When my son was eight months old, it could truthfully be said that he was eating literature. (0) I . A bit of Henry’s DNA has been permanently incorporated into the slightly damaged pages of Goodnight Moon, and the missing corners of pages 3 and 8 suggest that a bit of Goodnight Moon has been permanently incorporated into Henry. He was, of course, not the first child to indulge in this approach to ‘reading’. (1) . Henry and his word-swallowing colleagues are merely taking literally the metaphorical similarity between reading and eating. (2) . “Books are food,” wrote the English critic Holbrook Jackson, “we eat them from love or necessity, as other foods, but mostly from love.” If books are food, then books about food are the highlight of literary taste. Henry, who is now a year and a half, has developed his taste for literature to a higher level. (3). He usually does this with items that are at least theoretically edible – watermelons, jars of honey, large birthday cakes – although, worrisomely, he did once confuse a dental drill with a banana and pretended to eat it. (4) . Nevertheless, my very favourite food literature does not even describe real meals. It describes meals that were imagined – voracious reveries by people who were hundreds of miles from the nearest larder. (5) . So, one night, during the time I was expecting Henry, I lay in bed thinking, for some reason, about Treasure Island. I realized that from the entire book there was only one sentence I remembered word for word, something that Ben Gunn, who has been marooned for three years, says to Jim Hawkins: “Many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese – toasted, mostly.” Something made me repeat the last two words over and over. “Toasted, mostly. Toasted, mostly.” (6). I opened the refrigerator. In one of the drawers there was a lump of cheddar. (7) . When the cheese was reduced to a molten lump, I devoured it in one bite. Was it good? I don’t know. It went down too fast. Since then, I have wondered whether this experience, which resulted in a terrible stomach-ache, was responsible for two of my son’s most projected characteristics. (8) . A When he sees a picture of something toothsome, he pretends to snatch it off the page and swallow it. B Then I found myself drifting toward the kitchen.
C This comparison makes us say, for instance, that we have browsed through a newspaper or had a hard time digesting an overlong biography.
D When I read about food, sometimes it is enough to cause a chain reaction of associations.
E The great Philadelphia book dealer Rosenbach deduced that one reason first editions of Alice in Wonderland were so scarce was that so many of them had been lost by the young ones.
F My most frequent response to food references in literature is an immediate urge to raid the refrigerator.
G Later on, when Henry’s diet includes novels, I expect that he will assess the characters not by how they look, what they wear, or how they talk, but by what they eat.
H I dropped it in a Teflon pan, turned up the flame, and used a large spoon to stir.
I Presented with a book, he chewed it. (already used in the example)
J He not only loves books, but also hates cheese.