Sunday, September 04, 2016

Food, (in)glorious food

Food is essentially our means of sustaining ourselves, but it's so much more than that - as Roald Dahl seems to have been only too aware. As Annalisa Quinn has noted in an article for Slate, in his writing "food is alchemy - magical, wonderful, dangerous, unmanageable".

His descriptions of various culinary creations and confections are so imaginative, rich and evocative that you can almost taste them on your tongue. However, gluttony, not pride, is the primary sin - the one that is hardest to resist and most likely to cause a character's downfall - as well as being the thing that, despite humans' belief in their own intellectual superiority, ultimately reduces us all to the level of animals.

(Thanks to Sophie for the link.)

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