About book Appetite For Life: The Biography Of Julia Child (1999)
This is a biography with a big B: it was authorized; the author had full access to Julia Child, her letters, several family diaries, as well as letters and interviews with family and friends. It’s very much the historical work, sometimes overstuffed with minutia, names and dates, but does an excellent job of describing Julia and how she fit into the recent history of food as well as US history. The appendices describe all the source material, a great job was done in editing to only 500 pages. In the end, I find myself awed and inspired by Julia and her works.The early part of the book is slow, she grew up as a spoiled California party girl which was not all that interesting. The story picks up during the time she was in the OSS in India and China. Fascinating to me (as someone who doesn’t read big historical books, but lately, lots of WWII fiction) was the non-European perspective of WWII: the people and politics of the time, including the OSS, McCarthy-ism, and their influence on Vietnam. Later in life, Julia Child was quite the celebrity between PBS shows and Good Morning America appearances in addition to her books. I never saw much of her on TV (but knew enough to fully enjoy Dan Aykroyd’s satire of the show), and never had the Mastering The Art of French Cooking cookbooks. I didn’t understand her real influence on food. Her memoir, My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'Homme gave me much more background on what went into the first cookbook, but this book brought so much more to the story. Julia was passionate about food, and wanted to share this passion with others. She followed through with incredible organization, detail and hard work to share the vision through teaching. She had the drive to get things right (and that would be her definition of right). Also impressive was the energy that Julia had, right through her 80’s, even with the problems of aging like bad knees and loved ones in nursing homes.Julia’s vision started with an attempt bring the pleasures of cooking and eating to the American public, not the “America home economics with its undercurrent of nineteenth-century melioristic scientism”. (Definition of melioristic: the notion that the world can be improved by human effort). Her cookbook was out of step with the current fashion: “Americans were then eating canned vegetables with marshmallows melted on top, frozen chickens cooked in canned mushroom soups, frozen fish sticks, and dishes that could be served during commercials… Processed food products and junk food led to unwanted poundage, which in turn stirred up a wave of dieting and diet books … Avis [Julia’s agent:] commented about the “gunk” in the American kitchen and the increasing number of manuscripts for diet books she was receiving … “[There is:] not a single honest recipe in the whole book – everything is bastardized and quite nasty .. Desserts .. sweetened with saccharin and topped with imitation whipped cream. Fantastic! And I do believe a lot of people in this country eat just like that, stuffing themselves with faked materials in the fond belief that by substituting a chemical for God’s good food they can keep themselves slim while still eating hot breads and desserts and GUNK.” This was in 1959! (and its taken until 2009 for me to get all of the high fructose corn syrup out of my house, and even then some slips back in, last in the guise of Rice Crispy Squares).The other theme that runs through Julia’s work was to help Americans overcome their “fanatical fear of food”. An example: “fear of food was endemic in suburbia. Every new health warning (Poisons in Your Food) reinforced America’s puritanical relationship to food and wine. Food was either a sinful or a bothersome necessity. The most popular food books in the early 1960s were Calories Don’t Count and the I Hate to Cook Book…” That said, she had some confrontations with other visionaries of the time, like Alice Waters. Julia felt that all the talk of organic foods and evils of pesticides would just further scare people from cooking.I could go on.. but this book really hit home for me during my current quest to reduce the amount of processed food in my diet and understand the struggles of those around me with food. Plus I have another role model on living a full life, continuing to learn and share and grow (bad knees and all). The other take away: During the life of Julia Child, there was massive amount of written communication compiled, including letters, diaries, manuscripts, and written articles. I sometimes wondered if she ever made a phone call! But I can hope that in addition to more people cooking from the larger selection of fresh food available, that someday people can use our blogs, tweets, Facebook and other written communications to write inspiring biographies!
Two reasons to read this book: one, to find out more about a beloved icon, two, to find details to undermine the myth created about the beloved icon in "My Life in Paris" and "Julie/Julia." To pursue either of these goals, you will have to get through 500 pages of earnest but ill-edited prose. We feel like we've heard about every restaurant meal Julia ever ate, every tribute by an adoring public, every bookstore signing. As for the myth-undermining motive, we learn that Julia actually took a cooking course long before she came to France and met Paul Child. There is also a hint that a more complex woman hid behind the bluff, joking, upper-class facade. Between conference agendas and tv scripts are some interesting portraits of Julia's relationships: her ideal marriage that ended in an old people's home, her sisterhood with co-author Simca, her friendship and disagreements with Alice Waters, Graham Kerr, Jacques Pépin and Martha Graham. Any editors who try to read it will have to resist the urge to reach for the blue pencil to change "back-aching work," "celebrity-drive" and a generally annoying use of fragmented quotations and paraphrase. One finishes the book as after an ill-planned and overly rich meal: the appetite is satisfied but one has no desire to eat at that table again.
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If you’ve read my blog at all, you’ve probably seen me mention “My Life in France” by Julia Child at least once. It’s a book I adore. The writing is fun, Julia’s personality shines through on every page, and it’s a fascinating tale of how “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” came to be. Ever since reading “My Life in France,” I’ve devoured as many books on Julia Child as I can find. None have come close to that book for me. “Appetite for Life” is not a biography I would recommend unless you are interested in every minute detail of Julia’s early life. I do like that level of detail, but not for hundreds of pages. I feel that an inordinate portion of the book is focused on her early life. Julia lived to the age of 91, yet the book largely glosses over her later life. It goes from listing every dinner party guest and their history to “that year Julia …” The writing was dull. As I said, there was none of the magic of “My Life in France.” The writer had an amazing subject to work with, yet I didn’t get any of Julia’s personality in this biography.
—Leeanna
Julia Child is (was) a far more interesting person than you might ever suspect. Even reading My Life In France doesn't tell you much about the varied and adventurous life she had, nor much of anything about her background.The problem with this book, however, is not Julia's story. The problem is the poor writing (others say bad editing -- but it seems like poor writing to me). All the information is there, but nothing was left out and the information often just reads like a list. Paragraphs do not give you complete thoughts, in fact, sentences often don't follow one from the other so that you have to look back to figure out what the author was trying to say, and finally arrive at the conclusion that there is no way to know.But finding out about Julia made it all worthwhile. Her passion, her marriage, her friendships, her life, I enjoyed learning about it all.
—Dvora
500 pages of Julia Child is a lot. Ms Child is worth 500 pages, though, and she offered up plenty of written material to base the book on, so it's an interesting read.I'd say that unless you're really, really into Julia, reading "My Life if France" is enough. In fact, if you haven't read that one, you should.Even though I'd already read about that portion of her life, I found the bits about her learning to cook and researching the recipes for Mastering the Art of French Cooking to be the most interesting part of the book.
—Angela
