The Uncanny Gastronomic: Strange Tales of the Edible Weird (edited by Zara-Louise Stubbs)

 

"Sweeter than honey from the rock,

Stronger than man-rejoicing wine,

Clearer than water flow'd that juice;

She never tasted such before,

How should it cloy with length of use?"

Goblin Market, Christina Rossetti

The Uncanny Gastronomic: Strange Tales of the Edible Weird (edited by Zara-Louise Stubbs) was published last year as part of the British Library Tales of the Weird series.

The introduction reads like a shortened version of the PhD, curious but on the dry side.

"The uncanny gastronomic, at its core, literalizes the inherent weirdness of food, quering the many ways our appetites can begin to define our very sense of ourselves".

Blurb:

"A brush with the mushroom devil whets the appetite. The meat at the werewolf's table is a dish to relish. Dessert with London's cannibal club may be the cherry on top.

From fairy tales and folklore focused on magical foods and strange eating came an enduring tradition of writers playing with food and the uncanny. In the fiction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries this tradition thrived, with themes of supernatural consumption, weird transformation and sensual euphoria as key ingredients.

Raiding this dark pantry of writing, this new collection presents a feast of sixteen classic tales, two poems and one essay, with choice morsels by masters of the macabre including Shirely Jackson, Franz Kafka, Angela Carter and Roald Dahl.

Each story and poem comes with a short introduction to the author (very informative and useful if you want to expand your to-read list).

The division of chapters into a menu while being amusing, is slightly artificial, i.e. done for the purposes of style rather than relevance. 

Contents

Introduction: an aperitif

An Appetizer: Human Horror

The Laboratory by Robert Browning is a typical example of the poet's style. This is a dramatic and pompous monologue of a woman who is plotting the demise of her lover's new love interest with a deadly poison. The formal structure of 12 quatrains juxtaposes with the dark, frenetic thoughts of the crazy lady.

Brilliant, if you enjoy this Victorian poetic genre, less so, if you find the dramatics tedious. 3/5

The Measure of My Powers by M.F.K Fisher (1919) is one of the essays collected in The Gastronomical Me. The author takes a trip down memory lane, talking about the cook named Ora, hired by the family during Fisher's childhood, the creative meals she cooked, and the older generation's antagonism towards her dishes. Grandmother who loves "plain good food" (including rather revolting sounding steamed soda crackers with hot milk) is having conniptions on seeing the spicy meals cooked by Ora, and feels justified when a terrible thing happens. 4/5

A Fasting Artist (aka A Hunger Artist) by Franz Kafka is a third-person narrative about a performing artist who starves himself while sitting in a cage for public display. He prides himself on fasting for weeks and living on water. Despite his fame, the artist is constantly dissatisfied, he feels belittled and wants to prove that he doesn't cheat. Over time, such performances go out of fashion, public loses interest, and the artist feels misunderstood. 

The overall theme is rather anti-gastronomic, and reads as an ironic criticism of the artistic airs and pretensions. 3/5

Like Mother Used to Make by Shirley Jackson is a slightly odd choice for this volume. If you expect a horror story in Shirley Jackson's style, you might be disappointed. There is nothing supernatural or eerie in the story. 

It's a rather mundane tale of an awkward Englishman who finds himself entertaining an unwanted guest, and he doesn't know how to extricate himself from the uncomfortable situation. Imagine younger Hugh Grant character. David is a fastidious, prim man who prides himself on keeping his little flat clean and well-organised. He is also very proud of his growing china and cutlery collection. Having invited his neighbour Marcia for dinner, he is forced to entertain an unwelcome guest of Marcia. 3/5

A Main Course: Supernatural Appetites

Goblin Market is a narrative poem by Christina Rossetti, telling the story of Laura and Lizzie who are tempted by goblin merchants offering them exotic fruit. Penniless Laura offers a lock of her hair as a payment, and gorges on the juicy fruit in a frenzy. She cannot hear the goblins any longer and pines for their forbidden fruit. As the time goes, Laura is getting feeble and affected with an unknown malady. Her sister Lizzie ventures in the dark, looking for the goblins and their dangerous offerings. She manages to save her sister by using her cunning. 

