Tag Archives: Canadian Literary Fare

“Ice-Cream Man”

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Food and Sex: The Politics of Exchange in Lynn Coady’s “Ice Cream Man”

by Liana Cusmano

Chicken, ice cream, soup. In Lynn Coady’s short story “Ice Cream Man,” food is exchanged for companionship without allowing for meaningful connection between individuals. The guy at the canteen has been offering the protagonist an ice-cream sandwich – food – for years, making the “same joke since [she was] seven years old” (34). The proverbial ice- cream sandwich is a stand-in for sex, and the guy at the canteen does eventually “give [her] the ice-cream sandwich he’s been talking about all these years” (35). He repays the sex that she routinely gives him with free snacks from the canteen and with rum (37). Food is thus exchanged for company, specifically for sex, but the relationship between the two individuals is based solely on intercourse, involving no depth, intimacy, or intellectual closeness. Later, the man hints that the girl ought to bring him fried chicken (39); suddenly she has become the primary beneficiary of the relationship, and he expects his offer of sex to be repaid with food. He is used to this method of exchange: “Every woman I’ve known has always tried to do nice things for me” (39).

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The Soup Trade

The girl’s distant father has a similar attitude when he wants her to eat soup with him; he expects his culinary thoughtfulness to be compensated with company, although “he doesn’t even quite know why that is” (43). The relationships the girl has with the two men in her life are thus based on trading food for human companionship, but she shares no meaningful connection with her so-called boyfriend or with her father – in spite of all the soup and chicken involved.

 

Coady, Lynn. “Ice Cream Man.” Play the Monster Blind: Stories. Toronto: Doubleday, 2000. 27-43. Print.

Photos by Alexia Moyer

 

Why Half a Grapefruit?

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In Alice Munro’s “Half a Grapefruit,” the fruit is an occasion around which Rose hopes to distance herself from her classmates and from her less-than-desirable West Hanratty origins. No one else had thought to mention grapefruit as breakfast fare during that somewhat ill-conceived classroom discussion.

This grapefruit anecdote, as Sarah Contreras-Wolfe points out below, is also a tool for Munro to demonstrate ways in which Rose and step-mother Flo (gingerly) negotiate their relationship.

Text by Sarah Contreras-Wolfe

Flo and Rose bond by hiding their weaknesses from one another.

Rose never talks to Flo about the grapefruit incident. Rose would not share something that would reflect poorly on herself: “Half-a-grapefruit she never got to hear about. Rose would not have told her anything in which she did not play a superior, an onlooker’s part. Pitfalls were for others, Flo and Rose agreed” (Munro 54). Munro includes the story about the half a grapefruit to demonstrate Flo and Rose’s mutual belief that personal hardships should not be discussed between the two of them, not even when it comes to Rose’s father’s illness.

When Rose is talking to Billy Pope about her father, she speaks candidly, which she would not do with Flo: “’Not if he has lung cancer,’ Rose said firmly. She had never said that before and certainly Flo had not said it” (66). When Flo is telling a story about a woman with second sight who suggested her mother eat green onions to help with her nerves, she is also direct, like Rose: “It wasn’t nerves at all it was cancer, so what good they did I don’t know:’ Flo’s voice climbed· and hurried on, embarrassed that she had let that out” (69).

What doesn’t get said in these conversations between Rose and Flo is the meat, if you will, of this story.

 

 

Munro, Alice. “Half a Grapefruit.” Who Do You Think You Are? Toronto: Penguin, 1996. 51-72. Print.

Mills, Amanda. “Whole ceramic bowls each containing a half a grapefruit free stock picture”. 2015. CC0. <a href=”http://www.public-domain-image.com/free-images/still-life/whole-ceramic-bowls-each-containing-a-half-of-a-grapefruit&#8221; title=”Whole ceramic bowls each containing a half of a grapefruit public domain image”>Whole ceramic bowls each containing a half of a grapefruit</a>

Everybody’s Hungry: Food and Control in “Play the Monster Blind”

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We are launching a second miniseries. Over the next few weeks we will be joined by students from Nathalie Cooke’s Canadian Literary Fare course (ENG 441, department of English, McGill) as they too are studying food scenes in Canadian literature this term.

