"I used to get criticized for putting food in novels"
About this Quote
It lands like a shrug and a dare: imagine being scolded for feeding your characters. Harrison’s line is funny because the complaint is so obviously bloodless. Food in novels is one of the oldest tools in the kit, yet the criticism implies a certain literary puritanism - the idea that “serious” fiction should float above appetite, metabolism, and the messy logistics of living. Harrison answers that snobbery by not even arguing with it. The understatement is the point: he reduces the debate to something tactile, domestic, and indisputably human.
The intent is partly defensive, partly taunting. Harrison was a writer of embodied experience - hunting, drinking, sex, weather, hunger, the particular pleasures of a meal. To omit food would be to falsify the world he cared about. The subtext is a rejection of a thin, prestige-minded realism where people talk and think but rarely chew. Food is how Harrison measures class, region, intimacy, and loneliness without announcing any of it. A plate set down in silence can do what pages of interior monologue can’t.
Context matters: Harrison’s America isn’t the tasteful, abstracted “literary” landscape; it’s working kitchens, bars, cabins, and small towns where sustenance is culture. Criticizing him for food is, in a way, criticizing him for refusing to disinfect life for the page. The line doubles as a credo: if a novel can’t tolerate appetite, it probably can’t tolerate truth.
The intent is partly defensive, partly taunting. Harrison was a writer of embodied experience - hunting, drinking, sex, weather, hunger, the particular pleasures of a meal. To omit food would be to falsify the world he cared about. The subtext is a rejection of a thin, prestige-minded realism where people talk and think but rarely chew. Food is how Harrison measures class, region, intimacy, and loneliness without announcing any of it. A plate set down in silence can do what pages of interior monologue can’t.
Context matters: Harrison’s America isn’t the tasteful, abstracted “literary” landscape; it’s working kitchens, bars, cabins, and small towns where sustenance is culture. Criticizing him for food is, in a way, criticizing him for refusing to disinfect life for the page. The line doubles as a credo: if a novel can’t tolerate appetite, it probably can’t tolerate truth.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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