As They Were: Autobiographical Essays

by M.F.K. Fisher

This marvelous collection of autobiographical essays by the celebrated, much-adored M.F.K. Fisher covers her life, family, food, and adventures.

Genres: Food, Nonfiction, Travel, Memoir, Essays, Foodie, Cooking

261 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher was a prolific and well-respected writer, writing more than 20 books during her lifetime and also publishing two volumes of journals and correspondence shortly before her death in 1992. Her first book, Serve it Forth, was published in 1937. Her books deal primarily with food, considering it from many aspects: preparation, natural history, culture, and philosophy. Fisher believed that eating well was just one of the "arts of life" and explored the art of living as a secondary theme in her writing. Her style and pacing are noted elements of her short stories and essays.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

The prose here is clear and complex and supple all at once. With a voice I'd follow anywhere on earth. I felt embraced in these essays by a warm, plucky, companionable, and hyper-observant personality, by a person who herself embraced whatever life brought her way. And what a life it was: rich and sensuous and serious, full of humor and quiet (and not-so-quiet) pleasures. I found the earlier essays more interesting perhaps than the later ones, but through them all I was entranced. This is an absolutely spectacular collection.

And the food! These descriptions made me want to eat and eat well--to find in food one of life's purest pleasures.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

M.F.K. Fisher only came on my radar this year, and I didn't pick her up to read until I heard part of her essay about canning, and her earliest memory of jam-skin. She is one of the great foremothers of food writing, in fact there is even an award named after her for excellence in culinary writing.

I'm not sure this was the book to start with, as she is best known for The Art of Eating: 50th Anniversary Edition and The Gastronomical Me. This book is a collection of essays spanning 1941-1980, of memories and food in places she has lived around the world. Most of them have prefaces written later to give some context. Some of the instances detail places and even food that just doesn't exist in the same way anymore, and it was a great nostalgia read on Thanksgiving day.

(Warning: this book will make you hungry!)

Favorites:

I Was Really Very Hungry about a trip to a restaurant in northern Burgundy when a somewhat manic waitress gives her the best meal of her life, stuffs her to the gills. It is almost unbelievable, but the food!

The First Cafe details her first visit to a fine dining establishment at the age of 6, Marcel's in Los Angeles (in 1914.) She recalls the details that have never left her memory and talks about taking her own daughter to a similar place. "...She is whatever tender creature can thus begin the long nibbling through the invisible tunnel of the world."

Two Kitchens in Provence transports to a very specific moment in time from when she picked up her family and relocated to France for a while. It's like Julia Child without the political connections, even more embedded in the local life.

About Looking Alone At a Place is probably my favorite essay, about living in Arles, alone, in the off-season where a tourist is not exactly welcome. So much detail, so much place.

Dutch Freighter talks about life and food for people who travel on freighters. I don't know of anyone who has ever done this, so I'm guessing this is a pre-World War II phenomenon. The Fishers traveled from Marseille to Los Angeles on one in 1932, but also took shorter trips. The description of Dutch freighter food, from hodgepodge to Goudaspritses to Nassi Goreng (obviously a food from the Dutch empire) was fascinating, but to me reading in 2014, it also felt... lost.

ETA: This book was discussed on Episode 017 of the Reading Envy Podcast.

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Food writer M. F. K. Fisher shares stories with us from her past: the first time she ever ate at a restaurant: Fisher's meeting with a servant who adored the chef she served; three restaurants in Switzerland; two kitchens in Provence. She tells everything freshly, cleanly, with the beautiful prose that has made her so highly esteemed among food writers.

[AJ Nolan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written and charming essays, but they aren't really in my area of interest, thus just three stars, and they got a little repetitive and I definitely skimmed more than a few. Still, a great example of travel and food writing. Will use an essay in teaching my Craft of Literary Nonfiction class.

[Dvora Treisman · Rating 5 out of 5]

M.F.K. Fisher is one of my favorite authors and probably my favorite food author. I read this some years ago, in fact probably more than once. One of the pieces is my all-time favorite piece related to food. "I Was Really Very Hungry" is about the waitress in a small country inn where Fisher went once alone to have lunch. Whereas Fisher is passionate about food, this waitress was obsessed about the perfection of a meal. Five stars for that story alone!

