The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard

by John Birdsall

After World War II, a newly affluent United States reached for its own gourmet culture, one at ease with the French international style of Escoffier, but also distinctly American. Enter James Beard, authority on cooking and eating, his larger-than-life presence and collection of whimsical bow ties synonymous with the nation’s food for decades, even after his death in 1985.


In the first biography of Beard in twenty-five years, acclaimed writer John Birdsall argues that Beard’s struggles as a closeted gay man directly influenced his creation of an American cuisine. Starting in the 1920s, Beard escaped loneliness and banishment by traveling abroad to places where people ate for pleasure, not utility, and found acceptance at home by crafting an American ethos of food likewise built on passion and delight. Informed by never-before-tapped correspondence and lush with details of a golden age of home cooking, The Man Who Ate Too Much is a commanding portrait of a towering figure who still represents the best in food.

Genres: Food, Biography, Nonfiction, Audiobook, LGBT, Biography Memoir, Queer

464 pages, Hardcover

First published October 6, 2020

About the author

John Birdsall grew up near San Francisco and learned to cook at Greens Restaurant in that city. He spent the next seventeen years in professional kitchens there and in Chicago, and did some writing as a side gig, including food stories and restaurant reviews for the San Francisco Sentinel, a pioneering LGBTQ weekly. After leaving the kitchen, he was a restaurant critic and features writer at the Contra Costa Times and East Bay Express, and the editor of SF Weekly’s food blog. In 2014, he won a James Beard Award for food and culture writing for “America, Your Food Is So Gay” in Lucky Peach, and another in 2016 for “Straight-Up Passing” in the queer food journal Jarry. He’s written for Food & Wine, Bon Appétit, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Los Angeles Times, and taught culinary writing at the San Francisco Cooking School. He’s married to Perry Lucina, an artist and designer.

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started this as an ARC and couldn’t get through it then tried again when it was published. This time I was able to put my finger on what bothered me.

I understand the impulse to make the subject of a biography seem fresh and real but the author goes too far in imagining what the Beard was literally thinking and experiencing. Who knows if he observed “actresses lacing their tea with brandy” and if men winked at him and gave him candy? Or if didn’t like the scent of his father’s hair oil. Or if he caught the eye of a man along the train tracks and thought he looked like the family cook. It all reads as outright fantasy. There is a way to write biographies and factual information that doesn’t require so much fabrication. So much James felt this, James ate this, James saw this—you just don’t know. There were no home movies of the time, he doesn’t seem to have kept a minute to minute diary. It reads like fan fiction.

I did appreciate the shedding of light into Beard’s “borrowing” of other people’s recipes. As a recipe developer myself, it is galling to come across recipes I created in other people’s cookbooks and websites unchanged.

Birdsall isn’t a bad writer but I think he would be been better off writing a novelization of Beard’s life rather than what is being sold as a biography. I’m puzzled why he didn’t, he clearly enjoyed fantasizing and making up details about Beard’s thoughts and day to day life and a whole book of that without the expectation it was to be a wholly factual work would be have been much more palatable. Instead I was left wondering what else was made up when he talked about Beard’s life. Did he keep his flourishes just to Beard’s thoughts? Or were other things made up or exaggerated for dramatic effect? We don’t know because as he points out in the foreword, little has been written about Beard the man and even people close to him seem to have vastly different perceptions of him.

[Geoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an excellent biography of an American culinary legend. It focused on his career but also on his personal life as a closeted gay celebrity in 20th century America, and the ways in which his sexual identity shaped his life and choices. Beard almost seemed to fall accidentally in celebrity, after not finding success in the arts. But that is too simplistic a story and the author makes clear the way Beard plagiarized (himself and others) and formed and broke partnerships to become a celebrity. At times, though, it almost felt like a meta-biography, as if the author was having a conversation with previous biographies (as all biographies really do), but at times he forgot to let the reader into the first part of the conversation. And the biggest mystery was how Beard became famous in the first place. The author somewhat makes it seem like he wrote some interesting (plagiarized) cookbooks that mostly didn't sell too well and then at some point he became the face of American cooking? Knowing Beard only from the foundation and their annual awards, I feel like I learned a lot about the man and his psyche from the book. I greatly enjoyed it, but I want to go back and read some of those cookbooks and some of the earlier biographies to understand his fame and impact on American cooking a little better.

**Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Jarrett Neal · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of two things went wrong with this biography: either the author, John Birdsall, did a hack job of writing the book, or James Beard simply didn't live a life that interesting. The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard is a bit of a bait-and-switch. Beard's life story doesn't really begin until the end of chapter three. Birdsall spends so much time rhapsodizing about food that he sometimes forgets that the book's primary focus is supposed to be James Beard. Many readers have questioned the veracity of the material contained within this biography and have suggested that instead of a biography Birdsall should have written a novel about James Beard instead. I think that would have been the better way to go.

Like many contemporary biographies, this book falls into the trap of not being able to discern which events of the subject's life to include and which to exclude. Birdsall includes pages and pages of digressions in this book, and at the end of them all I could think was So what? In fact, this is a book that strays so often from its subject and purpose that readers will wonder why James Beard is considered a towering figure in the culinary world. All I really came away with is an impression of James Beard as a serial plagiarist, a bitchy fat queen, and a gourmand who wasn't nearly as masterful in the kitchen as those who came after him. Either he deserved a better biography or none at all.

[Rhiannon Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.



As a foodie I have heard the name James Beard millions of times. I knew he was a gay man and legendary food writer, but beyond that I knew very little about him. Wanting to know more about his life, I dove into The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard. Well, I waded in. The first two chapters about his childhood in Portland, Oregon were so detailed that I thought "I'm not sure I can take 464 pages of this" but the book did pick up speed after that point. John Birdsall, 2014 James Beard Award winner for "America, Your Food is So Gay,” shares great stories about Beard's education, scandals, recipe "stealing" and collaborations. I learned exactly how Beard influenced American cuisine after World War II all the way up to today (he loved "home cooking" and fresh, farm-to-table type eating). Before there was Julia Child hosting "The French Chef" (1963), there was James Beard hosting the live television series "I Love to Eat" (1946–47). I had no idea! This book is a must for any "foodie" interested in not only the life of James Beard but the history of American food and food writing.

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[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Birdsall's "The Man Who Ate Too Much" is the first James Beard biography to highlight - and contend with - Beard's queerness.

From a young age James Beard was queer and flamboyant and this aspect of himself led to oppressions - like being expelled from Reed College - but also plenty of love and community, like his relationship with Gino and his many queer friends. Birdsall draws back the curtain on a man who is revered in the culinary community for his home-taught embrace of American food, but he also tells the story of a man who plagiarized often and burned many bridges. And sadly, despite being a very long book, you finish the book feeling like somehow you still don't know James Beard. Birdsall does a great job painting a contextual picture and recounting the tens of thousands of dishes Beard tasted and made, but all this detail is missing something striking: an unraveling of who this queer, culinary giant truly was.

"The Man Who Ate Too Much" is important for the contribution in makes in highlighting Beard's queerness for the first time, but the book itself won't get you much closer to "knowing" James Beard.

[Christopher Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was originally really excited to read this book given that my only hobby is eating. I think the book is strongly researched and has an interesting narrative style which took me a bit of time to get into. However, I think the good parts get heavily overshadowed by the length of the book, general gaps in explanation of Beard’s success, and most importantly how repetitive it tends to be especially around him pointing out how gay all the characters are. The book is tough to get through (admittedly I have gotten distracted by the new Pokémon game because it slaps) not only because it’s just a long book in general, but because so much of it is just the author being like “BY THE WAY JAMES BEARD WAS GAY.” So much of the book is centered around how gay James Beard was but had to hide it which is tragic, yes, but he keeps repeating it over and over. Some parts of it are interesting, like how he interpret’s Beard’s voice and the queer nature of it throughout all the cookbooks he’s written, but a lot of it is just random dudes who are James’ friends or dudes he wants to have sex with, that have little impact on James’ life, that the author is like “THEY’RE GAY TOO!”. There’s so much focus on that and the lives of James’ random friends that it feels like there are large parts of his story missing. For example, it seemed like most of Beard’s cookbooks were commercial failures, but somehow he becomes known as the dean of American cooking, which is kind of just glossed over, as are a lot of other interesting parts (Beard’s insane tendency to plagiarize without credit, his cooking style and famous recipes, his culinary legacy). By the time you reach page 50 you will be like, “Ok we get it he was pretty gay”, and there will still be 400 pages left to go.

