with the tides…while the Western oysters lie within special brood-chambers of the maternal shell.” She tells us right off the bat her preferences for both oysters and people. Of course, Fisher believes “the Easterners seem more daring.” (3-4)
The essay “R is for Oyster” begins with an epithet, which in this case, is a marker from a grave stone,
C. Pearl Swallow
He died of a bad oyster.
Fisher says, “The man’s name was good for such an end, but probably the end was not.” I see her take the olive out of her martini to nibble upon, giving her guests enough time to laugh heartily. She goes on the describe the long and miserable death but as one would give a dry cocktail party anecdote, “And, God, he was thirsty, thirsty…I’m dying, he thought, and even in his woe he regretted it, and did not believe it. But he died.” (15)
This conversational tone makes even recipes interesting as the preface to the recipe for Dried Oysters with Vegetables shows.
“Dried oysters, which can be bought at almost any Oriental grocery store in the is country and are very much like the smoked oysters people give you now at cocktail parties, excellent little shrived things on toothpicks which make your mouth taste hideous unless you drink a lot, which may also make your mouth taste hideous. “(34)
Fisher teaches both the writer and the conversationalist that you can never exhaust your subject, if you add a bit of yourself in the content.
October 3, 2009
After reading this book, I had two thoughts: MFK Fisher is a crazy, snobby old loon; and would I ever love to sit next to her at a dinner party. Her writing is witty, knowledgeable and from a different era. There are great recipes; the one on oyster loaves was the most tantalizing to me. At about 75 pages, this book is an easy read. I would read other stuff by this looney old girl.
October 26, 2019
Pure joy!
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December 18, 2024Weird little book made up of brief essays and recipes for oysters. It drew me in because in the past few years my palate has dramatically expanded and I've found myself not just tolerating former dislikes like wine, olives, and raw oysters, but fixating on and actively seeking them out. Of course reading this brought back some mouthwatering memories of Victor and I eating a whole peck of giant, fresh, raw oysters on the East Coast this summer...I was so intimidated when they brought out that plate but shouldn't have been. We polished it off easily.
There really is nothing like a fresh, meaty raw oyster. They taste kind of like what the ocean "should" taste like in your imagination. Just barely salty, clean and cold...add some lemon and cocktail sauce and/or tabasco and it's just HEAVEN.
Anyway! I wasn't a fan of Fisher's writing unfortunately. It was pretty fanciful to the point that I question whether this could have been a book at all had she made it even a tad more efficient. Whatever though. You still have to give this a look if you like oysters. If you don't like them...try again. 🦪
There really is nothing like a fresh, meaty raw oyster. They taste kind of like what the ocean "should" taste like in your imagination. Just barely salty, clean and cold...add some lemon and cocktail sauce and/or tabasco and it's just HEAVEN.
Anyway! I wasn't a fan of Fisher's writing unfortunately. It was pretty fanciful to the point that I question whether this could have been a book at all had she made it even a tad more efficient. Whatever though. You still have to give this a look if you like oysters. If you don't like them...try again. 🦪
Read
July 6, 2023Fisher's pleasure in the acts of both eating and writing is evident on every page (and I don't even eat oysters!).
March 20, 2022
A delightful little book of essays on the oyster- including recipes, pearls of wisdom(!!!) and reminiscences- written by a witty, sassy lady in the 1940s. From the milky oyster stews of New England, to Oyster loaf in Victorian boarding school and Oysters Rockerfella in New Orleans. I want some oysters now.
June 17, 2025
One of my fondest memories is stopping into the Bank St. Whalesbone with Meredith one winter night after a weeknight grocery shop. Thought we’d have a quick pint and a few oysters.
The bartender was feeling generous and offered us a free round. There happened to be some drunk, dedicated, rich patrons at a small table. In between proclaiming their love for the Whalesbone, they kept buying free shots for the entire place. It got progressively wilder.
We got drunk enough that Mere faked drinking her last shot and dumped it into my beer, which I drank to appease our bartender friend.
I can still see the drunken iPhone photo we took on a pile of plowed snow on the way home.
The bartender was feeling generous and offered us a free round. There happened to be some drunk, dedicated, rich patrons at a small table. In between proclaiming their love for the Whalesbone, they kept buying free shots for the entire place. It got progressively wilder.
We got drunk enough that Mere faked drinking her last shot and dumped it into my beer, which I drank to appease our bartender friend.
I can still see the drunken iPhone photo we took on a pile of plowed snow on the way home.
