The months between the cherries and peaches The horns of plenty that are full of spills Fruits red and purple, dark, black with flowers Then, the fields of the rich and the beaches of frozen river We'll trample bright persimmons, while killing you Bronze partridge, quail, and white background. Elinor Wylie1 I ate another apple pie and ice cream, is virtually everything you eat all the way across the country, I knew it was nutritious and it was delicious, of course. -Jack Kerouac2 In October 1998, Jiao Tong, the literary editor of China Times, Taipei, Taiwan, invited me to write an essay on American food in American literature for presentation at the First International Conference on Food and literature held in Taipei in May 1999. I thought I would find many reference books in this school. After extensive research and communications network with several professors of American literature at university in the United States and Canada, I was very surprised to find no books on the subject. Not only was there no book on this topic also was no single article that directly addresses the same problem. The absence of secondary sources, explains why most of the references in this essay are primary sources. The limitations of time and space to write this also explain why I limited my study of American literature, novels, short stories and poetry. I tried to make a representative selection among novelists, poets and novelists including the authors of almost two hundred years of American literature, of both sexes and a variety of ethnic groups. Because there are so many versions of major works that quote, I have limited citations to the author's name, book title and the inner portion as worms, chapter or section and page numbers omitted specific versions I used. lesser known works, collections and anthologies receive standard citation format. To bring order to this vast amount of material, I created three topics on which I can build what I think American food in American literature: continuity and discontinuity, purity and impurity, and the abundance and scarcity. These three themes allow several important truths about the American experience in time to appear as the concerns of its authors as well. For example, major changes undergone by the land and indigenous peoples were accompanied by accessories, European ways deep and sustainable food. Moreover, the enormous wealth of natural resources and artificial wealth America has long lived with the land devastated and poverty. The greatest American writers like Melville, Faulkner, Hemingway and Steinbeck, have repeatedly recognized and sanctioned these two extremes in his plots and characters, as long as they are incorporated into everyday life and the personalities of Americans. As part of the introduction to my presentation, I would like to give some possible explanations for the lack of secondary sources. First, I think the most famous American food and popular, like pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers and ice cream are derivatives of European food. The pizza came from Italy. The hot dog is a version of the German sausage. The burgers are reformed meatballs with bread that has joined civilization as old as agriculture itself. And the ice cream also has its counterparts in the kitchen of the European nations. So the first reason for the lack of secondary sources, is that most American of foods are derived, is not original to America. A contra-ironic in this context is the Chinese fortune cookie. As a foodstuff, which has very little nutrition, but as part of the American idea of Chinese food has become a necessity in American Chinese restaurants. However, I asked several owners, waiters and waitresses in Chinese restaurants in America, Chinese fortune cookies come from China. All said no. They were invented in the U.S. and most likely, according to oral tradition, in San Francisco. That seems to be a credible story. San Francisco has grown into a city on the money generated by high-risk occupations such as hunting, boating, fishing, gold mining and the sea off the coast. It is easy to imagine someone watching Chinese entrepreneurs Americans involved in these occupations were in their future happiness or unhappiness, to put this knowledge with a well-established taste for U.S. sweet desserts, and creating a sweet dessert which looked different and words of wisdom contained in the lot of consumers. Secondly, until recent decades, American literature and literary criticism have been dominated by men whose worldview relates to women and food to both the kitchen and out of sight. Most male writers I've read this essay uses the food and activities around food to highlight aspects of character or plot. Do not submit food gathering and preparation, cooking, serving, eating, drinking and cleaning as activities that have significantly improved aspects of its main characters, most of whom are men, or events that have significantly advanced the plot , plot or theme of his writing. In fact, a related topic could be included in this type of study that deals with body care in general. For example, it is extremely rare for an American writer of mentioning bodily functions such as excretion or urination. The different types of breathing are clearly related to different types of physical and emotional conditions, such as fear, sadness, fatigue, stress or contemplation. But as food, other bodily processes are usually ignored, taken for granted or ignored. I mention this topic only in passing, and have no time or space here to dwell on the subject, but simply emphasize that focuses on food as a subject in relation to literature is an important innovation that consists of a series of activities human whose presence or absence in the literature would be an interesting extension of this debate. Third, as an American, I think most Americans take food for granted. We tend to see it as an inevitable burden placed on our freedom of action by the condition of having a physical body. We have a tendency, especially in the last decade of the 20th century to try to minimize as much as possible the time and energy necessary for all stages of life related to physical nourishment of our bodies. The growth, popularity and power of the fast food