From M.F.K. Fisher to Jonathan Franzen: Food writing and the American middle class from 1940 to 201

This thesis demonstrates the two contrasting views of foodways as they are portrayed in American food writing from 1940 to today. Specifically I will look at the experiences white middleclass Americans have with food. I have explored the two distinct views of food in both fiction and nonfiction examples. Some middleclass writers embrace and celebrate, perhaps even romanticize, slow food and the labor of love involved in creating a home cooked meal to be shared by a family or community. Conversely, other writers find the slow food movement to be problematic and instead write about food preparation and the rituals of the middle class table in satirical ways that foreground the absurdity of manners and highlight the drudgery that goes into preparing the meal itself. These two competing visions, romantic and satirical, will capture the conflicts that animate the middle class sensibilities about food and meaning as a wave of technological and social changes revolutionize life in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.;In the first chapter I will trace the significant changes in American food preparation over the stretch of time from the 1940s to today. I explore the idea of the good life and look at the ways in which white middleclass Americans use food as a way to achieve the good life.;In the second chapter I use the writing of MFK Fisher, Michael Pollan, Jonathan Franzen and Julie Powell, as well as the film The Stepford Wives, to study how the two contrasting views of foodways are revealed in popular culture. Within these examples we see in some ways how the slow food movement is celebrated and in others satire is used to highlight the ways the slow food movement can be problematic.