I'll leave the five stars because of that and a few of the others and because her writing is so good and the way she invokes place is too. But I was disappointed that I didn't like all the essays as much as maybe I did the first time. But then, who remembers the first time? I vaguely remember reading about Aix before (and since I've been there, enjoyed the visit with her). I've never lived in Arles, but I've visited there many times so I very much enjoyed her description of the people and the place. The people of Arles were unnecessarily cruel to Vincent van Gogh when he lived there. She never mentions anything about that, but she also found them unsympathetic.

[Ellen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a group of essays, written over a long time span, 1940's - 1980's. I found the quality uneven, some writing drew me into the time and place being written about. Other stories were strangely sterile and cold. A few pieces were personal experiences that for some reason the author wrote in the third person, with herself a character with a fictitious name. She seems very odd, detached from the world she is writing about, as she herself says,she felt "invisible".
Often she mentions sound as a dominant feature of the time and place she is describing. In some of the strange essays the author seems almost mentally ill.
I have read and loved many other works by MFK Fisher. This book not so much. I mostly felt uneasy, not happily enjoying her excellent writing as with everything else I have read by her.

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Started reading this in front of the fire, glass of inexpensive champagne in hand, on New Year's Eve (2 little kids...not going out.) I almost wept at knowing I could not time-travel my way back to 1939 Marcel's restaurant in L.A. or to the 3 chalets along Lake Geneva she described from the 1940s. Still worse was the meal she ate at a converted mill in...what was the town in Alsace (?), with the over-eager waitress and the semi-retired master chef. I had never in my life craved terrine de campagne and a glass of marc until that moment. What IS marc, anyway?? I look forward to savoring (!!) Fisher's other books over the years. The art of pairing aperatif and hors d'oeuvre will not die as long as I can help it!

[Gwen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I probably should have started with another M.F.K. Fisher book instead of this one. I'd always heard about how wonderful of a writer she is, how evocative her writing is, and how much of a standard-bearer she is in the food writing realm. And...I just didn't see it in this, absent any context about her, her life, or her other writing. I loved her descriptions of traveling in Europe in the interwar period and her travels on a freighter, but the rest of the essays felt extremely dated and overly long. The book also needed a better editor to more clearly piece together the essays; they just felt haphazardly plopped together with no rhyme or reason.

I'll definitely read another M.F.K. Fisher book, but the next one will be one of her most popular ones!

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, MFK Fisher is always a slooooow read for me. I've been working on this book off and on for a few months now because it just doesn't move fast enough to hold my attention for very long. But the writing is so lush and beautiful there is no choice but to just luxuriate in her sentences as you drink it all in. Completely worth taking your time with and savoring. This is a delectable book that showcases some of her best writing and also gives you a lot more insights into her bright, full life.

[Lindsey Sparks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. From the other reviews it looks like this wasn't a great starting place for reading Fisher. I only like a few stories, My First Cafe and some of the bits in France. I will try her more popular books. This seems like a better fit for people who already love her and are happy for even scraps.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

An elegant lady, spirited and witty. This was my first encounter with m.f.k. and won't be my last. Mildly appalled I didn't know her sooner. Absolutely never have I enjoyed food writing more. Though I realize "food writing" might be a reductive descriptor. It brings awareness to the significance, sacredness, of food in our lives with a sincere passion for living. I just loved looking at the world through her eyes at a certain time and place. She must've been a bold little lady in her time. And so full of respect and gratitude. I am almost moved to tears each time I read the last sentence in the last story of the collection: "It all proves what I've said before, that I am among the most blessed of women, still permitted to choose." I can't say exactly why. What do I read next?

