anthology
Ivor Indyk
Don Anderson (ed)
Banquet of the Mind
Random House $24.95pb, 306pp
0 091 83554 2
The sense of circularity is even more pronounced when Don Anderson is your host, not only because -- if I may say --he is a full-figured gentleman, and clearly enjoys eating as much as writing -- but because his writing is itself always a kind of banquet, containing so many servings of quotes and allusions, that even the most discerning reader is assured of leaving his board full of pleasure and instruction. As he is a master of the pun, he has the knack of making the individual word fork out in many different directions too, providing a menu de dégustation in its own right. In both respects, Anderson recalls Henry Fielding, who began Tom Jones by declaring, 'an author ought to consider himself not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.' We are no longer used to thinking of authors as inn-keepers (the more's the pity), still less of critics in this role. But for Anderson, the act of criticism and that of anthology are virtually synonymous, so the parallel seems appropriate. In the first two pages of his introduction, for example, he cites Alexander Pope, Brillat-Savarin, Aldous Huxley, Homer, Oscar Wilde, Fellini, Seneca and Seutonius -- and that's just for appetisers.
Once into Banquet of the Mind the reader will find many fine offerings from far-flung places, and excellent Australian dishes featured among them. Some are classic pieces, like Proust's description of the orgasmical effects of madeleine -- 'no sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me' -- and William Carlos Williams' poem in praise of stolen plums ('Forgive me/ they were delicious/so sweet/and so cold'). Others, perhaps less well known, make one freshly aware of the author's talent: such is Christina Stead's 'A Stuffed Carp', a wonderfully grotesque account of a dinner which begins with Cointreau and chicken livers, and ends with a meditation on money. In fact, many of the meals featured here follow a similar trajectory, from food to words to ideas, almost compulsively, as if the chief delight were in language, and the food only a stimulus to get the verbal juices going.
So it is with Proust, of course. And with the Christmas dinner from Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, where the warm heavy smell of turkey and ham and celery leads the characters deep into Catholic controversy and the politics of Ireland. Perhaps this is why the anthology is called Banquet of the Mind, rather than 'banquet of the senses', though the senses are catered for. Not in Watt though, where Beckett's account of Knott's all-purpose stew, containing 'foods of various kinds, such as soups of various kinds, fish, eggs, game, poultry, meat, cheese, fruit, all of various kinds, and of course bread and butter' is hardly calculated to inflame appetite of any kind. Nor in the weird excerpt from Gravity's Rainbow, advocating 'barf bouillon', 'cyst salad', 'hemorrhoid hash' and 'carbuncle cutlets...with groin gravy!', amongst other noisome delights.
Nor in Frank Moorhouse's 'Cuisine Cruelle', which trolls the dark side of haute cuisine, as in the dish Ox à la ficelle: 'Take four servants and an ox. Tie a piece of string to each leg of the ox, have the servants lower the ox into a large pot of boiling water containing a carrot and an onion. Boil for twenty four hours while holding the string.' Here, as in several other selections (from Mansfield, Wharton, Lohrey) the thrust is satirical, against the very assumptions of wealth and class and luxury which underly the notion of the banquet. In other pieces, like the goat story by Ho An Thai, the thrust is allegorical and political. In Pablo Neruda's wonderful 'Ode to Conger Chowder', nothing less than 'the essences of Chile' are invoked in the reenactment of the making of a soup, which is also a hymn of national praise.