A month ago I posted about suddenly thinking to change my creative nonfiction (CNF) class to a food theme this semester. It was too late to practically make this decision, but I made it happen anyway. (You don’t know this about me, but I’m what they call a hardhead. I’ve also been called a bullet-head and a watta-head, and Rory’s called me a couple of –heads I can’t repeat here. My sons call me balda-head and Daddyhead. Why’s everybody focus their gaze on my beautiful head?)

My feeling about CNF is that any topic will do, in the same way that Chekhov once said he could write about anything, and he pointed to an ashtray as an example. Nonfiction merely—caution!—requires immersing oneself in a topic, seeing well, writing, finding patterns and structure, and devoting oneself to long revision. Why not serve this process on food, which we all consume and sometimes produce, and which can be great fun to think and talk about?

I made up a new course packet that included a wide variety of writing on food, including: the bio of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin from the Larousse Gastronomique and two of his short essays from Physiology of Taste, a taste of Mark Kurlansky’s Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, the “Beer” section of Harold McGee’s classic On Food and Cooking, a cupping from Lonely Planet’s World Food: Vietnam, a ladle of Margaret Visser’s wonderful The Rituals of Dinner, a taste of Flandrin, et al.'s Food: A Culinary History, a soupcon of Eric Schlosser from Fast Food Nation, liberal helpings of Michael Pollan and Wendell Berry, a few dashes of Anthony Bourdain, Jim Harrison, and AJ Liebling, a helping of Bob Shacochis’s charming Domesticity, and a platter piled high with MFK Fisher, including How to Cook a Wolf. Spread out over 30 meetings and spring break, there’s still plenty of time for writing in and out of class, an annotated bibliography, an interview, a couple of workshops, scheduled individual conferences, and more.

Ultimately I’m asking students to consider the idea of “Real Food, Real Writing,” which they’ll need to define for themselves as they go. Real food to one person might be what’s local, with all its agri-enviro-socio-economic implications; for another, real might be the little disk of tropical chocolate in the old C-rations, which we used to call a John Wayne bar. The things were terrible—like biting into a carob-scented candle—but they were so loved we traded entire meals for more. An interesting essay—with elements of memoir, history, economics, chemistry, and social context—might be written on how we construct our odd food preferences, or on the power of nostalgia. Each student’s “real writing” will, I hope, result from choosing among the tools of various modes of CNF, finding her own forms, and immersing herself in thought on a focused topic. That is, emotional reaction informed by intellect, which wouldn’t be a bad definition of literary nonfiction.

We’ll end the semester with an amuse-bouche reading. Students will offer invited guests single bites of the foods they've focused on all semester and read 250-word distillations of their semester’s work to illustrate why their chosen foods are real. I hope to get a nice space, some donated materials, and to give proceeds to charity.

All this is different from anything I’ve done. What will come of us? I don’t know. We’re essaying—venturing forth on an adventure with no set plan—and have to trust that the process of preparing words and food will lead us to good, real things.