I have just started reading Julia Child’s My Life in France. It is a beautiful book full of luscious description of a time that is no longer. Opening in the late 1940s, the first chapter depicts her experience as a young, naïve American having her initiatory meal in a restaurant in Rouen. She and her new husband, Paul, feast on a lovingly described lunch of salade verte, baguette, oysters on the half shell, sole meuniere, strong black pressed coffee, fromage blanc, and a bottle of Pouilly Fume. Child touts it as “the most exciting meal of my life,” accentuated, no doubt by its distinction as her very first lunch in her newly adopted homeland, a place that suited her to a T.
In the introduction, which includes a charming photo of the young couple sitting side-by-side in their cozy study, Child relates how she and Paul meticulously documented their time in France for friends and relatives via a series of photos, datebooks, letters, sketches, poems, and cards. Paul handwrote his brother 3- to 6-page journalistic accounts every week, incorporating sketches, photos, and mini-collages out of ticket stubs and newsprint. Also a faithful correspondent, Julia added her own typewritten versions about what she’d been cooking and the human drama unfolding in her new French home. I imagine the delight the recipients must have taken in receiving these items, made with such creativity and care, much as I recall the pains taken by my mother and aunt, both artists, to handpaint and assemble collaged greeting cards for every holiday during the 1950s and 60s.The middle of our last century was a comparatively sensual and sensuous time. Little in our world was “virtual.” TV programs, perhaps, but TV was still a novelty and had a certain delineated quality, as video had not yet become a ubiquitous presence. Other than that, just about everything happened in ways that we could see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. And slowly—much more slowly.
When I consider the wild popularity of Julia Child’s book (and personage) in 2009 America, it’s hard not to imagine that some of it derives from our culture’s steadily inching away from the sensual, tactile world. A recent study found that the average American adult spends 8 1/2 hours/ day in front of a screen, including (mostly, sadly) TV, computers, mobile phones, and other devices. I have always loved how books look and feel, visually and tactilely. So much is now being done on screens that we have fewer and fewer experiences that involve apprehending in 3-D. For example, I love holding them, smelling them when they’re new, seeing how cozy they make a room when stacked end-to-end on a tall wooden bookcase. The art on their covers, the fonts used in printing, the texture of the paper and its sometimes-deckled edges that press rough and sensuously against a fingertip. There is something about hearing the crackle as you open a new hardcover for the first time that extends beyond the promise of the knowledge that lies therein or the kindred soul you may just meet inside. And that something has to do with the physical object itself.I am saddened to see that so many people have purchased Kindles and other e-books and seem to like them. This summer I bumped into one and its owner while eating breakfast in Mendocino County. I could tell just by looking at him that he was a genre reader—most likely sci-fi—and so consumed books the way some of us consume cereal. He was really in it for the story; the wrapper was unimportant. And so, he loved his Kindle (while admitting that he also loved books—and had shelves-ful back home). We spent quite a while debating the relative pros and cons of the device and its impact on the book business. And no doubt, it’s had a huge impact on the business that may only get worse as prices drop and young people decide that their entire world must be virtually lived.
But for me, it comes back to a larger question. What will we have in the end if the entire world is flattened onto a computer screen? And are we so compelled toward those backlit images that real life, with its lesser controllability and order, has taken a backseat? As a world, we have become “busy.” Computers were originally designed to “save time” and “make things easier.” And certainly, in many instances, they do. Yet, people never seemed as busy to me as we have since we became obsessed with our electronic toys.
We are being manipulated, sold an ever-greater bill of cybergoods due in part to our human propensity toward grasping—wanting ever more. Like hamsters on a wheel, we try to wring juice from this digital experience and wonder why, despite all our virtual “connecting,” at the end of the day we feel more exhausted than satisfied.
Tangible things and experiences, human interactions and sensual pleasures enrich our lives in ways that computer-generated experiences do not. Having a meal like Julia Child describes satisfies so much in us beyond merely the exquisite delight to our tongue. Going outside on a fall day when the leaves are at their peak, smelling smoke arising from fireplaces as dusk descends, hearing ducks flying overhead honking righteously on their migration south. These are realms into which our keyboards can never lead. It’s sad to think that someone would choose a sterile electronic device over a real book. And equally sad that so much of what is “real” in life has flattened into a randomly generated series of pixels.
I will leave you with a photo of Julia Child's kitchen, which has gone the way of the Smithsonian. Perhaps that's a statement in and of itself. Perhaps when End of Days hits, they'll find us all huddled in that Institution, ogling our former possessions and remembering what it felt like to be at play in three-dimensional space, cuddling objects we could actually see, touch, hear, smell, and taste.
