M.F.K. Fisher, the centenary of whose birth is this year, is probably less well-known these days, particularly on this side of the Atlantic, than she was a decade or so back. That is a pity, because she is a writer with a distinctive and attractive style whether her subject is food and drink, personal memoirs or, as here, places that are important to her.
She first made her name as a food writer – not so much of cookery books, though her essays offer plenty of recipes, as of studies of gastronomy, the seriousness of which can be judged by the fact that her translation of Brillat-Savarin remains a classic. However, she wears her academic laurels lightly and she is always fun to read.For those interested in this side of her writing, The Art of Eating, apparently still in print, combines five books including the wonderfully-titled How to Cook a Wolf. Regular contributions to the New Yorker and other magazines developed her skills as a travel writer and she even wrote one novel. W.H. Auden said of her: ‘I do not know of anyone in the United States today who writes better prose.’ Her love affair with France began with post-graduate studies at the University of Dijon, and continued with spells in Strasbourg, Cagnes-sur-Mer, and the two towns of this book, interspersed with spells in California, Switzerland and elsewhere Fisher’s France is not much concerned with the countryside of pretty villages that attracts so many writers: she spends most of her time in, by French standards, quite large towns, living in hotels, digs and the occasional flat. The places she likes best she returns to again and again over long intervals, so that her images of them are overlaid with revised versions taking account of what has changed since her last visit.
The two towns here are Aix-en-Provence and Marseille and this volume combines two separate books. Map of Another Town about Aix was first published in 1964, while the Marseille book, A Considerable Town, itself made up of writings across some 15 years, was first published in 1978.
These are by no means guide books, although, armed with a street map, one could find one’s way around the parts she describes. They are more like portraits painted from memory but presented in a decidedly impressionistic manner. Not do we hear very much of what he author is doing there, except by implication writing or researching. What we do hear and see and the sights and sounds that she recalls for us, the cafes and restaurants that she prefers, and every now and then the characters that she encounters.
There are not many of these, as Fisher’s preferred image of herself is a ghost or invisible person, passing through the busy streets and crowded markets unnoticed by people around her. In both Aix and Marseille, Fisher is accompanied by her two daughters at various ages, and in Marseille sometimes by her younger sister. There is even once a brief mention of a husband, of whom little is said, not even his name. This scarcity of people may seem unattractive but Fisher’s own personality, her reactions through which all experiences are sieved, provide quite enough evidence of humanity.
My own feeling is that the Aix book is the more successful of the two, probably because it was written all of a piece, where the Marseille one does not always link the different times of writing so comfortably. There are, for instance, a number of repetitions that could easily have been edited out. Aix comes over as a sunnier place than Marseille, of whose reputation as a ‘wicked’ place we are frequently reminded, even as Fisher tells us she does not find it so. The Aux book, too, is free of free of the darker philosophic ruminations – such as on the possibility that past actions may render particular places pockets of almost tangible good or evil – that cast shadows over the portrait of Marseille.
It really doesn’t matter whether you know these towns or not. If you do, you will probably find that Fisher’s picture of them do not match yours, if only because she is describing her own unique versions: her Marseille, her Aix-en-Provence. If you haven’t yet had the pleasure of exploring them, Fisher’s versions may tempt you, even though they may prove teasingly illusory.
Published in paperback by the Hogarth Press 481pp
ISBN 0-7012-0610-1 £16.95
