“When I am in France I am more truly real to myself.”–M. F. K. Fisher
Benjamin Exworthy is the best writer (or écrivain) of his generation. Although he is not known to most of the world as a writer, a small body of his food writing can be found at the website www.lorenschwartz.com. This past summer, the blog chronicled the adventures of Exworthy and a friend–one Loren Schwartz–on a vacation to France, where they saw the famed international bicycle race and ate gateau au chocolat, foie gras, and “spongy” hamburgers. Exworthy’s reviews of the food he ate in France rival, in terms of formal inventiveness and command of subject, the works of such 20th-century food-writing masters as M. F. K. Fisher, who, for all her contributions to the form, never wrote a sentence quite as bold as: “Ambience is 39 percent of any meal, and especially essential in any fast-food experience.”
That is the first sentence of “Ben’s ’04 Food Review 3.” Exworthy–who paid good money for this rave review of his writing–has described the unpretentiously titled “Ben’s ’04 Food Review 3” as his “crowning achievement.” Indeed, “Ben’s ’04 Food Review 3” is the pièce de résistance of www.lorenschwartz.com. The subject of the review is a Quick Hamburger Restaurant in Paris where, Exworthy writes, “The over-glare of the florescent bulbs is intense and, I feel, dual purpose in nature; pest control through a lethal exposure of retinal flicker, and forced adherence to [the restaurant’s] corporate mandate of ‘quick,’ since no one could stand to be in there for longer than about eight minutes. What medical aids the employees must be on, I couldn’t guess, but I did notice that all of their pupils are completely dilated.” Exworthy brings his considerable American expertise to bear on this foreign fast-food experience, vividly concluding that Quick Hamburger Restaurant’s hamburgers are “not as spongy as a typical McDonald’s meat patty, but more akin to the square, umber firmness of a Wendy’s burger, circa 1981.”
You do not need to look any further than what I have already quoted to find evidence of Exworthy’s genius. To take one example, notice the unexpected but surely purposeful “did” in the sentence “I did notice that all of their pupils are completely dilated.” That “did,” an irregularity in a paragraph otherwise built on present-tense verbs, masterfully functions to put the reader in the position of feeling both present and in the past–the very condition of dislocation experienced by anyone who is reflecting on a recent trip or meal. Exworthy is a writer of incredible precision and roundness of thought. Not since perhaps Joyce has the sly deployment of a small word so catapulted a piece of prose in the direction of la poésie, or poetry.
