Jamie Harrison on the Relationship Between Eating, Love, and Memory
January 14, 2021
When I finished my new novel this past endless winter and cleaned my desk, I found this note:
When you eat well, you’re eating memory Barry Hannah.
I probably put too much food in my novels, but food is what people do, at least my people. They think about it, and they talk while they’re eating it; it’s in their errands and the shape of a life’s story. Writing about it can be a dodge on a hard day; for a previous novel, set in 1905, I felt I had to spend days on the New York Public Library’s website staring at the Buttolph menu collection. Parts of a new novel,