June 14, 2016
MFK Fisher is a snob and I like it. I wouldn't want to have been friends with her but I love reading her words. Bought this book for K a long time ago because he loves oysters, and I stole it from him.
Sentences like: "A better [tartar sauce] can be made from this recipe, which is easy if you have an herb garden, and impossible, but still fun to think about, if you do not."
Or: "Far removed as this recipe may seem from the ordinary kitchen's possibilities, it still has not that fabulous quality of the rule quoted by everyone from Richelieu's chef to Crosby Gaige, in which you put one thing inside another until you have something more or less the size of an elephant, then roast the whole thing and finally throw away all but the innermost thing. For instance, you start with an oyster. You put it inside a large olive, then you put the olive inside an ortolan (a wee bird called "the garden bunting," in case you are among the underprivileged), and the ortolan inside a lark, and so on and so on. In the end, you have a roasted oyster. Or perhaps a social revolution."
Sentences like: "A better [tartar sauce] can be made from this recipe, which is easy if you have an herb garden, and impossible, but still fun to think about, if you do not."
Or: "Far removed as this recipe may seem from the ordinary kitchen's possibilities, it still has not that fabulous quality of the rule quoted by everyone from Richelieu's chef to Crosby Gaige, in which you put one thing inside another until you have something more or less the size of an elephant, then roast the whole thing and finally throw away all but the innermost thing. For instance, you start with an oyster. You put it inside a large olive, then you put the olive inside an ortolan (a wee bird called "the garden bunting," in case you are among the underprivileged), and the ortolan inside a lark, and so on and so on. In the end, you have a roasted oyster. Or perhaps a social revolution."
September 18, 2018
What a weird read. A 75-page ode to the gastronomy of oysters, written in 1942, dotted with recipes and nostalgia. Charming despite (because of?) her snootiness.
After a recipe for butter crackers: "This is something you will probably never taste in your life, unless you are stubborn or have a crazy cook, but it is nice to know that there are still live people who have eaten something other than those light dead things we call oyster crackers with their stews."
"Men insist that [oysters in late summer] will kill you or make you wish they had. This is wrong, of course, except that all oysters, like all men, are somewhat weaker after they have done their best at reproducing."
After a recipe for butter crackers: "This is something you will probably never taste in your life, unless you are stubborn or have a crazy cook, but it is nice to know that there are still live people who have eaten something other than those light dead things we call oyster crackers with their stews."
"Men insist that [oysters in late summer] will kill you or make you wish they had. This is wrong, of course, except that all oysters, like all men, are somewhat weaker after they have done their best at reproducing."
October 16, 2015
As long as it takes for an oyster to slowly evolve its way into crispness/liquoric stupor/optimal salinity is about as long as you'd want to linger over every word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, chapter of this book. Fisher takes her time to nudge descriptions into succinctness, whether directly narrating factual foundations or musing in the heavens of magical realism laced with truth. It's the literary equivalent of slow food, proving there are two sides (probably more) to every bivalve story.
September 22, 2016
Leave it to MFK Fisher to write a whole book on Oysters. She was apparently a devoted consumer of these unlucky shellfish, typical of her "I'll eat anything" motto in life. She covers -- you should pardon the expression -- the entire waterfront with this book, with recipes for everything from Oyster Loaf to Hang Town Fry as well as all the mythology and folk beliefs about the benefits of eating screaming, live protoplasm cut out of the shell.
August 24, 2021
One of the signs that M.F.K. Fisher is an amazing writer: Fisher can write an entire book about oysters and it's cover-to-cover fascinating.
I have eaten oysters. They were delicious. But I would be fine if I never ate them again.
Still, I read this book and I couldn't stop reading. If you are an oyster-lover, it's definitely a book for you. And even if you are not, you may want to read it anyway.
I have eaten oysters. They were delicious. But I would be fine if I never ate them again.
Still, I read this book and I couldn't stop reading. If you are an oyster-lover, it's definitely a book for you. And even if you are not, you may want to read it anyway.
Read
July 30, 2010I learned that you can make an "oyster loaf" by slicing off the top of a loaf of crusty bread, jamming a bunch of fried oysters in there, covering everything with butter, and then sticking it back in the oven. Sounds tasty.
Also, I (think I) learned that oysters are alive when you eat them raw.
Also, I (think I) learned that oysters are alive when you eat them raw.