[LAPL Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the preface to this biography there is a quotation from Gael Greene, food and restaurant critic, and it should whet the curiosity of every foodie:
"In the beginning, there was James Beard. Before Julia ..., before a wine closet in the life of every grape nut and the glorious coming of age of American wines, before the new American cooking, chefs as superstars, and our great irrepressible gourmania ... there was James Beard, our Big Daddy."
I cannot quite pinpoint my initial awareness of James Beard, but I do remember a week-long-baking experience with his book, Beard on Bread. I was on a staycation, which ended up as an obsessed, compulsive week of working my way through a good chunk of that book. In baking, yeasted breads cannot be rushed, so I read and reread parts of the book, plotting and planning which recipe to do next. My personal copy of that book is still with me, dog-eared and stained, as is an enormous appreciation about what it takes to make a good piece of bread, the staff of life.

He was a large man, rotund in fact, with an ebullient, cheery demeanor, which hid an injured soul whose life was fascinating and damaged. He became the American dean of cooking, not by design, but by happenstance, and he came fully armed with experience and knowledge, unlike anyone else. His mother was a phenomenal cook and hotel manager, and the lonely, young boy soon matched her innate fine sense of taste and smell, with his own. The young lad was able to have imprinted on his tastebuds and memory, the very best in fish and shellfish, as well as other food commodities that were fresh and unadulterated in the northwest region where he grew up.

Jame Beard's life, and that of his family, was full of secrets, inconsistencies, lies and obfuscations. It is important to note that he was born in 1903 and died in 1985. That span of years made it impossible, and in many instances illegal, to admit that someone was gay. Beard never came out, and he was among a cadre of gay men, in the world of cuisine, who also were closeted. Author John Birdsall's meticulous research about Beard's life and other gay food people, along with their major contributions to American cuisine, brings deserved and overdue credit. This part of his life should be of interest to the LGBTQIA community, whether or not they are foodies.

There is a great deal more to the historical background of the times in which James Beard lived, and to his family's life and his own. Apart from documenting gay life, Birdsall writes about the milieu of those long ago times when there were many gender, racial, social, political and economic inequities that were a given, and not to be challenged. James Beard was a captive of those times, as was his mother, an entrepreneurial woman way ahead of her time, who confidently forged ahead, in defiance of her husband and of others. The very kind family Chinese cook, Jue Let, was among many Chinese people whose lives were relegated to a defined type of work. Let followed the recipes of Mrs. Beard, but in addition he brought his own knowledge and expertise in preparation of his own cuisine. Birdsall excels at providing the historical context of those days when there was a burgeoning west coast (shipping, farming, fresh coastal waters with fish and wild life), where most people could shed old lives, create new ones and make a place of comfort and importance for themselves. The other aspect of Birdsall's writing, that drove me to a wonderful distraction, was his vivid description of food, cooking, recipes and meals.

In this first fully researched biography of James Beard, we are presented with an acknowledgment of how important and great are his contributions in putting American cuisine on the culinary map of the world. For books owned by LAPL, and written by James Beard click here.

The James Beard Foundation is a lasting heritage to the great man, where awards are presented, classes are given, and there is support for those who are interested in the culinary arts.

Reviewed by Sheryn Morris, Librarian, Literature & Fiction,

[Denver Public Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

Looking beyond a nuts-and-bolts biography, Birdsall goes beyond Beard's public persona and behind closed doors to reveal to readers a more human subject, one who (perhaps inadvertently) created the concept of a true American cuisine. Before Beard became the "dean of American cookery" he was an actor, caterer, and author, but by the 1940s, he was hosting his own cooking show. His supporting cast includes long-time companion Gino, friends and supporters from the publishing world, and fellow chefs like Alice Waters and Craig Claiborne, and his story spans Europe and the United States. One surprise from the book—in the early 1970s, there was a artisan bread boom, much like now, with NYC department store Bloomingdale's unveiling The Bread Basket, a boutique for craft bread bakers! Readers will feel like a fly on the pineapple-wallpapered wall in Beard's kitchen while taking in this look at Beard's professional life in the culinary world and his personal life here and abroad.

[Jessica Haider · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you watch Top Chef, read food magazines or websites, or buy cookbooks you've probably heard of the James Beard Award. But just who is this James Beard guy?

In this new biography, writer John Birdsall has assembled a look into the life of James Beard from the time he was a child up through his death. James Beard was born and raised in Oregon where he learned an appreciation of cooking from his mother. He was precocious from a young age and loved eating raw oysters while on trips to the beach. Born in the early 20th century, James came of age in a time when it was not easy to be a gay man. He found his way into working in the cookbook industry and published several books himself that met with varied success. He was publishing books that touted cooking with real/fresh ingredients in a time where America was infatuated with the arrival of convenience foods like frozen foods and boxed mixes. James Beard became a premier name in American cookery though his books were never very successful.

