Stefanie Savva

In his introduction to Foodists, John Lanchester reminisces about seeing Angela Carter’s 1985 essay in the London Review of Books being passed ‘from hand to hand’, an anecdote that demonstrates the power such pieces in literary magazines can have. Reading Lanchester’s piece took me back to my postgraduate years, sitting at Square 4 of the University of Essex, having just bought the latest London Review, reading and discussing essays with my fellow PhD candidates. I had forgotten how electric those discussions could feel: the half-formed thoughts; the references to the latest theory one of us was working on; the fearless interpretations of concepts we barely grasped but were eager to recite.

I read Foodists in between reading Jad Adams’ Decadent Women, which delves into the lives of the women who wrote for the art and literary journal Yellow Book. And while the two books share very little in terms of themes, combined they led me towards thinking about the value of literary magazines and the whys and hows I fell out of love with them. I wondered when it was that I stopped buying The London Review? When did I make the decision to stop actively keeping up with The New Yorker? Why am I not following any other magazines of this type on social media?

In Decadent Women, Adams recounts Ella D’Arcy’s experiences working at the Yellow Book in the weeks that followed Oscar Wilde’s arrest. While Wilde was not directly involved with the Yellow Book, he represented decadence and was, in the eyes of the public, linked to the magazine. Adding to that, Wilde was reportedly arrested with ‘a yellow book under his arm.’ (p.112) Wilde’s arrest has consequences for the Yellow Book, as they push back the publication date and have to reprint the artwork – a time-consuming task in the 19th century. D’Arcy is described as a force to be reckoned with as she works relentlessly to ensure that publication can go ahead. Out of all the chapters in Decadent Women, this is the one that has moved me the most, so far. I could see D’Arcy typing her letter to John Lane, suggesting she becomes the art editor for the magazine and felt the pain she must have felt when her request was not granted, despite being the obvious choice and the hard work she put in to save the publication.

The Yellow Book gave a platform to women to write in a way that traditional publishing did not allow them to, and I would like to believe that D’Arcy’s investment in it was, at least partially, for that reason. And while the big literary magazines are as elitist and as impossible for ‘young’ writers to be published in as all the big book publishers, they do allow for a certain freedom that does not come from writing a novel, a poetry or essay collection, or a collection of short stories. This is what Foodists reminded me.

While every essay in this collection revolves around food, they are extremely different. They span from the 1980s to the late 2010s, and while some of them are concerned with food-related issues of their time, others are timeless in their approach to how we understand and interact with food. Emma Rothschild explores the relationship between food and class, Margaret Visser questions how sustainable our fish consumption is. But by far my favourite one was “Eating Alone” by Francis Wyndham, in which he recounts an incident that took place at the Indian restaurant he used to dine alone. I will not spoil it for you here (it’s such an enjoyable read) but the moment I finished it, I wanted to share it with someone. I felt that urge to read it out loud and discuss what it says about community, human interactions, and connection. It gave me that electric feeling that Lanchester describes in the introduction. I guess there is still a place in my life for the literary magazine.