This classic poem has been interpreted and re-interpreted a hundred times, explaining the symbolism of the forbidden fruit, the allegories of female sexuality, temptation and redemption. 4/5

The Vampire Maid by Hume Nisbet is a classic tale of a young man who is looking for a remote place to stay, when he comes across an isolated cottage. 

"It was the exact kind of abode that I had been looking after for weeks, for I was in that condition of mind when absolute renunciation of society was a necessity. I had become diffident of myself, and wearied of my kind. A strange unrest was in my blood; a barren dearth in my brains. Familiar objects and faces had grown distasteful to me. I wanted to be alone".

A widow with a young ailing daughter Ariadne welcome him in their abode. The man is immediately smitten with the pale beauty of Ariadne. The accursed cottage proves to be more than the artist bargained for. While predictable (the title is obviously being the main spoiler), it is also very atmospheric. 4/5

Gabriel-Ernest is a 1909 short  story by Saki. It starts with a warning, "There is a wild beast in your woods..." The narrator meets a young werewolf in his woods, who preys on little children. The lycanthropy in this tale represents the symbol of adolescence. This Gothic horror reads as a parody of the genre, with a good dose of irony. 4/5

To Serve Man is a sci fi story by Damon Knight, first published in 1950, and reprinted numerously. It tells about three alien emissaries who arrive on Earth with supposedly altruistic purposes of helping the humans. The aliens are humanoid pigs. They promise assistance with the most complex issues and offer to send groups of volunteers to their home planet to learn more. One of the interpreters working with the aliens doesn't believe in their altrusim and tries to discover the truth. While the ending is not a true shocker, as you expect a twist, it's delivered with panache. 5/5

The Company of Wolves by Angela Carter is a provocative retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale, with an emphasis on the burgeoning sexuality of a young girl. The first half of the story is as a short essay on werewolves, which moves onto the tale of Little Red Riding Hood, a precocious child on the brink of womanhood. Carter turns an already violent fairy tale into a rather nauseating paedo's dream. Some critics analyse it as a defiant feminist tale. 1/5

#54 by Jim Crace is a chapter from The Devil's Larder (2001), a novel of 64 vignettes on all things food-related. #54 is dedicated to mushrooms - two pages on a mysterious encounter with a devil in the woods, searching for mushrooms. 3/5

A Palate Cleanser

The Watering Place by Virginia Woolf is a melancholic, quirky vignette. Like an artist, creating a sketch of a scene in a few fluid lines, Woolf gives a brief description of a small seaside town and a snippet of a conversation overheard in the cafe. The smell of fish permeates everything around, and lingers like a dejecting trace.

"Like all seaside towns it was pervaded by the smell of fish." The description of inhabitants as having a shelly look, and the overall dismal atmosphere, makes a depressing observation. Being one of the few last pieces before Woolf's death, it gives a dispirited mood. 4/5

Dessert: A Taste for Human Flesh

Cannibalism in the Cars by Mark Twain, published in 1868, is a dark ironic tale, describing the acts of cannibalism when the train is stuck in the middle of nowhere for days due to the heavy snowstorm.

It is a satire on the political system of the USA: the passengers have elections, where they decide the fate of their comrades, discussing all the pros and cons of each candidate. The ending of the story leaves it open to interpretation. 3/5

The Price of Wiggins's Orgy by Algernon Blackwood:

Samuel Wiggins has been a secretary to a philantropist for twenty years. "Soup kitchens had been the keynote of those twenty years, the distribution of victuals his sole objective. And now he had his reward - a legacy of £100 a year for the balance of his days". He wants to celebrate the unexpected legacy, and for the first time in his life goes to West End to dine in a restaurant. Not used to drinking wine, he enjoys a couple of bottles and gets rather intoxicated. The phantasmagoric, scary events that follow his opulent dinner could be interpreted as a result of intoxication. 4/5

A Madman's Diary by Lu Xun was first published in 1918. By challenging common way of thinking, it is considered to introduce a new language in Chinese literature.