Birdsall discusses a lot of what it meant for Beard to be gay and how he had to hide this aspect of himself from the public eye. In Beard's older years he saw more freedom for gay men through gay rights events like the Stonewall riots.

I listened to the audiobook which was well-paced and the narrator did a great job.

I highly recommend this book to people interested in food, biographies or about the life of a gay man living in America in the early-mid 1900's.

Thank you to the publisher for the audiobook in exchange for an honest review!

[Russell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This biography of the famous American epicure, James Beard, may be the first that deals in a straightforward way with Beard's homosexuality. And, as John Birdsall points out, this put him in good company, with Chuck Williams (of Williams-Sonoma fame), Craig Claiborne (New York Times food writer), and many others. Beard's early life was deeply unhappy, and he seemed to spend the rest of his days seeking to be happy, though it's not certain he ever achieved that state. Seeming to fall into his role as one of the best-known 20th century food authorities, he pursued it with relish, and made the most of this lucky happenstance. Birdsall sprinkles the book with interesting information about Beard's major books, wrung with great effort from the always-busy, often-depressed cook.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

I knew next to nothing about James Beard before picking this up -- other than a PBS documentary I saw a few years back and that there is an award named after him that every contestant on "Top Chef" brags about if they've received it (or were even a finalist).

I had no idea that he grew up in Portland, and I had no idea that he lead such a colorful life. It seems he was constantly busy writing, cooking, traveling, stealing recipes and ogling men. Nice work, if you can get it! He seems like someone it would be fun to know, but I think that being close to him must have been very wearing. He had an underlying sadness about him that really comes though in this book.

His personal relationships, while a core part of the book, seem to have been hard to pick a part. I almost felt like Birdsall was trying to protect him a bit. Either that, or so much of what he was able to learn about them may have come from third parties. He was intensely private about his personal life, and it seems even now it's hard to get into his inner circle. Still, Birdsall is a good and thorough biographer. The final sections that deal with his decline and death are quite beautifully in written.

I'm currently watching the season of "Top Chef" held in Portland. I saw in the previews that they would be doing some sort of challenge related to James Beard during the season. I'll be interested to see if they address his gayness.

[Jed Sorokin-Altmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is certainly not a hagiography--John Birdsall does not shy away from describing James Beard's faults, from self-plagiarism, to plagiarism of others (often stealing the words of friends); to what we'd today consider to be sexual harassment of a couple of employees. But his James Beard is a sympathetic figure as well, with Birdsall recounting the unhappiness that Beard seems to have felt throughout his life, with an unconventional and unloving household as a child; to having to stay in the closet for fear of damaging (or killing) his career; to what came across as his struggling to maintain healthy friendships. Even as Beard attained the respect and success that he strove for, he seems unable to conquer his own self-loathing.

The beginning of this biography is very slow and over detailed, but if you make it through the first couple of chapters, it picks up its pace. All in all, a fascinating book about a fascinating culinary figure.

[Anmiryam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, James Beard -- I was surprised at how much I knew about him, mostly received through osmosis growing up in a cooking obsessed household. Totally knew he was gay, knew he and Craig Clairborne were at odds at times, knew he preferred epicure to gourmet or gourmand (my father knew all this stuff, but it was NYC in the 60s and well, it was pretty common knowledge I guess), but I didn't know he plagiarized with abandon, though honestly, I do think recipes are a collective endeavor and it's rare that anything is sui generis, but clearly we should all give credit to the extent that provenance is known. While there are some fabulous elements of this biography, I felt it lost its way near the midpoint. Too much anecdotal reportage without a strong narrative thread to keep the proliferation of assistants, collaborators, lovers/not lovers, straight. Glad I read it though.

[Taranee Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

TL;DR - James Beard was a sad, creepy, lonely plagiarist who somehow became synonymous with everything that is great and amazing about food. John Birdsall's favorite way to describe lips is "sensuous" and he is a big fan of adjectives.

