Stay Me, Oh Comfort Me: Journals and Stories 1933-1941 - Softcover

Fisher, M. F. K.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679758259 ISBN 13: 9780679758259

Publisher: Pantheon Books, 1995

Synopsis

The second volume of reminiscences by one of America's best-loved writers, now in paperback. The book reveals Fisher's "magnificent resilience, the comfort she took from daily writing, her marvelous powers of observation and humor, and, of course, her lifelong attractions to good food and drink."--San Francisco Chronicle.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Even fans of the late, bright gastronomic memoirist (d. 1992) might be tiring of all the tributes to her that have been gushing forth, as well as of the incidental jottings and recycled reminiscences by her that publishers have been serving forth during the past few years. But whatever their reaction to last year's collection of Fisher's snippets on her childhood and adolescence, To Begin Again, readers will likely be moved by this less artful, more coherent account couched in diary entries, letters, and some retrospective notes. Fisher touches here on life with her first husband, Al, in their native California, after their idyllic and much chronicled two-year honeymoon in France; then on an odd stretch back in Europe with both Al and ``Tim,'' the man who would be her second husband. Most affecting, though, are entries from her four years with Tim, most of them dominated by his long, painful illness that ended in suicide. Fisher's writing to date, for all its sensual-autobiographical content, has been naggingly evasive about her personal life. But here she writes with directness and genuine emotion, not to impress an audience but to console herself. Less remarkable in isolation than Fisher's early works, perhaps, but affecting to those who have come to know through those writings the author's more cheerful, made-up face. This glimpse behind the lipstick is a fitting wrap-up, then--one that brings depth and dimension to the body of Fisher's work. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

The introduction by her sister states that Fisher, who died at age 83 in 1992, pulled these eclectic choices together to complete her earlier memoirs, To Begin Again . Culled from journals, correspondences and short stories, these were intended to describe Fisher's life "as it really happened to her and as she felt it at the time," according to Barr. After their fruitful years in France, Fisher and her husband Al rode out the bleak Depression years with their families in California. They later traveled in Switzerland in the company of their friend, Dillwyn ("Timmy") Parrish, but the threesome broke up when the author and Parrish fell in love. In 1937, after her divorce from Al, the two married, but their union was ill-fated: intolerable pain from an incurable disease drove Parrish to suicide in 1941. The elegantly earthy style of the book is familiar, as is Fisher's theme: the need for good food and love. But as in the title story about the narrator's meeting with an alcoholic friend and her wealthy lesbian lover, there is a certain chilly distance to the narrator's descriptions of the disintegration of her once sparkling boarding school chum, one which hints at a ruthless persona not often seen in the usually wise and witty Fisher.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0679758259
• ISBN 13: 9780679758259
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 366