Praise for The Raw and the Cooked: “Harrison is the American Rabelais, and he is at his irreverent and excessive best in this collection.” —John Skowles, San Diego Union-Tribune “There’s nothing false in The Raw and the Cooked. It’s straight to the heart . . . and leaves you content and full but wanting more.” —Robert Baldwin, Bloomsbury Review “What we’re reading about is a life voraciously lived . . . engrossment with the natural world, engorgement at its harvest plentiful, and engagement with just about any topic (principles of Zen, the merits of writers as varied as Kierkegaard and Gary Snyder, the restorative powers of walking). . . . Alternately breezy and dense, sometimes serious as a crusade and the next second seriously funny.” —Steve Byrne, Detroit Free Press “For [Harrison], a great meal is a mindful act, a call to attend the sensual, while bad food is the least digestible aspect of a puritanical business culture that puts money, progress and other abstractions before life’s simple pleasures. . . . Such views have a long history in American letters—read Thoreau and Henry Miller. . . . His vivid language and comic sense earn him a place near the head of the literary table.” —Chris Waddington, Minneapolis Star-Tribune “Like a fine meal, this book satisfies.” —Anne Stephenson, Arizona Republic “Harrison’s passion for food—and sex—are matched by his muscular writing.” —Janet K. Keeler, St. Petersburg Times “Calling The Raw and the Cooked a book about food is like calling The Old Man and the Sea a book about fishing. . . . Harrison’s writing is full of power and passion.” —Jim Carvalho, Tucson Weekly “Sophisticated and earthy . . . impossible to pigeonhole . . . Most of us will never be lucky enough to share a meal with this ‘roving gourmand,’ but this volume provides a satisfying alternative.” —Wendy Miller, Library Journal “By turns hysterically funny, heartbreaking, meditative, irreverent, mystical, and more fun than a double portion of ris de veau rotis with a slab of headcheese, a brace of game birds, and a coney dog.” —Hour Detroit “A man of appetites . . . a trencherman of the soul . . . [Harrison] wears his erudition lightly. Whether musing about the poetry of Verlaine or the joys of Breton oysters, he never beats you over the head with his knowledge. . . . Harrison is a raconteur of the first order.” —William Porter, Denver Post “To read this book is to come away convinced that Harrison is a flatout genius— one who devours life with intensity, living it roughly and full-scale, then distills his experiences into passionate, opinionated prose. Food, in this context, is more than food: It is a metaphor for life.” —Wolf Schneider, Santa Fe New Mexican “A rumination on the unholy trinity of sex, death, and food, this long-awaited collection of gastronomic essays reads like the love child of M. F. K. Fisher and James Thorne—on acid.” —Publishers Weekly “The Raw and the Cooked provides a tantalizing, scrumptious read, a smorgasbord of the finest food writing, one that’s entertaining, engaging, witty, and full of savoir-faire; all in a voice that reveals a man fully given over to the pursuit of the art of writing (and eating). Bon appetit!” —Beef Torrey, Lincoln Journal-Star (Nebraska) “One of the most important authors to emerge from this country in the last fifty years . . . The Raw and the Cooked . . . is about more than food; it is about being human in a difficult time. . . . You will not read a book more genuine than this one.” —Barry Graham, Chattanooga Times Free Press “You’ll never find a person who savors every kind of foreign foodstuff with more orgasmic glee than Harrison. In his mind, good food, good sex, and good literature . . . are the only things that keep a sensible person going in this world.” —Craig D. Lindsey, Houston Chronicle “A man of firm opinions and titanic appetites . . . Harrison is in search of the transcendent, whether in nature (trekking is the only pastime he seems to feel as passionate about as food) or on the plate. He finds it in intense flavors, the American landscape, his past, and his family: the subjects of most of his essays. . . . Delightful.” —Kirkus Reviews “To call this a book about only food would be to narrow its scope. Although Harrison is knowledgeable about all kinds of fare, has read thousands of cookbooks and eaten in the world’s finest restaurants, he comes across as a man who simply likes to eat and enjoys his life and the company around him.” —Parsippany Daily Record (NJ) ALSO BY JIM HARRISON Fiction Wolf A Good Day to Die Farmer Legends of the Fall Warlock Sundog Dalva The Woman Lit by Fireflies Julip The Road Home The Beast God Forgot to Invent Poetry Plain Song Locations Outlyer Letters to Yesenin Returning to Earth Selected & New Poems The Theory and Practice of Rivers & New Poems After Ikkyu & Other Poems The Shape of the Journey: Collected Poems Nonfiction Just Before Dark Off to the Side: A Memoir Children’s Literature The Boy Who Ran to the Woods THE RAW AND THE COOKED THE RAW AND THE COOKED Adventures of a Roving Gourmand Jim Harrison Copyright © 2001 by Jim Harrison All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003. These pieces have previously appeared, sometimes in slightly different form, in the, following magazines, to which grateful acknowledgment is made: Smart (New York): “Eat or Die” (published as “Sporting Food”), “Meals of Peace and Restoration,” “Hunger, Real and Unreal,” “Then and Now,” “Consciousness Dining,” “The Tugboats of Costa Rica,” “Midrange Road Kill,” “The Panic Hole,” “Piggies Come to Market,” “The Fast” Esquire (New York): “What Have We Done with the Thighs?,” “The Days of Wine and Pig Hocks,” “One Foot in the Grave,” “Just Before Dark,” “Cooking Your Life,” “Ignoring Columbus,” “Eating Close to the Ground,” “Return of the Native, or Lighten Up,” “Let’s Get Lost,” “Principles,” “The Last Best Place?,” “The Morality of Food,” “Contact,” “Coming to Our Senses,” “The 10,000-Calorie Diet,” “Walking the San Pedro,” “Back Home,” “Repulsion and Grace,” “Outlaw Cook,” “Unmentionable Cuisine,” “Heart Food in L.A.,” “Fresh Southern Air,” “Borderlands,” “A Huge Hunger in Paris” Men’s Journal (New York): “Thirty-three Angles on Eating French” (published as “Eating French”), “American Food Journal” Revue des Deux Mondes (Paris) and Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant Newsletter: “Wine” Beaux Arts (Paris): “Wild Creatures” (published as “Jim Harrison & Gérard Oberlé Food Correspondence”) Brick (Toronto): “Meatballs” Gérard Oberlé’s letters to Jim Harrison in “Wild Creatures” were translated by Diana Odasso. Published simultaneously in Canada Printed in the United States of America FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Harrison, Jim, 1937- The raw and the cooked : adventures of a roving gourmand / Jim Harrison. p. cm. ISBN 0-8021-3937-X (pbk.) ISBN 0-8021-3937-X (pbk.) 1. Harrison, Jim, 1937-2. Gastronomy. 3. Food writers—United States— Biography. I. Title. TX649.H35 A3 2001 641.3—dc21 2001033464 Grove Press 841 Broadway New York, NY 10003 02 03 04 05 06 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Terry McDonell and Gérard Oberlé