Nouvelle Cuisine Research Articles

Uncomplementary characters

The White House Years and Years of Upheaval take the story of Henry Kissinger's influence and power from his appointment to the White House staff at the beginning of Richard Nixon's presidency to the period of Nixon's resignation, when Kissinger was Secretary of State. He continued in that office under President Ford until 1977, so his public memoirs are not yet complete. George Ball, though not rising to quite such high office, has had an official career spanning a wide range of years and appointments, and fitting into what has become, in the last two generations, a traditional American pattern of in-and-out' involvement with public office. He is now full of years, and his memoirs, in the sense that he is in retirement, are a full retrospective of his career. The two works offer a fascinating comparison at almost every level, especially as Ball has much to say of the Nixon-Kissinger period, which followed his own period of particular prominence under Kennedy and Johnson. And yet they could hardly be more different. It is not so much that they are chalk and cheese; the contrast between haute cuisine and nouvelle cuisine is, I think, a better analogy, in relation both to the richness of the fare and the size of the portions.

Mint Madness: Surfeit and Purge in the Novels of Duras

Cooks and writers join today in a new awareness of basic materials, les mets et les mots; la nouvelle cuisine and the nouveau roman both reject the codification of traditional recipes. Of the culinary aspects of fiction we might say that we no longer crave the surfeit of yesteryear, or at the very least feel uneasy about conspicuous consumption at table or text. Eating in our restaurants is no longer like going to a cathedral,' says Paul Bocuse, and Raymond Federman observes, write then is to produce meaning and not reproduce pre-existing meaning.2 Roland Barthes recommends ne pas d6vorer, ne pas avaler, mais brouter, tondre avec minutie, retrouver, pour lire ces auteurs d'aujourd'hui, le loisir des anciennes lectures.3 The new emphasis on participation and generation takes us out of the restaurant and into the kitchen. As reader-cooks we reject literature as text of receipt and recipe, the acknowledgment of goods received or prescription for producing a desired result. There is a striking note in the foreword to Joy of Cooking putting into focus our discussion of the culinary aspects of fiction and particularly those of the work of Marguerite Duras. Marion Becker explains, We use other graphic symbols too. ... Among the symbols is the parenthesis, which indicates that an ingredient is optional. Its use may enhance, but its omission will not prejudice the success of a recipe.4 It is however precisely those optional ingredients in parentheses that we hunger for, those deferred meanings which put off indefinitely finishing a story. To refuse to eat or to suspend understanding, to tear up prescriptions, recipes and pre-existing meanings is to protest our omission as individual ingredients. Tante Marie, in La Veritable Cuisine de famille, tells us, Savoir dresser une table et savoir, comme il se doit, y placer autour ses convives, nous semble encore faire partie de ce livre qui n'en reste pas moins un livre de recettes.5 The prescriptive aspects of the culinary: whether we eat it raw or cooked, with our hands or with silverware, indicate how we are to be absorbed into the body politic. Daniel Oster raises the question of just what is being eaten and more important: What am I still hungry for when I am no longer hungry? I1 aurait peut-etre fallu ne

Policy Responsiveness to Protest-Group Demands

Policy Responsiveness to Protest-Group Demands