For many of us, the name Julia Child brings to mind memories of television broadcasts featuring a somewhat fluttery older lady as she prepared some sumptuous dish. For some, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, her 1961 book with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, is still a veritable Bible for the kitchen. Whether or not one is a fan of her multiple television cooking shows or of her many cookbooks, there are few Americans today who do not associate Julia Child with the kitchen.
Appetite For Life, by Noel Riley Fitch, explores the life of the woman who was to become an American culinary icon.
Born in 1912 to a wealthy California family, Julia McWilliams attended Smith College and then worked in the private sector until World War II, when she volunteered to join the elite Office of Strategic Services. The OSS was America’s first intelligence agency, and though Julia was hardly a spy, her career with the OSS was quite exciting for her, and her time in India and China was a wonderful part of her life. It was at this time that she met Paul Child and took her first steps on the road that would lead her to fame.
I was both surprised and inspired to discover in Appetite For Life that Julia Child did not learn to cook until she was in her mid-30’s! In fact, she had little interest in the art until she met her future husband, Paul Child, an OSS officer and artist who, at 42, was 10 years older than Julia and far more cultured than she. He opened her eyes to good food; essentially, she learned to cook for him.
“Paul’s mother was a good cook and he had lived in France. If I was going to catch him, I would have to learn to cook.”
She caught him, and their romance and long lovely marriage was the cornerstone of her life. Paul and Julia Child were true partners in a lusty, loving, modern relationship. Paul Child’s letters to Julia, as well as to his twin brother and his many friends, form much of the basis of the book. Fitch based her book on literally thousands of hours of research. Written with the full cooperation of Mrs. Child, Fitch had access to letters, diaries, and interview subjects able to chronicle Julia Child’s life in the most intimate detail. This may be the most well-researched book I’ve ever had the pleasure to read.
The degree of access allowed to Fitch is apparent in the beautifully honest quotes from Paul Child. For example, here is Paul’s description of one of Julia’s early attempts at one French dish: “…a sort of white, suspiciously suggestive thing, disguised by a multiform yellowish sauce for which, if you saw it on the rug, you’d promptly spank the cat.”
Appetite For Life is an extremely revealing and fairly forthright book. Initially I was a trifle nervous about the writing; in the first few chapters Fitch appears to be fawning over Mrs. Child to a degree that had me wondering if she was actually on the Child payroll. It’s hard to believe that so many people could possibly adore anyone. Few people have as many friends as Julia Child appears to! As the book continues, however, it becomes clear that it would be very difficult to put this much research into a volume and yet manage to hide every negative quote and comment. We see that Child is earthy: “…she snatched a set of cannelloni out of the pot of boiling water with the cry, “Wow! These damn things are as hot as a stiff cock.”
And she can be a poor judge of character: “Julia is essentially a con-able woman,” Paul told a reporter. “She’s naive in the nicest possible way. She just can’t believe people have bad motives, when it’s a palpable fact.”
Though Fitch makes it clear through her writing that she does not agree with most criticism of Mrs. Child, she does acknowledge Julia and Paul’s faults, and she is not afraid to mention failures as well as successes.
The picture that emerges of Julia Child is that of an intelligent, spirited, independent and loving woman who’s lived an incredible and fascinating life. I recommend this book to anyone who needs a dose of good entertainment and inspiration. On the whole, this is a riveting work and I enjoyed it quite a lot.
(Doubleday, 1997)