As a self-confessed foodie and early subscriber to Lucky Peach back in the day, I was excited to read this biography of the man who supposedly launched our modern day concept of American Cuisine. The James Beard Awards take place in Chicago, and in particular I follow their book awards for reading suggestions and cookbook gift ideas. Everything I love about food - the taste sensations, the creativity, the emphasis on eating local and shying away from frozen/processed crap - seemed like it ultimately sprung from Beard's influence. He was the Dean of American Gastronomy, and I wanted to know more about the man who started it all.

James Beard was a man with a sad childhood and adolescence, growing up gay and fat at a time when it was Definitely Not Ok to be gay, and being fat didn't help. He was a complicated man, full of insecurity and contradiction, all of which makes for a truly well rounded portrait. To his credit, Birdsall does not shy away from showing the unsavory sides of Beard's character. He was a plagiarist of his own work as well as others, he used his friends and colleagues mercilessly and without remorse, and his professional life was filled with as many crushing failures as it was with success. And honestly, I never felt his success was anything that stirring or glowing - Birdsall painstakingly goes through each and every challenge and painful step of Beard's writing process for EVERY book he wrote. After a while they all seem to run together into a long life of books that were poorly received and commercial failures. I wasn't sure when the point was that Beard actually found success and became the famous and well respected gastronome we remember him as - and perhaps that's Birdsall's point. What I got from this was Beard's lifelong hustle - one project after another, constantly working, one negotiation and schmoozy lunch away from utter failure, one secret tryst from public shame and ruination. At some point, he turns around and through spin and agents and knowing-the-right-people, suddenly he is the Dean of American Cookery. What was the moment things changed? It's not clear. What is clear is that he had a hard life to get there, and with many burned bridges behind him. Even at the apex of his success, Beard was a lonely man with a tiny penis (yes it is discussed) who struggled so hard to find love that he instigated some serious "me too" moments that are pretty gross and disturbing.

They say you should never meet your heroes, and perhaps this is where my disillusionment with this biography begins. James Beard was never my personal hero, but he represented the pinnacle of achievement when it comes to food. He didn't need to be a happy, joyous, or perfect man; I guess I just didn't expect how much of the opposite he was. Beard was a tragic man - living a semi-closeted life with conflicting feelings of desire and shame, ultimately embracing his size and personality in a Chris Farley-esque way in order to find acceptance and success. He was also a ruthless and selfish man. To know that Beard stole other peoples' recipes, used his friends to edit and ghostwrite his books without ever giving them credit, and outright lied at times about his own popularity definitely takes the sheen off of the man who we are supposed to admire as the Ultimate American Foodie, and whose name represents everything that is great about food. It's disappointing, but I can't fault the biography for shedding light on a man for who he was.

What I can fault the biography for is its writing style, which I found distracting at the best of times and downright irritating at the worst. Birdsall loves his adjectives, sometimes using four or more to describe one thing. Regarding a country ham James's mother made for a picnic: "... cut thin slices of the enormous dark and sticky and beautifully shiny thing she'd glazed only yesterday."

I understand that we're trying to create a mood here but that's FIVE qualifiers describing a side of ham.

Next are the enthusiastically described home decor pieces that mean literally nothing to you unless you've actually seen/take the trouble to google them: "Blue willow plates" "English majolica jardinieres and Wedgwood strawberry plates, the Minton tureen with sides like a woven basket" "contemporary Knoll table with a black marble top; McGuire chairs of heavy rattan.."

Also - can we stop describing lips as "sensuous"? Birdsall uses it to describe at least 5 characters in the narrative and it's a bit creepy.

This isn't terrible writing by any means. It does create the sense of opulence and luxury that Beard coveted, and the fear/shame he endured living in a time when it was dangerous to be gay. It is well described, if a bit speculative in its dialogues and thought/action imaginings of its characters. It tells the story, if a bit monotonous and without a definite Point when Beard became successful. Overall, I'd say the book is worth a read but I wouldn't go out of my way to get a copy.

[Libby · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF for me, at about page 160 of 440-ish pages. If this were a shorter book by half, I may have hung in there. The beginning was interesting, with James' childhood and the stories of his parents too. It evokes the American experience in western cities such as Portland, Ore., and San Francisco at the turn of the 20th century. But as the book wears on, I felt increasingly puzzled by leaps from one incident to another, without sufficient (or any) narrative progression. A pretty negative picture is painted here of James Beard as an obese, phony, tiresome snob who plagiarized his work from one publisher to another, stole recipes, back-stabbed friends and colleagues (who were just as likely to do the same to him) and had no feelings of connection with his own parents or sister. I found myself not wanting to pick the book up again, so I didn't. I will find something else to read that is more inspiring, or at least less unpleasant and more fun.