The main protagonist (who wrote the diary) is obsessed with cannibalism, and sees it everywhere around him, including his own family and neighbours from the village. His reasoning as to why they want to eat him is convoluted and totally ungrounded. The madman quotes the Confucian classics, where cannibalism has been mentioned, which supposedly justifies his way of thinking.

You can read it as a metaphor of a free-thinking character who doesn't want to accept the traditional norms and beliefs. 3/5

Roald Dahl's The Pig, a cautionary tale for the grown-ups, proved to me once again, just why I don't like his style of writing. It is pretty revolting and disturbing, from start to end. A baby named Lexington loses his parents in unrealistic bizarre circumstances, and is adopted by an elderly aunt who brings him up as a vegetarian. They live in the countryside, surrounded by nature, looking after their animals and growing vegetables. Lexington becomes a talented cook who loves creating imaginative dishes. On his aunt's death, he goes to New York, to be fleeced by his lawyer, and discovers the taste of meat. The ending is truly vile.

Dahl is a classic of children's literature, and has acquired a huge following of fans, but I've never been one of them. His books are thoroughly unpleasant and unnecessarily cruel and nasty. 1/5

A Digestif: On Human Love

Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe: strange and eerie, Gothic and macabre. Including it in this volume, however, is questionable. 

"Berenice! - I call upon her name - Berenice! - and from the gray ruins of memory a thousand tumultous recollections are startled at the sound! Ah, vividly is her image before me now... Oh, gorgeous yet fantastic beauty!... And then - then all of mystery and terror, and a tale which should not be told".

Egaeus, a sickly young man, has known Berenice since childhood. While he has been sickly all his life the sweet little girl was a picture of health and vivacity. As a young woman, she becomes stricken with a strange malady. Her health and looks deteriorate. Egaeus proposes to her out of sympathy. He becomes obsessed with her white teeth. The ending is not for the fainthearted. 4/5

Sinister and freakish? Definitely. Related to the theme of  the book? No, the inclusion of this story is rather tenuous, as technically the gastronomic aspect is missing. 

Witches' Loaves by O'Henry has been one of my favourite short stories for a long time, ever since I read it as a young teen. An old spinster Miss Martha Meacham is running a bakery. One of her frequent customers always buys two loaves of stale bread. Miss Martha is lonely, and compassionate. She dreams of helping the shy customer, but sadly, her efforts bring a calamitous result. She acts out of kindness and also hope for her own future, invisaging a possible relationship. You feel sympathy for both Miss Martha and her customer. It's an empathetic tale, infused with irony. 5/5

There is nothing uncanny, strange or eerie in this story, and as much as I love it, this volume is not the right place for it to be included in.

Lovers by Silvina Ocampo is a slightly surreal insight into the inner lives of two people. They meet in secret to partake in a little feast of four sugar-laden treats from the bakery. They eat in unison, devouring every crumb and bit of cream. Shared passion for food is their way of demonstrating their feelings for each other. "With greater energy and speed, but with identical pleasure, they began chewing and swallowing once more, like two gymnasts exercising at the same time". 4/5

Under the Jaguar Sun by Italo Calvino, one of the greatest Italian writers, is a story set in Mexico. It examines "the dichotomies of religious and sensory ecstasy". The sense of taste is the dominant theme of this peculiar and even outlandish story. A couple are travelling across Mexico, exploring both cultural and culinary secrets of the country. The young woman Olivia gets over-excited when a topic of a human sacrifice is introduced. Rather than being put off by his lover's interest, the male narrator imagines himself being consumed. "I was insipid, I thought, without flavour. And the Mexican cuisine, with all its boldness and imagination, was needed if Olivia was to feed on me with satisfaction".

I wanted to like this story, but I'm not sophisticated enough to appreciate the nuances. 3/5

I wasn't sure whether to keep the rating of each piece, after all, isn't it quite presumptious to rate the classics? Yet, the grade in each case doesn't judge the quality of writing, and is really a matter of personal taste and emotional appeal. 

This is the third book in the series that I read, and the one I liked the least. 

Have you read any books from this series, and is there a particular book that you would recommend for me to read next?