Domesticity: A Gastronomic Interpretation of Love

(Paperback)

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Bob Shacochis, author of the critically acclaimed novel The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, and National Book Award winning-author of such books as Swimming in the Volcano, Easy in the Islands, and The Next New World, hones his nonfiction skills in this tour de force romp through the worlds of eating and eroticism. Domesticity is an irreverent exploration of the sweet and sour evolution of the enduring romance between author and lover. In this relationship, Shacochis stays at home and cooks, all the while reflecting on the ups and downs of a romantic partnership, the connection between heart and stomach, and how the crazed lust of youth evolves into inevitably settling down and, well, simply making dinner.
Shacochis's delectable musings on monogamy, emotional and physical separations, dogs, career changes, the stress of the holidays, the aesthetics of food, moving, sex and seafood, friendships, writings and the angst over who is going to do the dishes are deftly folded into seventy-five recipes, half of them of the author's own creation. Guilelessly hilarious, and ever entertaining, Domesticity is Shacochis's celebration of a life spent in proximity to the boiling point. Guilelessly hilarious, and ever entertaining, Domesticity is a celebration of a life spent in proximity to the boiling point, a "prose stew" of audacious candor, a culinary valentine for lovers of literature.

Reviews

"Delicious. . . . Domesticity nourishes the senses and the soul." -- New York Times Book Review

"Domesticity--rightly subtitled A Gastronomic Interpretation of Love--is about the voluptuous pleasures of cooking for, and eating with, someone you love, about making meals a participatory rather than spectator sport. It is about excess and obsession . . . Shacochis wants to get back to the earth, or, in his particular case, the sea, establish an intimate relationship with whatever's freshest or indigenous to the region, and then devour it." -- Los Angeles Times

"The highly personal essays, each of which ends with a few recipes, are rooted in his role as head chef in his household, which he has shared in curmudgeonly but apparently unquestioned devotion with his partner, Miss F, for 20 years, much of that time in Florida. He follows his nose to investigate such 'gastronomic riddles' as the nomenclature of ptes and terrines and the aphrodisiac reputations of various foods, the latter in the nearly perfect essay 'Wanton Soup.' He takes up arms, more than once, against 'bores and bastards' and, in the food world especially, 'any bourgeois shithead who pretends he or she is the guardian of high culture.' As seen on these pages, Shacochis is literate, tough, romantic and the master of his kitchen." -- Publishers Weekly

"His vibrant, offbeat, and sensual essays on the importance of food in the daily affairs of interesting, idiosyncratic men and women who know their way around kitchens combine an enthusiastic storyteller's love of narrative with an enthusiastic cook's love of fresh ingredients . . . Shacochis uses the raw materials of his longstanding, nutritionally balanced relationship with the coyly named 'Miss F' to concoct appealing philosophical riffs, capped with serious recipes (for pheasant, for roast suckling pig, for West Indian pepper pot) . . . Shacochis cooks his columns just right and serves them salted and peppered, to taste." -- Entertainment Weekly

"By turns doting, curative, seductive. . . . Its celebration of the cook's greatest need--the significant eater--rings sweetly true." -- Washington Post

Author Bio

Bob Shacochis is a novelist, essayist, journalist, and educator. A former contributing editor for Harper's and Outside, Shacochis currently teaches in the graduate writing programs at Bennington College and Florida State University. Among his works are the short story collections Easy in the Islands and The Next New World; the novel Swimming in the Volcano, a finalist for the National Book Award; Domesticity, a collection of essays about food and love; Between Heaven and Hell, a travel memoir of his journeys in the Himalaya; and, most recently, the novel The Woman Who Lost Her Soul. The Immaculate Invasion, about the 1994 military intervention in Haiti, was a finalist for the New Yorker Magazine Literary Awards and a New York Times Notable Book. Shacochis's work has received a National Book Award for First Fiction, the Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. His op-ed commentaries on the U.S. military, Haiti, and Florida politics have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. He lives in Florida and New Mexico with Ms. F. They have been together for thirty-eight years.