[Curly Ripe Meat] "The Metaphysics of Authenticity"
I have this Angela Carter book in the bathroom, and I only ever get to
read a paragraph or two at a time. It's just as well, because Angela
Carter's witty columns often take days of delight-filled mastication.
Sometimes I wonder - 'did I really just read that?' or, 'when was this
written; yesterday or thirty years ago?' or, 'OMG thank god someone has
explained that nagging feeling I've been having!' This last one happens
frequently, as Carter has an extraordinary talent for recognizing fads,
hypocrisy of class, and falseness. I love it. Don't get me wrong; I
love living in the Bay Area, and I'm supportive of openness and love
paying my taxes (really!), but my god; sometimes I just want to call
bullshit!
Angela Carter must be the queen of bullshit-calling, and she did it
long in advance of most trends' popularity (see the NYTimes review at
the bottom). I love that she identifies falseness without making the
argument that her own ideas are true based on the false rationale of
her subject matter. Carter just says, "fuck, people, get over
yourselves."
At the moment, I'm reading through a series of articles that she wrote
about culinary books, before "foodies" even existed; before Julia. I
love foodie magazines, but I love it even more when I can have a
chuckle with Carter about how ridiculous some of these idealizations
are. She pries the dramatics (a.k.a. snobbery) off of these books and
points at wider trends, without disrespecting their sensuality or the
prose.
Enjoy:
"This combination of material asceticism and passionate enthusiasm of
the sensuality of the everyday is at the core of the tradition from
which Mrs Gray springs, with its obvious affinities to the style of
Bloomsbury, where it was a moral imperative that the beautiful should
always take precedence over the comfortable. Though 'beautiful' is not
quite the right word -- it is a kind of authenticity which is invoked
here, as though water is more authentic, more real, wetter, draw from a
open-air cistern than from a city tap.
"The metaphysics of authenticity are a dangerous area. When Mrs Gray
opines, 'Poverty rather than wealth gives the good things of life their
true significance', it is tempting to suggest it is other people's
poverty, always a source of the picturesque, that does that. Even if
mrs Gray and her companion live in exactly the same circumstances as
their neighbours in the Greek islands or southern Italy, and have just
as little ready money, their relation to their circumstances is the
result of the greatest of all luxuries, aesthetic choice. 'Poverty',
here, is sloppy language -- a rare example of it. Mrs gray isn't
talking about a pavement dweller in Calcutta, or a member of the
long-term unemployed in an advanced, industrialized country; nor about
poverty as such, but about a way of life which has a dignity imposed
upon it by its stoicism in the face of a nature on which it is entirely
dependent. The Japanese created an entire aesthetic, and a moral
philosophy, out of this stoicism and this intimate relation with
natural forces; as soon as they had a bob or two in their pockets, of
course, they binged on consumerism, but the hard core is still there."
~Angela Carter's Book Review, "Patience Gray: Honey from a Weed," from
the book Shaking a Leg.
Carter, Angela. Shaking a Leg: Collected Journalism and Writings. New
York: Penguin Group, 1998. 102. Print.
This isn't the only article where she talks about the upper class
idealizing the diets of working class people in foreign countries. And
it's not just about learning to cook; she talks about the cult of the
whole-grain bread folks, the vegetarians and vegans who have made their
food preferences nearly evangelical cult activities. Not that there is
anything crappy about eating no meat or baking your own bread. But
Carter has a way of walking in and calling a duck a duck, and a cult a
cult.
It's refreshing.
From a NYTimes Review on Shaking a Leg:
"But to adopt Angela's own kind of terminology for a moment, what
emerges most powerfully from Shaking A Leg is her ability to detect
bullshit at two hundred paces. Years before the term `foodie' had been
invented, she was mocking the pretensions of the cookery writer who
insists on recherche ingredients not because of their qualities but
their snob value. And it is a delight to find her, years before the
porn star Linda Lovelace came out as a victim of the sex industry,
deconstructing the actress's sexual braggadocio as a species of false
consciousness -- and discerning a profound rage behind Lovelace's
notorious skill at fellatio. The permissive societies of which Lovelace
is a product, Carter points out more than once, are actually deeply
repressed: why else do people need permission to explore their
sexuality? Only someone with an appreciation of the sweaty, earthy
pleasures of sex could create this kind of critique, outspoken and
completely unprudish..."
read a paragraph or two at a time. It's just as well, because Angela
Carter's witty columns often take days of delight-filled mastication.
