Eggs and hard liquor: Spectator writers on their favourite examples of meals in literature

P.J. O’Rourke

I love poems but hate poetasters, love wine but detest oenophiles, love food but can’t stand foodies. Therefore my favourite passage about food in fiction is Lionel Shriver’s entire book Big Brother. In her tale of obese totalitarianism and comestible fascists Shriver destroys every pretention and abstract conception about food — starves it to death or fattens it for the kill. And she does so in prose that is poetry: ‘You have to ask yourself if there was ever a time people just ate something and got on with it. Every time I open the refrigerator I feel like I’m staring into a library of self-help books with air-conditioning.’

Taki

When Papa Hemingway was not standing up writing in longhand, or fishing or hunting, he spent his time eating and drinking with friends and followers. His last big theme was, like his first, bullfighting in Spain. It was 1959, and he called it The Dangerous Summer.