From: gerald_a_levy (gerald_a_levy@msn.com)
Date: Sat Oct 26 2002 - 11:55:19 EDT
Once upon a time in a place far, far away there was a famous chef who repeatedly wrote, in published and unpublished writings, that he planned on writing a series of six books on cooking. In one of his works, "An Outline on Cooking", he wrote that "obviously" the order of those 6 books would be: Book One: Cooking in General Book Two: Vegetables Book Three: Meat Book Four: Fish Book Five: Fruit Book 6: International Cooking as a Whole One of the unusual aspects of "The Complete Book of Cooking" was that it was not only to be a comprehensive and systematic exposition of the subject of cooking but it was also to be a critique of all previous thought on the subject of cooking. Quite a task! In the "Preface" to his work "A Contribution to a Critique of Cooking" the very first paragraph read: "I examine the system of cooking in the following order: cooking in general, vegetables, meat, fish, fruit, international cooking as a whole". Yet, the "Contribution to a Critique of Cooking" only concerned "Cooking in general". The last major work that he wrote was a massive multi-volume work on the subject of "Cooking in general". The first volume of "Cooking in general" (subtitled "A Critique of other philosophies of cooking") was published in his lifetime. The subsequent volumes were only incomplete drafts but were edited by a cook who worked in the same kitchen as the great chef and was a life-time collaborator, friend, and benefactor. They were then published posthumously since the great chef died (alas) while still a young man. In the "Prefaces" to "Cooking in general" and in all of his subsequent writing (much of which was also only published posthumously) the great chef neither wrote that he planned on only writing Book One ["Cooking in general"] and had thereby given-up on his 6-book-plan nor did he write that he still planned on writing the other 5 books in the 6-book-plan. Query: given the above, doesn't the preponderance of evidence strongly suggest that he still planned on writing the remaining 5 books? Indeed, since in his last published comment on this subject -- in the "Contribution to a Critique of Cooking" -- he had informed his readers that he *was* planning on writing all 6 books beginning with "Cooking in general" wouldn't it have been only reasonable to expect that had he abandoned his plan to write the 6-book-series on cooking then he would have explained (or at least noted) that in "Cooking in general"? Can't his silence on that topic in "Cooking in general" -- given *the context of what he wrote in "A Contribution to a Critique of Cooking"* be taken as evidence that he still planned on writing the remaining 5 volumes at the time that the first volume of "Cooking in general" was published? In solidarity, Jerry
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Oct 30 2002 - 00:00:01 EST