[Jill Diamond · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars for the incredible research and beautiful, descriptive writing. I was, at times, confused by the constant stream of new people entering and exiting Beard’s life- which actually was a good illustration of his lack of confidence and difficulty in relationships. A fascinating, but often very sad tale.

[Maria Klondike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wasn’t expecting to enjoy this so much. But I learned a lot, and this book has really stuck with me. I keep thinking about the impact James Beard had on cooking in America, and not just cooking, but our culture surrounding food.

[Paul Gagne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and WW Norton for the eARC of this important biography of one of the most outsized movers and shakers in American cookery.
3.75 stars.
John Birdsall has written a lively account of Beard’s life, so lively that it is extremely overwritten in the early stages that recount Beard’s family history, and early life. Luckily, the biography settles down to become vastly interesting as Birdsall recounts Beard’s many failures in life before seemingly lucking into writing several cookbooks during and after WWII. He continually steals and recycles recipes from others (over-generously termed “crowd-sourcing” by the author as he attempts to sum up Beard’s influence) and himself as he eventually accepts more writing assignments and contracts than one person could humanly maintain.
As with his highlighting of Beard’s stealing (very often without credit) of recipes from others (and he continued to do it right up until the end of his life), Birdsall presents a very balanced portrait of Beard, who found small circles of foodies around whom he could be himself (that is, outwardly gay), even with the many petty jealousies he found along the way.
Beyond his writing, Beard found his greatest influence in his NYC cooking school, and the detail in this portrait is fascinating, as Beard forges his brand right out of his Greenwich Village home, complete with teaching kitchen and grand-piano-as-buffet-table.
The chapters are not perfectly chronologically, and while there is some thematic idea to this, I’m not sure that the reader is all that well-served from this choice.
All in all, this is still a very important biography for those with an interest in how American cooking developed and grew up through the years, despite all of those TV dinners, and other convenient-but-really-terrible canned and frozen vittles.

[Danielle · Rating 1 out of 5]

OMG this is a terrible book. It's hard to know where to start: with the atrocious writing or with the terrible content or with the awful judgement and lack of discernment of the author.

Okay, the style. This author never lets a noun go unmodified. It's a veritable thesaurus of unnecessary adjectives. If an editor had taken a blue pencil to this (and shame on editor Melanie Tortoroli, who didn't) the book would have been half as long. Some of the floridity actually made me laugh out loud. I would have pitched the book early on but decided to slog through because I was interested in the subject.

If you believe this author, there was nothing truly as important about James Beard except that he was gay (queer, in the author's terms). We are reminded on nearly every page that Beard was gay, and that he strove to hide this fact and few people knew. Oh c'mon. I knew he was gay the first time I saw him on television, as a teenager back in the late 60s. I also knew Richard Olney and Craig Claiborne were gay from the moment I first read their work. The author has the infantile ideas that he and his generation (whatever it is) are the first to discover sex, and that someone's sexuality defines everything about them, no matter what other achievements or interests they may have. Of course a bad marriage or poor partners influence your life, but to define Beard by the orientation and size of his penis is woeful. And yes, we're treated to a discussion of its size.

In fact, nearly everyone in the book is gay. Even Beard's twice-married mother is gay, although no evidence is provided. After a while, the verbatim conversations and details about what someone is thinking grew eerie, so I plunged into the back-of-book footnotes where the author--what a shock--admits he made it all up, but if it wasn't true, he thinks it should have been. This book is not a biography, it's a contrivance and pastiche.

According to Birdsall, Beard had a miserable childhood--a complete shock to me after reading Delights and Prejudices, where he seems to adore his mother and writes lyrically about their relationship. Of course, all memoirists recast and edit what they reveal, but that's a pretty far stretch.

The book recounts failure after failure of Beard's books, collaborations, and writing. Also, he alienates and abuses nearly every friend and doesn't find a lover until his 50s (and it doesn't go well). Yet all of a sudden he's the doyen of American cooking, with friends and influence everywhere, flush enough with money to travel constantly, and the primary person responsible for the success of Julia Child, who somehow got rich instead of him. He's also the originator of food writing as memoir, although that might come as something of a surprise to MFK Fisher. Also, according to Birdsall, Beard plagiarized a vast amount of his recipes (where were the editors on that one?), and the messes he scribbled had to be entirely reconstructed by ghost writers, acolytes, and editors. These are serious accusations and should be the subject of actual research and expose if actually verifiable.

