M.F.K. FISHER: A LIFE IN LETTERS

Her cunning as a culinary essayist, memoirist, and fiction writer won't fully prepare Fisher's many fans for her gusto as an informal correspondent. The long-lived Californian (1908—92), whose more than two dozen books (To Begin Again, 1992, etc.) also chronicled her extended stays in Provence and other parts of Europe, wrote letters with the sort of committed lax that some authors reserve solely for their published books and articles. Thankfully, though, Fisher seemed to find herself with special joy as a writer when writing to someone. The more than 60 years covered by these letters offer a changeable, canoeing, and unself-conscious portrait of the writer by her own highly skilled hand. They also vividly suggest the shifts in opportunities for American women as the decades passed in this century. Unlike her previously published writing, the letters are less often travelogues or sensuous surveys of adventures in appetite than they are a gathering chorus of Fisher's monologues about her family, her marriages (three), her friends, the work of writing, the business of publishing and other good reasons to live for as long as possible. Her correspondents here include Julia Child, James Beard, longtime Esquireeditor Arnold Gingfich, and Knopf editor Judith Jones. Yet mainly she wrote to people who weren't famous, and her arena mostly wasn't all that worldly. Nor was her life especially privileged, despite the suggested enchantments of her sentences. Fisher seemed to take charge of any catastrophe falling on those near to her; a large part of the record shows her fighting valiantly and generously on their behalf, perhaps with a touch of inherited masochism. At the same time, however, she could insist on freedoms for herself that were not then fashionable, and with exhilarating gumption. So much to inspire; too much to summarize.