A Bistro of One's Own

"There was the scent of the sea as we passed the display of oysters on their bed of crushed ice, the rich whiff of butter warming in a pan, and, coming through the air every time the kitchen door swung open, the pervasive–and to my untraveled nose, infinitely foreign–hum of garlic." Mayle, French Lessons








One of the great consistencies of Mayle's work (with the exception of a Dog's Life, I suspect) is that his protagonists tend to personas of Mayle himself, as mentioned before, middle age or beyond, usually once or twice divorced, and an eloquent wannabe hedonist.  For their time, his books captured, I believe a sort of sentiment of the age, a desire to use a little extra cast to travel and live the good life for the man of charm and semi-means. For the likes of me, I have tried to capture this persona myself, most successfully with a series of food writings that resemble his Provence A-Z, which, in turn, took its inspiration from MFK Fisher's own title of the same name.  Even the wonderfully inquisitive short essays were rooted in the Mayle charm of the well seasoned traveler, seeking the high points of culture and some anecdotal findings. I had wondered yesterday if, in order to reach a voice that was compelling and well worth writing, if it wouldn't be quite fun to turn such a type of character – the amateur food sleuth that is – to something more of a young adult's book, what I would certainly categorize as otherworldly departure from the standard fare of that age which seems to be quite generally hollow and far too often menacing and needlessly exploitative of some flashier forms of contemporary culture. I really have to say I like the idea of our protagonist as a sort of independent minded young foodie who hires himself to seek out these little mysteries around the neighborhood. We used to get this sort of unsentimental mystery of youth in the Great Brain Series, books that I always loved, in which the young protagonist was always a bit of the fray, seeking out his assignments from others.  The idea that a young man would want to create and establish his own restaurant is very fascinating. A little with, a little wisdom, a little Maylian.