Tony Tanner
"GNAWED BONES" AND "ARTLESS
TALES"-EATING AND NARRATION
IN CONRAD
In
his preface to his wife's
Handbook of Cookery for a Small
House
Conrad states that of all the books ever written "those only that
treat of cooking are, from a moral point of view, above suspicion. The
intention of every other piece of prose may be discussed and even
mistrusted; but the purpose of a cookery book is one and unmistakable.
Its object can conceivably be no other than to increase the happiness of
mankind." The tone throughout the short preface is appropriately
light, even jocular. But in view of my topic I want to take note of a
potentially far-reaching point that Conrad makes.
Good cooking is a moral agent. ... The decency of our life is for a
great part a mall er of good taste, of the correct appreciation of what
is fine in simp licity. The intimate influence of conscientious cook–
ing by rendering easy the processes of digestion promotes the
serenity of mind, the graciousness of thought , and that indulgent
view of our neighbours ' failings which is the only genuine form of
optimism.
Conrad then goes on to designate an opposed realm where the
virtues and comforts consequent upon good cooking do not obtain–
the wigwam of the Noble Red Man.
In
Conrad's version, the Red
Indians were great hunters fo), their domestic life was:
clouded by the morose irritability which follows the consumption of
ill-cooked food. The glullony of their indigestible feasts was a direct
incentive to counsels of unreasonable violence. Victims of gloomy
imaginings, they lived in abject submission to the wi les of a multi–
tude of fraudul ent medicine men .. . who haunted th eir ex istence
with vain promises and false nostrums from the cradle to the grave.
Needless to say Conrad has no evidence for this outrageous state–
ment, and no contribution to anthropology is being offered here.