industry in the United States reflect this disdain for the needs of local food. After the Allied victory in World War II, the United States has unprecedented prosperity, so that the applications of new technologies has allowed more tasks with increasing rapidity. The full acceptance of free competition in the ideological opposition, political and economic centralized economy, planned and society, the enormous success of the speed, mass production scale in support of military combat forces during the war, and increasingly more tense and complicated between capitalism and communism began to change the values of the American Society of slower, more simple values of rural life and rural life faster, more complex values of industrial production and urban life . Speed began his emergence as a vital American value. For example, in 1955, shortly before the experiments recorded in Kerouac On the road, the two fast food companies are bigger in America, McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken, was founded. "In early 1980, there were about 440 food companies in the franchise with a combined total of over 70,000 outlets in the United States." 3 Americans to children, people living situations in Europe gradually adjusted available to the American land and resources. Size, particularly size, has become a common value in all areas of American life. With the advent of speed and value, the American ideology for the rest of the 20th century had its first description, the better, faster, better. "From the car to burgers, this ideology has begun more control and way Americans thought of everything they did. Both values are important and significant in the relationship between American food and American literature. In addition, the social environment of European derivation, male dominance and indifference to food, is the traditional character of the writer of American success. Most of America's most famous writers have been and are still men. Most of these male authors such as Hawthorne, Twain, Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Poe and Miller, which remains its main characters, most of whom were men, in positions that require the creation of a stable and significantly life. Like the early settlers, like the pioneers, such as immigrants, their characters are constantly faced with challenges to their survival, their ability and virility when defined in terms of superiority manifested in verbal and physical place of mutual care cooperative or feed. An ironic example is contra-Ayn Rand, a writer who fully accepts the values of competence, personal power and individualism wild. His characters powerful men, as the architect of almost divine in Atlas Shrugged, face problems and situations that require a strong, individual creativity and mass production. The fact that the creation and production has also consumed energy, resources, time and money has not been a central concern to the beginning of the environmental movement in the 50s and 60s. The fact that the creation and production, often leading to emotional and physical deprivation less independent beings, including children, animals, women, the poor and members of ethnic minorities was not a concern writers and critics Central America until the late 50s and 60s. Ancient writers felt compelled to produce and reproduce the feelings, drives, pictures and characters of male-oriented, individualistic creation and production in his writings. Consequently, most of the facts of life such as eating, drinking, digesting, excreting, and education have always been absent, implicit, hidden or ignored. There are at least four reasons why there is a scarcity of secondary sources on the subject of American food in American literature. It is, indeed, a book waiting to be written. Fortunately, however, there are many cases of food in American literature and show some interesting trends and characteristics. I created three themes to focus on these patterns and characteristics: continuity and discontinuity, purity and impurity, and the abundance and scarcity. First, I will briefly describe the content and justification for each item and then proceed to the literary material that illustrates, in particular, and is illuminated by each subject. A. The continuity and discontinuity. The first European settlers on the east coast of the United States saw several discontinuities and began to create more. In crowded European cities and farmland and sparsely populated arrived vast forests, mountains and valleys. Society intolerant rigidity of the century, many 16 and 17 European countries who arrived in a country whose societies, indigenous peoples, have been closed and completely strange. From life of poverty and scarcity of their arrival in a country that gradually reveals the resources and riches beyond your wildest dreams. In the old areas populated Europe, which had long been domesticated by the sword, the plow, the cross and the crown that went into the desert that seemed oblivious to the greatness and traditions of European civilization. Within these discontinuities also created gaps in the lives of indigenous peoples, through war, trade and intermarriage. In the natural life cycle of the new land, have also begun to create breaks in the invasive activities of forestry, agriculture, mining, urbanization, hunting and fishing. The culture of extreme devices become in American life began at that time. There were Americans who loved the desert and how indigenous and shoot as many of its European assets as possible. There were Americans who hated the desert and the native form and tried either to modify or destroy them. These were among the first settlers insisted on the continuation of religions and European languages, formal protocols, social forms and customs, and any food they could do in the new world, such as bread sent from Europe, without alteration, like tea. Indigenous peoples lost to most of Europe the growing waves of which are convinced that the Indian was a dead Indian best. For example, it is estimated that in 1600 there were approximately 10 million indigenous people living in different groups, tribes, or in the Americas. In 1900, under an official policy of the United States of extermination, that total had fallen to about 