Posted by David Pierce on July 16, 1998 at 22:50:23:
In Reply to: Re: Merchant Marine and Ports of Call (and meals) posted by Menno vd Leden on May 19, 1998 at 05:29:33:
Re: Food -- To find an author with Jack Vance's ability to describe food and eating establishments in sensurround minutia, we have to look back to Charles Dickens, who took particular delight, as does Jack Vance, in vividly painting all manner of kitchens, refectories, taverns. No one has excelled these two at this art, though it has been equalled by Peake, O'Brien, and Spinrad (in "The Void Captain's Tale" and in "Child of Fortune"). Piers Anthony came close in an early novel, describing small grubs that craved to be dissolved in the consumer's saliva. This produced a horror in me that I respected, and as I read the passage, I instantly thought of Jack Vance. Christopher Rowley, in his "Fundan" books, shows promise perhaps greater than Anthony in this regard. Barrington Bayley has displayed a great talent for creating exotic bars and taverns. Also, we must not forget Swift and Cervantes. Swift's humor is even drier than Vance's, for Gulliver has to play it straight even when forced to eat grass. Cervante's descriptions of restaurants, and of the procurement and consumption of food, make me laugh so hard that I inevitably drop the book and fall on the floor. (Some scenes in Dicken's "Pickwick Papers" have a similar effect on me.) The art of food-description is not lost! There are artists today who, influenced by the modern masters and by those of the past, find joy in describing eating, drinking, and carousing.
Re: Ruble -- Perhaps the "ruble exchanger" that palmed the tricky currency to the merchant marine was an early grandsire of Cugel.