Could there be any warmer way to kick off the New Year than with Julia Child? When the days are this dark, I find myself drawn to the warmth of my kitchen. And with the Dutch oven bubbling with a delicious tomato-dal soup, I settled in to learn more about “Our Lady of the Ladle.”
I’l l confess that I started on the back foot a bit. My sense of Julia Child prior to this reading excursion was that of a TV chef, albeit an iconic one. I knew there has been a well-received film about her, starring Meryl. And that she specialized in French food. But I knew little more about her; if you’d asked, I would have assumed she had cooked all her life.
Sharks, Spies, and Supposition
My interest was actually first piqued when I saw The Secret War of Julia Child in a local bookstore. I’d never really thought about the fact that Child lived through WWII, let alone likely participated in it. The idea that she worked for the OSS – the pre-CIA American intelligence agency – was a revelation. How exactly do those lives intersect?
The Secret War of Julia Child is a heavily novelized hypothesis. In it, Chambers weaves the scant facts known about Child’s war-time exploits into a tense tale of espionage and danger. The few known truths: McWilliams worked for the OSS, in the Office of the Registry. Early in her career there, she worked with a team to cook up shark repellent, which was used widely in the war. She was transferred to Kandy, Sri Lanka, where she met Paul Child; then later, again, to Kunming, China. Their love bloomed slowly, but blossomed into something inspirational and nourishing – for both, and for the American populace.
Between these sparse facts, Chambers dives deep into the what-ifs. What if McWilliams was more than “just” the head of the OSS Registry? And what if she were there to spy on the British contingent, including Lord Mountbatten, posted to the same place? What if her love with Paul Child was actually helped along by a shared spy mission? (And of course, what if she crashed into the Burmese jungle and snuck her way through the bush with a refugee?)
It’s the kind of danger and derring-do one loves to see in a spy novel. And it’s woven in with the real facts, such that each moment has some kind of anchor in life. Chambers is trying to do a lot – sharing the broader story of the WWII in the Pacific theater while progressing the tale of Child’s real life. But the result is a flashy, heightened tale that diminishes Child’s actual contributions to the war efforts, including the attention to detail and record-keeping that also characterizes Mastering the Act of French Cooking.
Perfection, Persistence, and French Butter
Still, it intrigued me enough that I decided to read Child’s autobiography, My Life in France. The book picks up almost immediately where Chambers left off, with the Childs moving from D.C. to Paris. And almost immediately, I fell in love with Julia Child’s real voice, which is clear and full of personality. (She reminded me, happily of Marilyn Hagerty – one of my favorites last year.)
I also fell in love with the story she chose to focus on. My Life in France is, fundamentally, the story of a project, started by accident, that took a lifetime to complete. The core arc of the book is Child’s journey to the writing of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She starts a cooking rube. After an epiphanic meal at La Couronne, she starts to explore cooking in the “professional” classes at Le Cordon Bleu. It’s via these social circles that she meets her future cooking class co-founders. It so happens that these two co-founders want to publish a cookbook, and eventually ask Julia for help writing it. She agrees, and it becomes the project that changes her life.
It’s in these segments – where Child describes the effort and focus that went into researching and testing recipes, working hard to make each and every one fool proof – where her passion and conviction most shine. She sets a new standard for recipes. She encourages the team to shop the book around to different publishers, unchanged, until one sees its true value. Child is also willing to share the ugly in the story, as when her pursuit of perfection leads to rifts with her co-authors. (At one point, she kicks the least contributing author from the group, to the give the other “her due credit”.) It’s those moments of frustration, of over-extension, and of Paul re-centering her to kindness, that lay bare the drive required to reach her level of expertise – and its costs on her life.
I left My Life in France in awe of Julia Child, and a little in love with Paul as well. Through the book, he’s clearly her rock and biggest supporter. When she needs illustrations, he’s ready with his camera; when she’s getting snappy, he helps her smooth things out. He’s the kind man behind the great woman, and theirs is a relationship for the ages.
Snark, Stubbornness, and 524 Recipes
But I wasn’t done with Child just yet. I was curious about her cultural legacy, her impact on readers. And luckily, there’s quite a famous modern project that relies on Child’s work. So it was with tentative curiosity that I picked up Julie and Julia, the blog adaptation about the author’s year of cooking through Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
On its surface, one cannot imagine two more different subjects to read about. Julia Powell is anything but deliberate – she rushes through 524 recipes in 1 year, happy to make mistakes so long as the recipe is made. She starts the project out of curiousity and seems to continue out of sheer stubbornness. Child may have aired her own ugly side, but Powell has no issue sharing her friends’ private lives, especially the stressful or shameful bits. Child, in fact, famously thought of the blog as a stunt rather than a serious work of fandom.
Without the context of My Life in France, I’m not sure I would have made it through Julie and Julia. Powell’s voice is very of its time – early 2000s blogger snark – and relies too much on cynicism. She frequently jumps between subjects – recipes, personal anecdotes, random musings – in a stream-of-consciousness way that probably works well in a weekly blog but is hard to digest in a full-length book. When, right at the very end, she tries to land an earnest note about Child’s death, it’s hard to feel that she has earned it.
But. At its heart, Julie and Julia is another story of another project, and in that, the two authors share something essential. Both are determined to see their project to completion, even in the face of unpleasantness and frustration. Both describe how cooking and writing completely take over their lives. There’s a nice echo, when read so closely together, between Julia’s endless recipe-testing and Julie’s receipt and execution of those instructions. And both get support from their partners, who help them pull through even in the depths of their frustration.
The Power of a Chosen Project
I can truly appreciate the story of how a Project saved both Julie and Julia, giving each purpose and a creative outlet. To me, that’s the real magic in these stories – the reminder that there is joy in doing something well, not for others but simply because you choose to, even if it’s hard. While this blog is not nearly so strenuous as a cookbook or a two-a-day recipe regimen, I can still find the commitment challenging (especially when I sign myself up for another half-dozen Christmas mysteries). But I keep coming back to it because I love how it makes me grow as a reader and a writer and a photographer of books. In my own small way, I can understand Child’s motivation – and I can only hope to one day create anything so impactful and beloved.
But I expect that will be the journey of a thousand steps, so I can but take another next week. Until then – stay cozy, and stay curious!
These books will constitute several of my entries for this year’s 52 Book Club Challenge. The Secret War of Julia Child will be the biographical fiction; My Life in France, the answering non-fiction. Julie and Julia is the book where the author’s bio mentions their dog.