Sometimes I wonder - 'did I really just read that?' or, 'when was this
written; yesterday or thirty years ago?' or, 'OMG thank god someone has
explained that nagging feeling I've been having!' This last one happens
frequently, as Carter has an extraordinary talent for recognizing fads,
hypocrisy of class, and falseness. I love it. Don't get me wrong; I
love living in the Bay Area, and I'm supportive of openness and love
paying my taxes (really!), but my god; sometimes I just want to call
bullshit!
Angela Carter must be the queen of bullshit-calling, and she did it
long in advance of most trends' popularity (see the NYTimes review at
the bottom). I love that she identifies falseness without making the
argument that her own ideas are true based on the false rationale of
her subject matter. Carter just says, "fuck, people, get over
yourselves."
At the moment, I'm reading through a series of articles that she wrote
about culinary books, before "foodies" even existed; before Julia. I
love foodie magazines, but I love it even more when I can have a
chuckle with Carter about how ridiculous some of these idealizations
are. She pries the dramatics (a.k.a. snobbery) off of these books and
points at wider trends, without disrespecting their sensuality or the
prose.
Enjoy:
"This combination of material asceticism and passionate enthusiasm of
the sensuality of the everyday is at the core of the tradition from
which Mrs Gray springs, with its obvious affinities to the style of
Bloomsbury, where it was a moral imperative that the beautiful should
always take precedence over the comfortable. Though 'beautiful' is not
quite the right word -- it is a kind of authenticity which is invoked
here, as though water is more authentic, more real, wetter, draw from a
open-air cistern than from a city tap.
"The metaphysics of authenticity are a dangerous area. When Mrs Gray
opines, 'Poverty rather than wealth gives the good things of life their
true significance', it is tempting to suggest it is other people's
poverty, always a source of the picturesque, that does that. Even if
mrs Gray and her companion live in exactly the same circumstances as
their neighbours in the Greek islands or southern Italy, and have just
as little ready money, their relation to their circumstances is the
result of the greatest of all luxuries, aesthetic choice. 'Poverty',
here, is sloppy language -- a rare example of it. Mrs gray isn't
talking about a pavement dweller in Calcutta, or a member of the
long-term unemployed in an advanced, industrialized country; nor about
poverty as such, but about a way of life which has a dignity imposed
upon it by its stoicism in the face of a nature on which it is entirely
dependent. The Japanese created an entire aesthetic, and a moral
philosophy, out of this stoicism and this intimate relation with
natural forces; as soon as they had a bob or two in their pockets, of
course, they binged on consumerism, but the hard core is still there."
~Angela Carter's Book Review, "Patience Gray: Honey from a Weed," from
the book Shaking a Leg.
Carter, Angela. Shaking a Leg: Collected Journalism and Writings. New
York: Penguin Group, 1998. 102. Print.
This isn't the only article where she talks about the upper class
idealizing the diets of working class people in foreign countries. And
it's not just about learning to cook; she talks about the cult of the
whole-grain bread folks, the vegetarians and vegans who have made their
food preferences nearly evangelical cult activities. Not that there is
anything crappy about eating no meat or baking your own bread. But
Carter has a way of walking in and calling a duck a duck, and a cult a
cult.
It's refreshing.
From a NYTimes Review on Shaking a Leg:
"But to adopt Angela's own kind of terminology for a moment, what
emerges most powerfully from Shaking A Leg is her ability to detect
bullshit at two hundred paces. Years before the term `foodie' had been
invented, she was mocking the pretensions of the cookery writer who
insists on recherche ingredients not because of their qualities but
their snob value. And it is a delight to find her, years before the
porn star Linda Lovelace came out as a victim of the sex industry,
deconstructing the actress's sexual braggadocio as a species of false
consciousness -- and discerning a profound rage behind Lovelace's
notorious skill at fellatio. The permissive societies of which Lovelace
is a product, Carter points out more than once, are actually deeply
repressed: why else do people need permission to explore their
sexuality? Only someone with an appreciation of the sweaty, earthy
pleasures of sex could create this kind of critique, outspoken and
completely unprudish..."