My Life in France
By Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme
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Reviews Cooking legend Julia Child serves life lessons in memoir Sunday, April 23, 2006 The Oregonian My grandmother was a card-carrying member of the Peg Bracken, I Hate to Cook Book School of Domestic Servitude. She grumbled about spending time in the kitchen and used to tell me: "Whatever you do, don't learn to cook, type or sew, and especially, don't iron." I ignored the part about cooking and typing, but I knew Gram didn't come by this handy advice easily. She'd lived through a cultural revolution that was all about women's fight for equal rights and equal wages, as well as finding outlets for their creativity and self-expression. To my grandmother and many of her fellow freedom fighters, kitchen work was just one more form of women's traditional enslavement. But when "The French Chef" began airing in the early '60s, Gram recognized a fellow freedom fighter in Julia Child. That laugh! That voice! That great, gawky body! Julia represented a mix of the safe and the new: Here was an All-American gal introducing classic French dishes and making them seem accessible and fun. The show was a mix of glamour, human fallibility and pure charm, and Julia presented it all in that funny, lovely, instrument of a voice. According to Alex Prud'homme's forward to "My Life in France," his great-aunt Julia had often toyed with the notion of writing a memoir of her years in France. It wasn't until she was in her 90s, near the end of her life, that she finally agreed to a collaboration with Prud'homme. They began work, but after her death in 2004, he put in another year on his own stitching notes, correspondence and conversations together into a book that sounds remarkably as if Julia had dictated it from start to finish: her ripe, fruity tone and sensibility seem to fill the book. The memoir begins with the Childs' arrival in France: from a rocky, transatlantic crossing, they dive straight into a lunch of sole meuniere which she describes as "the most exciting meal of my life." Julia grew up in a well-to-do household in Pasadena, Calif., where, she says, "France did not have a good reputation." She was 36 years old when they arrived, didn't know how to cook and didn't speak a word of French. But if there's a secret to Julia's success, it might just be her intrepid nature and her openness to people: she accepts the world. Her husband and cohort Paul Child works as a cultural affairs officer, and the pair happily launch into their shared adventures in food and travel. It quickly becomes clear to Julia that "French food was it. . . ." She enrolls in a cooking course at the Cordon Bleu school. Study unlocks her passion: her life is given over to the classes and her days are based on cookery. "My Life in France" showcases the way that learning to cook is also a way of learning a place. Julia excavates Paris, visiting cheese sellers and cafes, bistros and butchers. She and Paul are immensely sociable and great throwers-of-dinner-parties, and as Julia's culinary technique improves, she meets an ever-expanding cross section of French society, including, eventually, two impressive women: Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle. The three found an informal cooking school together. But their great project -- the work that drives this memoir with a force like destiny -- is the researching and writing of a unique, instructional cookbook that will become the insuperable classic, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." Writers in particular should feel edified by reading about the long struggles Julia went through in bringing that book to publication. The male-dominated editorial board at Houghton Mifflin, for example, felt that American housewives wanted simpler, easier recipes than those in "French Cooking." It's thrilling and deeply gratifying to see the great book gradually overcome the obstacles. But there is also something profoundly appealing in Julia's life story, the lessons of her memoir as foundational as the lessons of her television show. "My Life in France" teaches that preparing and eating good food will:
And surely that is something all us freedom fighters can agree with. Diana Abu-Jaber is the author of "The Language of Baklava" and "Crescent," and she teaches in the writing program at Portland State University. ©2006 The Oregonian
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by Julia Child, Alex Prud'Homme
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