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Biography & Autobiograph Nonfictio HTML: Meet the woman behind the apron in Noël Riley Fitch's revealing biography of America's favorite cook: Julia Child. A household name, Julia Child has entered the hearts of millions of Americans through their kitchens. Yet few know the richly varied private life that lies behind this icon. Fitch takes us from her exuberant youth through her years at Smith College, where Julia was at the center of every prank and party. When most of her girlfriends married, Julia volunteered with the OSS during World War II and was an integral part of the elite corps. There, she met her future husband, Paul Child, who introduced her to the glories of fine French cuisine, art, and love. Julia invested ten years of learning and experimentation in what would become her first bestselling classic, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Now her career is one of legend, spanning over half a century. Hers was a truly American life.… (more)
User reviews
Noel Riley Fitch. Where do you start with this woman and the way she wrote this book? Another reviewer said something that I also thought about throughout the entire book: Julia Child worked
What was so bad about the book? Start with the level of detail. I don't need to know the minutiae of every dinner she had, person she dined with, food she served, etc. It was simply tedious beyond belief to read at that level of detail. Hooray for Fitch that she knew all of that, but please don't put every particular you know into the book.
Next (note the transition--ha), Fitch seems to have tried to write the book without using a single transition from one thought to the next. Those must be supplied by the reader, so what in effect she's doing is asking the reader to work harder than she was willing to work in writing the book. As if that's not bad enough, she does use transitions sometimes--incorrectly and illogically.
The biography was published in 1997; Julia Child died in 2004. So unfortunately for her she must have read this thing, and what a disappointment it must have been.
I made it all the way through this thing, but it is quite literally the hardest I will ever be willing to work at reading a book. I did it because of my interest in this fascinating, dynamic woman. As she herself might have said, "bouter en avant!" (barrel on through).
So while Julia and Martha may have started with the same idea of overcoming food mediocrity, they took wildly different paths in their careers. Martha was consumed with making money and was very commercial with her own magazine and cookbooks, network television shows, textile lines, paint pots and household product rollouts at Macy's and K-Mart. Julia's motivation was simple; she loved food and she loved to eat. She was primarily a food educator, a cook and teacher, who conquered America in the Wild West days of early black and white educational television. The first public television personality to win an Emmy, she helped to raise public television viewership to over 50 million. While Martha became a brand and built an empire and joined the stock exchange, Julia became the leader of a food movement that she expanded each decade of her life. In the sixties and seventies, her monumental television shows introduced us to French cooking techniques and recipes and raised the level of food consciousness. She revolutionized the television cooking show format, and it is difficult to imagine even Martha's success twenty years later without Julia preceding her. Her magazine and book writing raised food to a popular discussion. In the eighties she continued her educating and she began mentoring and encouraging new chefs. She worked hard to establish college level culinary programs and promoted the development of cooking schools. Julia established scholarships and found funding for libraries devoted to cookery, cuisine and wine history. She became a tireless fundraiser and served on countless committees and boards of directors. On two occasions she even offered to step in to improve the level of cuisine at the White House. Julia never endorsed a product line or did a commercial. Despite her considerable monetary success, Fitch writes, "Julia saw herself primarily as an educator." Endlessly curious she said, "Teaching is a very good way to learn."
Julia's movement to change our relationship to food through cooking had a slow start. She was well into her thirties when she married her husband, Paul Child, who she had met while working in India and China in Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor to the CIA. Later Paul got an information officer's job in the state department and the couple moved to Paris in the early fifties. This was a charmed time to be an American abroad. The dollar was strong but food inflation prices were as high as 21 percent. With the economy suppressing the local citizens, Americans working in Europe could affordably educate themselves on wine and cuisine with frequent visits to four-star restaurants. Julia meticulously took notes of memorable meals and wine and slowly there was an awakening within her. A rabid curiosity and the "appetite of a wolf" certainly helped her focus. Shortly the idea of enrolling herself in the Cordon Bleu cooking school, in a course created for Americans using their GI bill to train in haute cuisine, took root. She was a standout from the beginning, not just because at six feet two inches she towered over the rest of the class but because of her enormous stamina, tenacity, and curiosity. Her capacity for hard work was enormous. As Fitch tells it she started classes early in the morning and then took an hour for lunch and to make love to her husband, She practiced the recipe she had learned again in the afternoon and then cooked it again in the evening. She followed this instruction with endless dinner parties to further perfect her skills. When she could not find the instruction she wanted at school she followed a practice, she would follow throughout her life, of tracking down chefs and experts to get private instruction. She sought out knowledgeable food vendors and learned about the seasonable availability and local production of food.
It was a chance meeting with two other French women in a French cookery circle that led to the writing of the masterpiece "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". The book was written for the American audience and was needed because French cooking at that time had not been set down in detailed and tried recipes. This book led quickly to a career on television where she soon developed the synchronized practice of cookbook writing and television show shooting that would define her working method for years. This process was defined by the meticulous routine of carefully testing and editing recipes , a practice she maintained her entire life. She approached cooking like a scientist who was not satisfied until each food experiment consistently produced the same results.
This book is also the story of a marriage. During the crucial writing period of "Mastering" Julia followed her husband from one diplomatic assignment to another and had to separate herself from her beloved France. Julia waited her turn while her husband brought his career to an end. He in turn tirelessly supported her as she launched and formed her career in the decades that followed. This is a couple, so in love they eschewed Christmas cards and instead sent out racy Valentines to their friends. She called him Paulski. They had no children but scores of nephews and nieces in addition to the children of associates and friends passed through their lives. Throughout their lives they lived in modest homes and were seldom separated. Eventually they would own their own home in Provence and return there for months each year until his health started to decline. They shared everything, the success and the work.
Through the years Julia became an icon noted for her good humor and improvisation. Fitch writes about many of these in her fine biography. Julia's voice, she writes was described as "two parts Broderick Crawford and one part Elizabeth II." Another critic described her as a "dowager doing a burlesque routine." Her television career is full of anecdotes and Fitch notes many of them in her charming book. When Julia dropped flour on the floor while dusting a cake pan she deftly turned to the audience and announced. "I have a self cleaning floor" and moved on with the recipe. While filming an early live television show in less than optimum conditions, a freight elevator bell blasted the soundstage. Undeterred Julia said, "That must be the plumber, about time he got here. He knows where to go." Julia was unflappable, determined and opinionated. When the artistic presentation of "nouvelle cuisine" seemed to take more importance than the cooking Julia quipped, "The food is so beautifully arranged on the plate, you know someone's fingers have been all over it." As the years rolled on she stuck to her basic techniques and her encyclopedic knowledge of food. On occasion she would turn to an audience and during one cooking demonstration she chided, "hello, I hear some of you don't like butter." to remind them that while she had changed with the times she was the same old Julia. Through the years Julia learned to be more improvisational in her cooking, including American and international recipes in her repertoire but all of these were informed by a hard won education in French cooking that Julia would probably say over and over can be achieved only through the sound technique that you achieve only through "practice, practice, practice".
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,
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.
The book is well-written. For me, the most interesting parts where Julia's time in France, the writing of her first cookbook, and the filming of her first TV series, The French Chef. Anyone with an interest in this larger than life lady will enjoy this book.