ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a small constellation of modernist novels, in which food memories and culinary scenes together structure innovations in narrative form, from James Joyce's Ulysses and Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse to the contemporary postcolonial novel by Monique Truong, Book of Salt. In The Book of Salt, writing is both thief and champion of cuisine and the labor of the chef who makes it: "The Book of Salt" turns out to be one of Stein's manuscripts that Binh steals for his lover Lattimore. The chapter argues that in some such novels, as in Proust's, the tasting and ingesting of food propel narratives of the past, while, in others, those acts function as signposts that guide the reader through alternating narrative structures. It discusses a contemporary novel that both reflects and critiques modernist writers and their perspectives on eating's intimate and social significance.