500,000. The impact of new inhabitants on earth was no less powerful. In 1600, most of the land east of the Mississippi River and west of the Rocky Mountains was covered with wood and hardwood forests. In 1990, less than 3% of the original trees are still standing. Apart from the clash of Europeans and indigenous peoples, the growing population of Americans to cultivate the land for crops, especially cotton and snuff, sold for a growing population of consumers in Europe was a market for human labor slave labor. The slave trade, initiated by the Dutch and continued by almost all Western European countries experienced seafarers, created extreme discontinuities in many aspects of African life that are beyond the scope of this essay. But the importation of Africans as slaves created an entirely new stream of Americans subjected for two hundred years of planting conditions of near starvation, he invented and innovated with edible thin materials available. His creativity has helped many types of food as American as chitlins, greens and a variety of foods focused on the surface of the swamps of Louisiana known as Cajun food. With original contributions of indigenous peoples of the early settlers and pioneers plans such as corn, some of these foods that have lasted longer than the institution of slavery have also found a place in American literature. B. Purity and impurity. The first settlers of the U.S. East Coast have brought a deep fear of hell and a deep desire to purify the lives of all the elements that have prevented the practice of true Christianity. True Christianity means to them a literal reading of the Bible and a literal interpretation of the social life of man in the teachings and precepts of the Bible. Red, for them was the devil's color, the color of evil and the color of indigenous peoples. Pure black and pure white are the colors of your choice. Americans who loved nature, however, have quickly adopted the use of animal skins for clothing and colorful natural dyes to dye fabrics or leather. It is no mere historical accident that the American cultural revolution of the 60s, adopted wild colored clothing, vehicles, hair and tongue in the obvious sense and dramatic against the dark suit, white shirt, tie, black shoes and the darkness of the establishment. This is not a historical accident that the beatniks and hippies came so close to the foods that are very different in flavor, color, smell, taste and texture of white bread, roast beef, potatoes, oatmeal, milk and tea. There was also no accident of history that some of the most influential writers of this period, as Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, which is deep and lasting inspiration of literature and food of the lands and peoples beyond the shores of America. The abundance of C. and rarity. From 1895 to 1915, approximately 23 million immigrants left Europe for America. These people came from all over Europe. They left the living conditions characterized by poverty, political instability and oppression and the lack of any opportunity for improvement. America was a land that promised to turn their dreams of prosperity, wealth, abundance and freedom is realized. Many of these immigrants have made their fortune in America, then returned with them to their families in Europe. But many others stayed in the U.S., had his family and became a contributing tastes, colors and flavors of an increasingly diverse scene. This period of intensive migration has seen the beginnings of neighborhoods in big cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago. These ethnic enclaves have been for Italians, Poles, Germans, Jews, and blacks are trying to find an alternative to military defeat, but racism still powerful former masters of the south or other persons whose strong collective identity always brought the special foods that have been amplified by the scales more and more of American life. At the same time, the rapid growth of large-scale manufacturing in factories that employ tens of thousands of immigrants who were poorly paid and allowed only a minimum education background beyond its European origins, he turned some of these neighborhoods in slums and ghettos first American. Extremely low wages, lack of social services, the waves of unemployment and growing pressure from families and newcomers often bring many of these new Americans on the banks of malnutrition, hunger and starvation, even. The abundance and shortage began to emerge as centers of oscillation socioeconomic reasons not apparent from these institutions as slavery, but by the beliefs, prejudices and attitudes of superiority and inferiority different types of people along with well-established models of access and lack of access to resources. The negative impact of the First World War was followed by the euphoria of the 20 positive. The decade of unprecedented prosperity and national expansion was followed by the Great Depression of the 30s. America was clearly moving in the forefront of a world order whose extremes ranging from genocide to the population explosion, famine surplus and foot rot in a dirty worn clay painted satin shoes on the polished marble. A first look at the issue of continuity and discontinuity can be seen by comparing the two quotations at the beginning of this essay. Elinor Wylie lived from 1885-1928. Jack Kerouac lived from 1922-1969. seems ripe fruit as a food source tree in Wylie's poem and as an ingredient of the pie in Kerouac's novel. cherries and peaches Wylie are closer to nature than apple pie baked by Kerouac raw. Wylie poem means the establishment of the first European settlers in a country that has provided plenty of food. Kerouac's novel, American concerns urban environment to which food has become a necessity, without interest. Wylie poem mean abundance and therefore the value of the amount without the addition of the speed that has played an important role in the life of the protagonist of Kerouac, Dean Moriarty. In fact, Dean Moriarty was based on the real man, Neal Cassady. In 1964, lived in Palo Alto, California, after leaving Stanford University to try my hand at writing fiction and poetry. I met a beautiful young woman who was a freshman at Stanford University and a guest at a party. The party