 

Text by Carla Dean.

Food and familial power dynamics form the center of “Play the Monster Blind” by Lynn Coady; throughout the story, the struggles of various characters for power in their relationships are reflected by their eating and drinking habits. Characters who successfully control their food intake have power in the family unit; those who are controlled by food are disempowered.

John is a more powerful version of his father; he has overcome an eating disorder (4), whereas his father is incapable of controlling his drinking habits. An example of this dynamic is the restaurant incident, where the father causes a scene over “a good dry chip” (15). John, however, uses “‘[a] little thing out there called PR,’” (13) which really means a controlled approach, to much better effect. John’s interpersonal skills earn him far more social currency than his father’s drunken antics.

Bethany similarly mirrors Ann, whose lack of agency is clearly linked to her eating habits. Bethany is a self-described “big eater most of the time” (11) and earns the father’s approval because of her appetite (10), whereas Ann is a “meal-obsessed” recovering anorexic (11). Ann associates her stagnant, disappointing life circumstances with food; she throws up shellfish after a nightmare in which she “‘[is] just doing all the things [she’s] been doing all along’” (15). Ann’s blow to Bethany at the end of the novel, which turns her new ally against her, only happens because of excessive drinking—and Bethany, who does not lose control, tastes power (25).

 

Works Cited

Coady, Lynn. “Play the Monster Blind.” Play the Monster Blind: Stories. Toronto: Doubleday, 2000. 1-25. Print.

Kulesza, Michal. Movie Night. Digital image. Stock.tookapic.com. JPEG file. February 7th, 2016. <https://stock.tookapic.com/photos/21005&gt;.

Sbattutino Is Love

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We asked Montreal author and editor, Licia Canton, for a recipe and a story. For this Valentine’s Day, why not make sbattutino for the one you love?

 

“What’s the most important ingredient in this meal?” I grew up with that question.

I did a lot of the cooking after school. I was taught that every meal is made slowly and caringly. Love is the main ingredient to every meal.

Of all the foods I learned to prepare, from my mother and father, the sbattutino* is the one that I equate with love. My mother’s love. My mother is the only one who has ever made sbattutino for me. It’s quite simple to make really: simply beat an egg yolk with two tablespoons of sugar until it becomes a creamy white mixture and the grains of sugar are no longer distinguishable. Getting it just right involves constant beating for about fifteen minutes.

The sbattutino is comfort food – it tastes good and it’s uplifting. I yearn for my mother’s sbattutino when I am really down. A few years ago, when I was bedridden after a car accident, my mother asked if there was anything she could do for me.

“Can you make me a sbattutino?” I asked. “That’s all I want.”

Very early the next morning, she came over and made my childhood treat for breakfast.

The other day I visited my mother, now 80, in her Montreal-North home. She wanted to feed me, of course. She had left-over polenta and guinea hen. She had homemade biscotti.

“How about a sbattutino?” I asked.

She went over to the kitchen, took out the eggs and the sugar bowl.

We had some on bread – spreadable sbattutino. We had some with espresso and milk. And I also had some with Marsala.

Over the years I’ve made sbattutino for my children, but it just doesn’t taste the same as my mother’s.

 

*Literally sbattutino means “little beaten one.” (Isn’t it interesting that this drinkable food is uplifting.) The word has its root in the verb sbattere – to beat, as in “to beat an egg.” Sbattuto means beaten. And the suffix “ino” is the diminutive. For those who know a little Italian: it is “lo sbattutino” or “uno sbattutino,” not “il” or “un” because the “s” is followed by a consonant.

 

Text and Photos by Licia Canton