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Food, Inglorious FoodMy decision to opt out of the macho food-writing movement.

By Paul Levy
Posted Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2007, at 7:27 AM ET

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The rawest chronicler of foodie lowlife, Anthony Bourdain, not only tells tales of bad-boy kitchen behavior, such as the consuming of softer drugs, but also assumes this prosy pose in his writing: "You've made meat loaf, right? You've eaten cold meat loaf, yes? Then you're halfway to being an ass-kicking, name-taking charcutier."

This is not just a trend among commercial writers and chefs with TV tie-ins. Their success has polluted the mainstream consciousness and licensed the intelligentsia to dabble in the ass-kicking style. The Prince of Wales' Eton- and Oxford-educated stepson, Tom Parker Bowles, writes with a testosterone-inked pen and in his recent book, The Year of Eating Dangerously, insists that the taste of silkworm eggs reminds him of "freshly dug graves."

Even The New Yorker has succumbed to fashion when it comes to food. In its recent food issue, John McPhee describes durian as "a fruit that smells strongly fecal and tastes like tiramisu." McPhee again, on his own strange juvenile eating habits: "When I was eight years old … I used to swallow little two-inch whole trout—toss them high in the air and stagger around under them and catch them wriggling in my open mouth. …"

Adam Gopnik, in the same issue, writes about trying to be a "locavore," eating only food from New York. When describing the Red Hook Community Farm's use of zoo droppings in their organic farming program, he asked "if we could taste the elephant manure residually in the food." The answer was yes.

Buford projects this macho posture in his books as well as his journalism. In his memoir, Heat, he writes: "The pain was remarkably intense, and my skin responded immediately by forming globe-like blisters on the tender area between the back cuticle end of the fingernail and the first knuckle. Four of them, one on each finger. These globes were rather beautiful, not unlike small shiny jewels." This is not an account of a sports injury, but a description of Buford's encounter with some short ribs and scalding hot olive oil.

It's not surprising that the guys who write about food are looking for a way to nurture their manliness. After all, many good writers have revelled in the virile values of sport, from Hemingway on the bull ring and big-game hunting, to Mailer on boxing, and Martin Amis on tennis. What is novel is that, thanks to the Bad-Boy chefs' aperçu that the kitchen can be a thrillingly dangerous place, real writers can now show off the size of their cojones while admitting to an interest in cooking. Personally, I'd rather stay home and read a good cookbook.

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Paul Levy writes on the arts for the Wall Street Journal Europe, co-chairs the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, and edited The Penguin Book of Food and Drink.
Illustration by Robert Neubecker.
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