was in a house on the east side of Palo Alto has been increasingly seen as a suitable place for the Mavericks and the beatniks. The game had many people that neither my friend nor I knew much wine. He also presented some unusual. At one point during the game we drank wine in the small kitchen light. In a move to laugh, to talk about people, a young man with a smile and laughter, whose feet seem barely able to stay on the ground, floating and crossed the room, while the man who invited me to the party showed Neal Cassady me. He recognized me and went to another door. I've never seen, but keep to this day the strong impression of light and the speed also seems to have given Kerouac. The continuity between the poem and Wylie Kerouac's novel is indicated by the American saying: "It's as American as apple pie!" Another type of continuity is also where the verse quoted above from the poem Wylie is considered: Even the Puritan marrow of my bones There is something in this richness that I hate. I like the look, austere, immaculate, monotonous landscapes drawn in pearly. There is something in my blood that has barren hills, tools silver sky slate A trickle of water, wave milkshake Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones. 4 In general, this verse and quoted at the beginning of this essay spectacular view of the three themes. There is continuity and discontinuity between the religious doctrines of European heritage, Puritanism, which emphasizes great worldly accomplishments, but as little as possible the world of the screen. One of the most important contributions of Max Weber in our understanding of modern Protestant view is its clear delineation of the conflict between Protestantism in the early acquisition of great wealth in the sense of being in favor of God and the screen humility to the rest of the world, without ostentation pietistic Puritans material, the Luddites and many other Protestant groups found so objectionable in Catholicism. Weber argues, convincingly I think, that the Puritan, like every rational type of asceticism, tried to stop a man [sic] to maintain and act upon his constant motives, especially those in which he himself taught against emotion. "5 The aim was to carry out a certain kind of life" free from all worldly temptations and all the details dictated by the will of God, and so sure of his Renaissance [itself in the sky after] the ultimate test external signs manifested in their daily behavior. "6 In the Bible and all other religious materials, success in difficult tasks is a sign of God's favor. For Protestants, these signs does not guarantee salvation, but they are the closest to a guarantee that a Protestant can get. In fact, that "God blessed the elect through the success of their work was ... question ... the Puritans. 7 This ascetic doctrine combined with successful efforts worldwide Protestantism positioned to be the driving force behind capitalism and religious creations and large accumulation of material wealth, which took place in modernity. But the fact remains that this combination can be a rhythm, swing, confusion or conflict. This combination offers a lot more substance to our historical themes of abundance and scarcity and purity and impurity. A summary example of the oscillation between opulence and austerity of American Puritanism can be seen in some passages of history, the System of Doctor Tarr and Professor pen of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). This passage also highlights how food and activities about food were treated with the greatest male American writers as inevitable needs, but without interest, even in a fiction: "The table was set beautifully. He charged plates, and loaded with candy. The profusion was absolutely barbaric. There was enough meat to have celebrated the Anakim. Never in my life have I seen so lavish, so a waste of the good things of life. "8 The tension between the narrator and his guests Poe's story is shared by the tension between the narrator and hero of the road. Jack Kerouac's appointment is part of the narrative of the novel in first person by Sal Paradise, support, supporting character based on Kerouac himself. For the duration of his trip hitchhiking cross country, saw the apple pie and ice cream. This system not only reflects the poverty of the salt, but the novel is clearly an American tradition that continues to emphasize the physical world, natural or physical. The discontinuity, however, occurs between the natural fruit character in the poem of Wylie and the impersonal, processed foods eaten Sal Paradise. A discontinuity also appears in the fact that Sal has his meal on the road, on the track at high speed, while Wylie is a painting of the man of the trees, which by its nature can not move to where they are. Wylie poetic image is drawn from her life in New England. Many of these early settlers remain in or near the coast, allowing them to maintain marine life and professions that have been practiced in Europe and because it offers an abundance of food. However, their puritan ideology often led lives that were lived in measuring the abundance Wylie "cold silver on a sky of slate." Another American poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), born in Massachusetts and raised by her grandparents in Nova Scotia in the east, the maritime provinces of Canada. Their lives overlap and Wylie She also paints the spirit of this particular region in terms of food, but with an emphasis on the austerity of his diet: near the provinces fish and bread and tea, Home tides long where the bay leaves the sea twice daily and takes herrings long rides, 9 The abundance that hates Wylie was also rejected by Kerouac in a left-handed, so casually, as if less time devoted to a man with something as banal as the food of better quality or more a person he was. However, the oscillation between abundance and scarcity appears in Kerouac's novel in the contrast between Sal Paradise and the protagonist of On the Road, Dean Moriarty. "... But Dean just raced in society, eager for bread and love, did not care one way or another," so long, I can get this girl Lil Lil sumpin OLE Why? Blackberries 10 11 15 17 19 21 23 24 " 25 " 26 "
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