100
PARTISAN REVIEW
the cooking given in the frame situation-inedibl e chops, scorched
lumps of fl esh , gn awed bones, etc. - and move to a point in the
narra tor's story in which details o f cooking become o f paramount
imporlance.
The narrator has described how Falk has a bducted Hermann 's
ship and left his, the narrator's, in the harbor. Perpl exed by this action ,
the narrator has gone to Schomberg's hotel and res taurant for some
tiffin and perhaps some expl anation of Falk 's behavior. He is served
with both, both equall y foul. Once again inedibl e chop s are on the
menu and they are put in front of the narra tor at the same time as
Schomberg's " talk gathered way like a slide of rubbish ." Schomberg 's
hatred for Falk is based on Falk's refusal to patronize hi s restaurant,
and he goes into great detail about Falk 's eating habits. Apparentl y
Falk refuses to touch fri ed o r roasted meat ("a white man should eat
like a white man .. . ought to ea t meat, must ea t mea t" compl ains
Schomberg ). H e prefers instead ri ce bo il ed in a pot, and h e ea ts alone.
The narrator says that he could not be bothered about " Falk 's ideas of
gastronomy" because " I could expect from their study no clue to his
conduct in matters of business, which seemed to me totall y unres–
trained by morality or even by the commonest sort of decency." Of
course the clue to Falk's business conduct is precisely to be found in his
" ideas of gas tronomy" - as 1 have mentioned, the bio logi cal and the
economic are shown to be intimately interrelated-and this becomes
clear when Falk finally tells his story: i.e. , the two planes merge and
emerge at the level of language. Before considering tha t story 1want to
draw attention to the range of words relating to different states o f food,
and different kinds of cooking, employed during this conversation
with Schomberg-raw, boiled, fri ed, stale, and by implica tion roas ted
and ro tten. At this point let me just recall a few of Lev i-Stra uss's ideas
concerning the raw and the cooked. 1will limit myself to his brief essay
on ' 'The Culinary Triangle."
Starting from the vowel tri angle and the consonant triangle, Levi–
Strauss pos its a culinary tri ang le.
It would seem that the methodological principle which inspires such
distinctions is transposable
to
other domains, notably cooking
which, it has never been sufficiently emphasised, is with language a
trul y universal form of human activity : if there is no society without
a language, nor is there any which does not cook in some manner at
leas t some of its food .
The three po ints of his culinary triangle are the raw, the cooked,
and the rotted. But within this abstract triangle there is ano ther