August 16, 2016
This is what all food writing should be. So witty and erudite that it barely touches the ground; effortlessly edifying. Full of richness, but easy like a summer breeze. MFK Fisher is a stunning writer.
May 18, 2019
This slight book is so completely and utterly charming! I have always enjoyed reading MFK Fisher, and this is no different -- she writes poetically about the oyster and inspires me as a lover of the mollusk, to consider all of the wonderful things one can do with oysters.
January 6, 2020
I love Mary Frances' prose and anecdotes - and this may be the best argument ever put forth to eat an oyster - but I still remain somewhat unconvinced. If I ever find myself at an oyster bar, think of this book, and give it a go, I will rectify this review to four stars.
August 8, 2007
Mandatory reading for the ostriavore. Includes colorful recipes, polemics and oysterlore.
March 11, 2019
Everyone talks about M.F.K Fischer in positive platitudes but all of them are true. This is a mouth watering read and I am off to find myself some oysters.
July 30, 2019
Minus stars for outrageously racist statements interspersed throughout otherwise funny and interesting writing!
September 27, 2019
What a pearler!
March 28, 2021
I sincerely wish I could've partied with Ms Fisher just once.
April 16, 2025
"the best known of all an oyster's parasites (if anything as crisp and delicate and tiny as a crab could be called such) and all its by-products of chicken-scratch and paving-crumbs and even catsups, is something that for centuries has meant love and bloody battle to mankind: the pearl"
this. is. WRITING. it gave me one of those blissful moments where my eyes were gliding over the most delicious prose as the strings are swelling and i have that art-experience. this is one of those rare and true writers who could be talking about it matters not what, their voice takes that topic to the realm of divinity. i'm sure many people have called this a "love letter to oysters" but that doesn't suffice to describe what this is. this is exaltation, apotheosis. it caught my attention on the reception desk as i checked in to my hotel, and then again at a mcnally jackson. only after did i find out this book was taking new york by storm. discovering things organically is amaziiiing. anyways.
fisher writes with presence and simplicity, but doesn't sacrifice for a moment humor or sarcasm. this is the type of read that enchants you with it's bareness. as you read you can tell that something else is actively going on, but it's not on the page, it's not in the text, it's right in your heart. i have been vegetarian for 8 and a half years but recently have been thinking that if ever i break that vow, it will be for oysters. there are some self-imposed logic that i have to untangle before i can get there. in the meantime here is a fragment of a poem i wrote with just that in mind, named "things i don't eat":
no animal meat, of any kind:
because think of the cow and her big wet brown eyes
or the chicken that's so unaware that it died.
but with you, i'd eat lemon, on oysters, with wine
somewhere in Europe, the sea at our side
this. is. WRITING. it gave me one of those blissful moments where my eyes were gliding over the most delicious prose as the strings are swelling and i have that art-experience. this is one of those rare and true writers who could be talking about it matters not what, their voice takes that topic to the realm of divinity. i'm sure many people have called this a "love letter to oysters" but that doesn't suffice to describe what this is. this is exaltation, apotheosis. it caught my attention on the reception desk as i checked in to my hotel, and then again at a mcnally jackson. only after did i find out this book was taking new york by storm. discovering things organically is amaziiiing. anyways.
fisher writes with presence and simplicity, but doesn't sacrifice for a moment humor or sarcasm. this is the type of read that enchants you with it's bareness. as you read you can tell that something else is actively going on, but it's not on the page, it's not in the text, it's right in your heart. i have been vegetarian for 8 and a half years but recently have been thinking that if ever i break that vow, it will be for oysters. there are some self-imposed logic that i have to untangle before i can get there. in the meantime here is a fragment of a poem i wrote with just that in mind, named "things i don't eat":
no animal meat, of any kind:
because think of the cow and her big wet brown eyes
or the chicken that's so unaware that it died.
but with you, i'd eat lemon, on oysters, with wine
somewhere in Europe, the sea at our side
December 28, 2022
Classic MFK Fisher. Funny, erudite and evocative of days gone by.... her writing about oysters and what to drink with oysters (definitely not hard liquor) makes me really want to head straight to Flying Fish and order a glass of crisp Alsatian wine and a dozen raw succulent oysters. (Though I'll skip the oyster loaf, I'm glad to read about it and her quest for the right recipe.)
I think I'll start saying "I don't give a toot or a tinkle" about what people think, thanks to her usage of the phrase on pg. 43.
I think I'll start saying "I don't give a toot or a tinkle" about what people think, thanks to her usage of the phrase on pg. 43.
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