Historical continuity is pretty lacking. At nearly the end of the book, we're told Beard's chest is heavily scared from all the hospitalizations and medical procedures, none of which have been mentioned hitherto.

Beard is a sad, ugly, friendless fake when all is said and done (and Birdsall says it ad nauseum). Really, I felt like I had to shake off my shoes after finishing this book.

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating book, especially for someone who lives in Portland where James Beard grew up as well as someone very interested in food history. I learned quite a bit about Portland history on its own.

Ultimately this was a bit of a depressing read due to the inner turmoil and challenges that Beard faced his whole life. I kept wanting to read how he got a break, and while on some levels he achieved success, it seems like he could never find happiness and nothing was ever enough.

The main reason I've giving this a 4 out of 5 stars is because there was so much name dropping and it was hard at times to keep up with all the people he worked with, lived with, or socialized with. It was clearly well-researched (I read the list of sources the author relied on for researching this book) but at times I lost track of the progression of Beard's life because I was getting bogged out about who was who.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of those reasons I have to be grateful to the BookTube Prize, because I likely would have never read a biography of James Beard otherwise!

This is a solid piece of work. The footnotes are hidden and the primary source quotes are conversational, giving this book an almost fictional narrative appeal. Birdsall cherry picked some memories from Beard’s childhood, dove a little bit into his parents’ backgrounds, and then largely focused on the famous chef’s young adult and middle aged years.

The focus did tend a little bit towards Beard’s book deals, which was surprising. One might assume readers would get a little bit more intel into his recipes, or at least get a little more detailed into the classes he taught. (Though speaking as someone who is definitely not a foodie, I sometimes felt overwhelmed as it was!)

Birdsall’s unique focus into Beard’s life would be his (closeted) homosexuality, something Beard himself never could (or would) disclose in life. There’s a lot of commentary alone on the changing mores for gay society throughout Beard’s lifespan, and what it is like to try and forge sexual and intimate relationships in a cloistered climate. Beard in fact was expelled from college due to a liaison with a male faculty member. Birdsall dips into some of the “gay coded” establishments Beard would visit, as well as some of his relationships, particularly with his live-in partner, Gino. Still, it could be vague sometimes, likely because this was a secret part of Beard’s life.

In terms of setting up Beard’s character, I was intrigued by how he kind of “fell in” to being a food critic, after a failed acting career. Birdsall certainly got the point across that Beard was a bit of a gregarious performer, with a sort of rustic, patriotic appeal: he loved French techniques, but wanted to apply it to accessible “good home” food. That being said, Birdsall didn’t dig too deeply into the underlying issues—like that growing U.S. reliance on frozen food and such had a decent amount to do with changing social mores as Beard’s narrow middle class audience women had to vacate the kitchen for professional jobs (in order to stay middle class.) I can’t imagine lower class women ever having the means to prepare his “good home” food (should also be noted that his classes were astronomical in price! And he did most of his book research by traveling abroad for long stints of time!) Also, as other critics have pointed out, Beard’s “American” food choices were largely based on the European, though he did have fond memories of a Chinese chef, Jue Let, from his youth.

Still, if the U.S. is indeed fractured, Beard appeared to speak to his subset. Anyone interested in the foodie world will appreciate the name droppings and such. There are a lot of them, perhaps too much to keep track, but they are often famous, or at least interesting in the moment!

To return to the main point of “reconciling” Beard’s sexuality with his profession, it does make sense that he fashioned this dedicated “bachelor chef” persona in order to hide his true desires. Or maybe that makes sense because Birdsall said it directly. :P This wasn’t really a biography that was given to “show” over “tell,” though the author did engage in a few turns of purple prose that stood out to me, a la “taken to the angels” for “dying.”

Still, overall an engaging read. And I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn about someone outside of my “wheelhouse.”

[Michael McCue · Rating 4 out of 5]

I checked The Man Who Ate Too Much out of the Greece(NY)Public Library as an e-book. I noticed it because a James Beard cookbook got a lot of use in the first few years of our marriage. His recipe's for Salad Nicoise, several kinds of quiche and soufles and Risotto Alla Milanese were the pages of that paperback cookbook that fell out of the binding. I was a fan of James Beard's cookbooks while he was still alive though I didn't know anything about the man he was.

