C. Fraser, Prarie Fires: the American dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (2017)
A. Huxley, Doors of Perception; Heaven and Hell (1954, 1956)
U.K. Le Guin, The word for world is forest (1972)
A. Martin, Night trains (2017)
S. Nosrat, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat (2017)
I. Tree, Wilding (2018)
J. Philips, Saladin (2019)How did the fashionable 50s and 60s happen? How did intelligent, well established, perceptive people fall for this utter tosh? Reading Huxley's book on hallucinogens I'm reminded of the terrible end of A Dance to the Music of Time. I don't think Powell understood the 1960s, but his final incarnation of Widmerpool is reminiscent of Huxley here. It is dreadful to see the decline. The brilliant satirist of 20s society, trenchant and perceptive critic of the utopian dreams of the 30s, is reduced to writing bunkum.
At the same time as this drivel was being written, Julia Child was in France, learning to cook. Her posthumous account of it is everything Huxley's is not. It is engaging where his was ponderous; self-deprecating rather than infused with his own sense of its significance. And it's undergirded with a fierceness of interest that makes his witterings on the transcendent look absurd. Like her masterpiece, it has dated elements (though far less than Huxley), and is, entirely acknowledged, the product of the particular background of the author. Learning this makes my much beloved Mastering the Art of French cooking even more immediate and engaging. At heart though, it's is a romp through post war Paris and the century of French cooking that preceded it. That's no bad thing.
Children, spend more time with classic French sauces and less time on acid, especially if you're reading about them.