[Kim]

Stopped at about page 65. So, apparently this is not the right book for a person's first-time read of MFK Fisher. I was interested to learn a little about her childhood in California during the 1918 pandemic (including how she, her sister, and apparently her father all chewed road tar like gum!). I also enjoyed the essay about the delicious but never-ending meal in an old mill converted to restaurant in the French countryside with the enthusiastic waitress and top-notch Parisian chef. But I found I kept putting the book aside to read other things and came to the point where I didn't want to continue reading it.

[Tisha (IG: Bluestocking629) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yikes. Yikes. Yikes.

I know this is non-fiction. But it read to me like a book of short stories. Boring short stories. I had to keep reminding myself it was an actual collection of reality. Some of the “essays” (short stories to me) were ok. Others were a complete bore or they had me questioning the writer’s sanity.

Just awful. I hate saying this. It’s not easy. She seems so well loved. Her other books appear to have much better ratings. Maybe I picked the wrong one to start with. Too bad, I highly doubt I’ll give another one of her books a try.

[Mary Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected this to be food writing, but it was more memoir. That would have been fine, except that it was such colorless memoir. It felt like the dregs of Fisher's writings that hadn't been published elsewhere. The only essay I thought was really good was the account near the end of experiencing what I would call a panic attack, which was so spot on that it almost made wading through the rest of the book worth it.

[Luke Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picked this up thinking this would be more of Fisher's writing on food and wine in France full of description of perfectly executed multi course meals, but it wasn't. Food does come up often, but we really only get one breakdown of the dishes she enjoys in a old mill turned restaurant, but even that story is more about the waitress's approval of her order. The book is more stories of growing up, California towns, travelling by cargo ship, other food-relates but not food-based stories.

[Shari · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked these essays. I was sure I would really love them. Sometimes her writing seemed rambling, although I did enjoy her keen observations, especially about the people and the produce. I wondered how she lived, alone in France. Could she pay for all this traveling from her writing alone? Where were her husbands, almost all the time? The last essay about her final house was my favorite. Obviously I'm not a real writer or book reviewer, given the literary reviews.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

like listening to a judee sill album. deceptively simple and easy to drift from, but when the words catch you you become totally enveloped in the depth and intimacy and religiosity they contain. made me want good food and miss cocktails and the excitement of finding new and strangely familiar places.

[Kristine Berg · Rating 3 out of 5]

M.F.K. Fisher lived and traveled during the 20 th century , which makes her reminiscences particularly nostalgic and a little archaic. But one essay about the restaurant on the 2 Nd floor of the Gare de Lyon was revelatory and if I am ever in Paris I will go there for “ bread and butter , Parma ham, and a half brut of champagne”.

[Suzan Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed these beautifully-written essays from MFK Fisher - the first I had read from her. Many of them focus on food, but she also has a talent for describing place - after reading this, I wanted to visit southern France! To hear more about this essay collection and my thoughts on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCGyp...

[Stephanie Chambers · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag really. There were a lot of good stories about living in France and eating in France! And there were interesting stories about her life and her family. But there were some that just didn't hold my attention.

[Mark Burris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her prose is magic, especially when she writes about a sumptuous meal or wine ... or both. It’s interesting that we meet virtually no friends or family members — people don’t seem to interest her as much unless they’re along as trusted companions at dinner time. So often she’s alone in her reportage ... except for us: we’re right there with her.

[Kerianne Noel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked all of these essays. Four stars if it were anyone else, but just not my favorite by MFK Fisher. Maybe that's a bit unfair but I am happy to own my subjectivity. Read it for the glimpses into a fleeting cultural moment - the period between two world wars.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most liked the essays on European cuisine, restaurants, shopping, waiters and waitresses, and her experiences on cargo ships.

[Raquel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the most gorgeous prose I have ever encountered.

[Hannah Grinestaff · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I loved the first half of the book and one of the essays towards the end, the rest were meh.

[Chelsea K · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

[Patty Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely made me want to live in a variety of places for a sufficient period of time.

[Magda · Rating 5 out of 5]

How does one even rate a book like this ? It’d be like rating someone’s sharing of her life to a friend

[Danica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pure delight.

[RD Chiriboga Moncayo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Audiobook
Beautifully written and well read.