{"id":13220,"date":"2016-11-07T08:32:42","date_gmt":"2016-11-07T13:32:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alexprudhomme.com\/?p=13220"},"modified":"2016-11-07T08:32:42","modified_gmt":"2016-11-07T13:32:42","slug":"grandnephew-book-julia-child","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alexprudhomme.com\/2016\/11\/07\/grandnephew-book-julia-child\/","title":{"rendered":"Grandnephew has the book on Julia Child"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4>Julia Child and her husband Paul gaze at each other on the cover of her autobiography My Life in France. They\u2019re young. They\u2019ve pinned red paper hearts over their real hearts, signalling a love for the ages<\/h4>\n<p>When the book, co-written with Julia Child\u2019s grandnephew Alex Prud\u2019homme, was published in 2006 (after Child died), Prud\u2019homme\u2019s friends were confused. \u201cHow did they get that cover photo of you with Julia?\u201d they asked him. (And why the love hearts, they must have been wondering.)<br \/>\nThere lies a clue as to why Prud\u2019homme was close to his famous great aunt. \u201cI look like him,\u201d Prud\u2019homme says of Paul Child, his great uncle (his grandfather\u2019s brother) who died in 1994. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the reasons Julia and I got along so well. We looked alike, we had similar temperaments and shared a similar sense of humour.\u201d<br \/>\nI, too, was struck by the close family resemblance when I interviewed Prud\u2019homme at the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel recently. Their hairstyles? Identical. That is, their hairline receded in exactly the same pattern and their heads seem cast from the same mould. Their faces project calm and good humour.<br \/>\nHe was in Vancouver promoting The French Chef in America: Julia Child\u2019s Second Act, his second book about his great aunt. This one, however, was not based on interviews with Julia as much on the Childs\u2019 papers, including letters, memos, TV scripts, articles, speeches, cookbooks, date books and of course, his personal knowledge. He cites the sources in 21 pages of footnotes. Prud\u2019homme has also written political\/scientific books on energy and the environment.<br \/>\n<div id=\"attachment_13222\" style=\"width: 302px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13222\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13222\" src=\"https:\/\/alexprudhomme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/1105-alex-prudhomme-in-vancouver-png-merlin-archive.jpeg\" alt=\"Alex Prud\u2019homme in Vancouver. Photo by Mia Stainsby.\" width=\"292\" height=\"300\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-13222\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alex Prud\u2019homme in Vancouver. Photo by Mia Stainsby.<\/p><\/div><br \/>\n\u201cTheir marriage was a remarkable business and life partnership,\u201d says Prud\u2019homme. \u201cThey even used to write joint letters. It was a fantasy marriage.\u201d<br \/>\nFacebook didn\u2019t exist back in the day but their letters foreshadowed things to come.<br \/>\n\u201cThey wrote letters full of details about everything \u2014 the weather, the price of wine, what was happening during the Cold War. It was almost like they knew they were going to live extraordinary lives. Julia always typed her letters, which were full of crossed-out words. It\u2019s tremendous. They kept everything pristine.\u201d<br \/>\nIn the beginning, Julia and Paul had something of a Pygmalion relationship.<br \/>\n\u201cShe considered herself too tall, too loud, too unsophisticated. Paul (a U.S. diplomat in France) mentored her,\u201d says Prud\u2019homme.<br \/>\nBut later, after moving back to the U.S., she was a beloved celebrity chef with two massive volumes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, TV cooking shows and much more to come.<br \/>\n<div id=\"attachment_13223\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13223\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13223\" src=\"https:\/\/alexprudhomme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/1105-julia-and-paul-child-png-merlin-archive.jpeg\" alt=\"Julia and Paul Child.\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-13223\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Julia and Paul Child.<\/p><\/div><br \/>\nWhereas the first book detailed Julia\u2019s life in France, French Chef in America is about Julia back in the U.S.<br \/>\n\u201cShe found her raison d\u2019etre in France in the late \u201930s and \u201940s. It was pure joy, an Aha! moment when she understood the reason why she was on the planet,\u201d says Prud\u2019homme. \u201cShe was the right person at the right time with the right ideas and communicated them in the right way. She didn\u2019t invent a food revolution but she certainly catalyzed it.\u201d<br \/>\nIn America, she jump-started a second career with American cookbooks and more TV shows. \u201cShe was responsible for creating that. She reinvented herself and it didn\u2019t happen overnight. It was hard work but she loved working.\u201d<br \/>\nShe was a superstar. But in France, not so much.<br \/>\n\u201cThe French don\u2019t like anyone telling them how to cook their food and profess not to know who she is.\u201d However, after the movie Julie &amp; Julia (where Meryl Streep reincarnates Julia), American tourists descended upon Julia\u2019s France, so the French \u201ccertainly had an inkling,\u201d says Prud\u2019homme, who coached Stanley Tucci for his performance as Julia\u2019s husband. \u201cI played an extra at a party scene,\u201d says Prud\u2019homme.