Clifton Fadiman introducing MFK Fisher’s The Art of Eating, 1954:
A good book about food informs us of matters with which we are to be concerned all our lives. Sight and hearing lose their edge, the muscles soften, even the most gallant of our glands at last surrenders. But the palate may persist in glory almost to the very end. Indeed the greatest gourmets alive are elderly men, and, less frequently, elderly women. Where is the tongue, the palate that is truly grown-up before thirty? The ability to enjoy eating, like the ability to enjoy any fine art, is not a matter of inborn talent alone, but of training, memory and comparison. Time works for the palate faithfully and fee-lessly.
Furthermore, the alimentary canal contains the only stream that flows through all history and geography, laying banks on which cluster those works that mark man at his most civilized.
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