The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand

From Strand Bookstore

From the author's legendary Smart and Esquire columns, to present-day pieces including a correspondence with French gourmet, Gerard Oberle, fabulous pieces on food in France, and America for Men's Journal, and a paeanto the humble meatball, this book is a veritable nine-course meal written with enough force to make your knees buckle. 271p.

From the Publisher

Jim Harrison is one of this country's most beloved writers, a muscular, brilliantly economic stylist with a salty wisdom. For more than twenty years, he has also been writing some of the best essays on food around, now collected in a volume that caused the Santa Fe New Mexican to exclaim: "To read this book is to come away convinced that Harrison is a flat-out genius -- one who devours life with intensity, living it roughly and full-scale, then distills his experiences into passionate, opinionated prose. Food, in this context, is more than food: It is a metaphor for life." From his legendary Smart and Esquire columns, to present-day pieces including a correspondence with French gourmet Gerard Oberle, fabulous pieces on food in France and America for Men's Journal, and a paean to the humble meatball, The Raw and the Cooked is a nine-course meal that will satisfy every appetite. "Our 'poet laureate of appetite' [Harrison] may be, but the collected essays here reflect much more." -- John Gamino, The Dallas Morning News "[A] culinary combo plate of Hunter S. Thompson, Ernest Hemingway, Julian Schnabel, and Sam Peckinpah...." -- Jane and Michael Stern, The New York Times Book Review "Jim Harrison is the Henry Miller of food writing. His passion is infectious." -- Jeffrey Trachtenberg, The Wall Street Journal

Review

Bloomsbury Review
"There's nothing false in THE RAW AND THE COOKED. It's straight to the heart, credits reputable cookbooks by name, and leaves you content and full but wanting more."

Review

Jane & Michael Stern - New York Times Book Review
"[Harrison] presents himself as the Yosemite Sam of dining....He eats with vigor and writes with unbounded gusto. His enthusiasms are so visceral that readers may put the book down feeling as if they have just been trampled by the bulls at Pamplona....His obsessions run deep, and he knows how to put them on paper with powerful effect. But that power can be oppressive. Unlike A. J. Liebling and Calvin Trillin, whose culinary passions form an inviting frame around other people and other worlds, Harrison's interest is almost exclusively himself. And...he knows no restraint. Each of his tales is an exuberant and sometimes funny adventure. When they are put together in one book, the roustabout tales are nothing short of exhausting....Call him bigger than life or overbearing, Jim Harrison has staked out a distinctive place in the world of food writing [but] THE RAW AND THE COOKED made us yearn to sit quietly over plates of pan-fried chicken and chocolate layer cake at the counter of some cafe in rural Iowa."

Review

Kirkus
"Delightful in small doses, but too intense to be consumed in a single sitting."

More about the book

The novelist Jim Harrison changes his focus from fiction to food in this collection of essays. A hearty and eclectic eater, Harrison includes among his favorites French wine, garlic, game, and pigs' feet. He also writes about his problems with his weight and his digestion.