<br \/>\nHe says Julia refused to endorse products. \u201cShe forewent millions of dollars,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople were constantly trying to use her name. She was a modest person who didn\u2019t like to talk about herself, carried her own suitcases through airports but the only time she used her name was to get into restaurants she desperately wanted to try. She\u2019d only do it for food.\u201d<br \/>\n<div id=\"attachment_13224\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13224\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13224\" src=\"https:\/\/alexprudhomme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/julia-and-paul-child-png-merlin-archive1.jpeg\" alt=\"Julia and Paul Child\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-13224\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Julia and Paul Child<\/p><\/div><br \/>\nAt restaurants, she visited the kitchen to talk to everybody.<br \/>\n\u201cShe spent more time with the dishwasher than the chef. She always wanted to know their stories,\u201d he says.<br \/>\nShe wasn\u2019t vain but she did have facial plastic surgery. She never talked about it but Prud\u2019homme found references in letters, coded in her doctor\u2019s name. \u201cShe understood that on TV, you\u2019re judged by looks,\u201d he says.<br \/>\nIn America, she began writing in the first person, telling personal stories. \u201cShe discovered her voice and had a whole second career, which was more American,\u201d says Prud\u2019homme. \u201cShe used that voice and became very outspoken. She was not like a nice little old lady. She was big and strong and tough. She railed against vegetarians and nutritionists and the fat police. She stirred it up and got people to talk. She later changed her position on nouvelle cuisine but never changed her mind about butter. She hated margarine so much she wouldn\u2019t speak the word.\u201d<br \/>\nShe had detractors in the 1970s. Madeleine Kamman, a French chef and cookbook writer in the U.S., said Julia was neither French nor a chef. \u201cJulia thought it was mean spirited,\u201d says Prud\u2019homme. Paul, meanwhile, was investigated during the McCarthy era.<br \/>\n\u201cPaul and Julia never had kids but they had surrogate children \u2014 my sisters, me, my cousins \u2014 they were generous with them and with a lot of other people.\u201d To the young Prud\u2019homme, Julia was like a fairy godmother. \u201cThey\u2019d often come and stay with us and we\u2019d watch her show on black and white TV. As a kid, it was like she just walked out of the TV,\u201d he says.<br \/>\nHis great aunt viewed cooking as a civilized art. She\u2019d originally dreamed of being a famous novelist but when she found cooking, those urges went into cookbooks. \u201cI think maybe that\u2019s a hidden reason why her cookbooks had such power. There\u2019s something more than recipes. It\u2019s like an iceberg with hidden passion.\u201d<br \/>\n<div id=\"attachment_13225\" style=\"width: 213px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13225\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13225\" src=\"https:\/\/alexprudhomme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/1105-french-chef-in-america-by-alex-prudhomme-png-merlin-a.jpeg\" alt=\"French Chef in America by Alex Prud\u2019homme.\" width=\"203\" height=\"300\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-13225\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">French Chef in America by Alex Prud\u2019homme.<\/p><\/div><br \/>\nIf her recipes tend to be long, it\u2019s because she wanted them to work perfectly. \u201cIf there were risks of something going wrong, she\u2019d write about how to save it.\u201d<br \/>\nPrud\u2019homme visited Julia two days before she died and she talked of going lobster fishing, visiting a slaughter house in Chicago, and teaching kids.<br \/>\n\u201cShe still had that hell fire,\u201d he says. \u201cWe were gathering to celebrate her 92nd birthday. When she died, we decided to have a party anyway.\u201d<br \/>\nFor him, her legacy was her optimistic, risk-taking nature and a non-apologetic approach to life.<br \/>\n\u201cI use her as a touchstone,\u201d he says.<br \/>\nHis next book is about the history and role of food in the White House.<br \/>\n\u201cIt tells you a lot about the state of the nation, where we were as a people, where the culture was and what we ate.\u201d<br \/>\nThe project wouldn\u2019t have happened, he says, without inspiration from his great aunt having been the first to go into the White House kitchen with TV cameras, first during the Lyndon Johnson presidency and another during a dinner for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip under President Ford.<br \/>\nThus article originally appeared on <a href=\"https:\/\/vancouversun.com\/life\/food\/grandnephew-has-the-book-on-julia-child\">vancouversun.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Julia Child and her husband Paul gaze at each other on the cover of her autobiography My Life in France. They\u2019re young. They\u2019ve pinned red paper hearts over their real hearts, signalling a love for the ages When the book, co-written with Julia Child\u2019s grandnephew Alex Prud\u2019homme, was published in 2006 (after Child died), Prud\u2019homme\u2019s&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Grandnephew has the book on Julia Child - Alex Prud&#039;homme<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/alexprudhomme.com\/2016\/11\/07\/grandnephew-book-julia-child\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Grandnephew has the book on Julia Child - Alex Prud&#039;homme\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Julia Child and her husband Paul gaze at each other on the cover of her autobiography My Life in France. 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