John Birdsall's biography of Beard takes us back to the story of his parents before James was born in Portland, Oregon in 1903. Beard became known as a proponent of a cuisine that was truly American. Though he was a huge fan(pun intended he weighted 300 lbs. or more) of French or Continental food traditions he realized that those didn't always translate to North American grown items. He made good food approachable and doable for millions. At the same time James Beard live a very careful and secret life as a gay man in a world that was still very hostile to him and other men like him. The author shows the reader a part of his life that Beard keep guardedly secret for most of his life. Only at the very end of his life did Beard become more open about his sexuality. Perhaps by the time he died in 1985 most people didn't really care if a person was gay.

Other food writers of the period are also mentioned in this book. Among them were Julia Child, Alice Waters and Helen Evans Brown. Beard knew all of them and many others too. The book thouched on some foods that are no longer seen. Beard was concerned that some of the fish that were a big part of his early cooking and eating were no longer available due to overfishing and other causes. One fish, Sand Dabs, were a poplular West Coast fish often featured on breakfast menus. I only remember having them once in the 1970s. Now few have heard of Sand Dabs something that I lament as much as Beard did. Now I think I will go find my copy of Beard's How to Eat Better for Less Money and make a Salad Nicoise.

[Cerealflakes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked Beard's Delights and Prejudices and was looking forward to reading this one. Unfortunately, it wasn't as good as I was hoping. It was too long, with too much detail, and yet it left out the personality of Beard that was so present in Delights.

Some of this difference may be that Beard hid much about himself in his own memoir. This book included much about Beard knowing he was gay at a young age and then having to hide it almost until the end of his life. Beard also did not write about his "me too" issues, of which he was the instigator, and that definitely affects the way I see him now.

It was interesting as a social history from the way American food has changed over the years to the way being gay was much more difficult after WWII than it was before (I would like to read more about this). The author included much information about early cookbooks, tv shows, and food writing, which was also interesting, as was reading about old Portland and Gearhart.

One final thing is that the author talked about "Pike's [sic] Place Market." Reading that is like fingernails on a chalkboard.

[Stuart Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

An intriguing look at the life of James Beard, one of the first "foodies" who loved and promoted American cooking, that is, using French/European techniques to cook food native to the United States. He was very well regarded and popular in his lifetime, author of many cookbooks and articles, and whose eponymous foundation gives out prestigious awards to restaurants, chefs, food writers, etc. (although recently mired in controversies with regards to racial biases and sexual harassment). Birdsall contrasts Beard's professional success against his frequent bouts of depression, at least partially caused by his repressed homosexuality and his failure to have a truly fulfilling relationship. Birdsall also does not try to hide Beard's penchant for plagiarizing recipes and the difficulty in collaborating with him as his friend Helen Brown (author of the renowned "West Coast Cook Book") discovered. Probably best suited for devoted "foodies" or those interested in the lives of 20th century homosexual men pre-Stonewall.

[Lindy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Listened to the audiobook and overall enjoyed it okay. Found the passages about Beard’s childhood and his mother’s life most interesting. I learned a lot about the evolving American culture of eating in the mid century, about the ways in which gay men had to hide in plain sight to maintain their careers and safety, and much about Beard in general. Sadly much of what I learned about him was disappointing and redundant. Plagiarism, indecent proposals to mentees, lazy food writing, all boiled down to a sour impression of this larger-than-life figure. I could have found that in about half the word count.

[Tristin Amezcua-Hogan · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Birdsall’s “The Man Who Ate Too Much” paints a clear and tragic picture of an often frustrating man who led an overall interesting and impactful professional life that was seemingly devoid of particularly interesting moments. Beard’s towering legacy is apparent, both today and in small moments in the book. His grit as a closeted man, navigating a fast—but not fast enough—changing world is clear. His success seems to have dramatically outpaced his work ethic and skill sets, built on the shoulders of others around who developed him into James Beard: the marketable brand.

[Gizzard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of flaws in this book. So much detail, some of it wasn't all that important to Beard's life. Some of it, I couldn't help wondering whether Beard would appreciate all of the details of his personal life bared for all, and I'm not referencing that he was gay.

[Sadie Dorf · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF

The book is redundant, drawn out, and overwritten. Disappointed read

[Morgan]

Picked this one up at Powell’s Book Store in Portland, Oregon. Recommended to foodies and the queers. :)

[Micaela Grimaldi]

I really tried but this was not engaging enough to justify 15 hours of listening.