That Overstuffed Feeling

There is a very interesting double message going on in today’s culture that has to do with food. Love and redemption through a decent meal have become as much a cliché of the modern art film as the notion of overfeeding oneself to compensate for a lack of self-love has become a convention of armchair psychology. Take Mostly Martha, for example. In the 2001 German film, a tightly wound, successful-but-emotionally-repressed chef finds real fulfilment only when she inherits her niece after the child’s mother dies in a car crash. Through learning to love and feed the child (with the help of a big-hearted Italian guy), Martha learns to lighten up and love. In Babette’s Feast, Like Water for Chocolate and Big Night, the food=love / food=sex / food=kindness equation is played out in charming, if predictable, ways.

Oddly, it seems not to happen much in novels, where food rarely figures as part of the daily doings. Although one can find some...