Foods of the Gods: Eating and the Eaten in Fantasy and Science Fiction ed. by Gary Westfahl, George Slusser, and Eric S. Rabkin (review)

Book Reviews59 determined, I, for one, don't want to start the revolution with McTeague and Gary Gilmore as my leaders. JUDITH VILLA Indiana University ofPennsylvania GARY WESTFAHL, GEORGE SLUSSER, and ERIC S. RABIÓN, eds. Foods ofthe Gods: Eating and the Eaten in Fantasy and Science Fiction. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996. 236p. Ibis intriguing collection ofessays from the 1991 J. Lloyd Eaton Conference at the University of California at Riverside contains what can be termed culture studies and inter-disciplinary literary criticism. In the introduction, George Slusser provides the rationale for a volume on food and eating in the two genres. The theme touches biology, religion, culture, and myth. The essays range outside of fiction to movie analyses of Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast by Stephanie Hammer and Indiana Jones and the Temple ofDoom by Andrew Gordon. Brooks Landon's essay is an analysis of the 1893 Columbia Exposition and body building in the twentieth century; while interesting, these analyses have little relevance to understanding SF and fantasy. But most of the essays illumine the announced topic. Eric S. Rabkin concentrates on the theme offorbidden fruit, thoughtfully using Freud, LéviStrauss , and Edmund R. Leach. He shows how an "Eden complex" rather than an Oedipus complex is important in myth, fairy tale, and science fiction. Breaking food taboos increases the strength of the character. Cannibalism and vampirism as a variant of the former are analyzed; vegetarianism, which signals nobility, does not lead to energy and success. Rabkin's view of Jesus as a Cain figure, leading humans to heaven by cannibalism and forbidden fruit seems very idiosyncratic in light of Miltonic and New Testament sources cited. The only essay by an anthropologist, Wayne Allen, is provocative, but he admits it is controversial. He believes that various hallucinogens are responsible for the fantastic myths oftransformation and metamorphoses; shamans may have been important in the development of ritual, art, and language. George Slusser's essay focuses on gluttony and cannibalism in horror and SF. However, neither he nor others who analyze cannibalism in this volume about food in literature seem aware ofthe long simmering controversy among anthropologists about the very existence of cannibalism among humans. [A recent summary of the issue appears in Lawrence Osborne's "Does Man Eat Man?" Lingua Franca 7 (April/May 1997): 28-38.] Still Slusser covers a wide range of literature from the seventeenth to twentieth century with interesting insights. Two essays on CS. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein, while fairly traditional in critical approach, are the most excellent analyses of fantasy novels in the volume. Susan Navarette's essay on Perelandra emphasizes "the sacramental nature offood." She gives interesting background from BrillatSavarin and M.F.K. Fisher as well as surveying the meaning of eating in 60Rocky Mountain Review Proust and Joyce. On the new planet, Ransom the earthman hero, is transformed by the paradisal food; he is enlightened. Navarette also notes paradisal food in other fantasies. Her use ofLacan is helpful, not doctrinaire. Jonathon Langford's "Sitting Down to the Sacramental Feast; Food and Cultural Diversity in The Lord of the Rings" cites Bakhtin's concept of "heteroglossia" and asserts that fantasy and science fiction expand the novel's scope; fantasy in this complexity helps readers understand their own culture better. After this theoretical background, Langford analyzes each of the major groups and characters' food and eating customs. Good characters eat together with cordiality while the evil characters compete and are cannibalistic. Langford closes with some insightful comments about eating in other fantasy and science fiction. Paul Alkon and Sharon Delmendo focus on cannibalism and selfconsumption as ways authors use readers' repulsion thematically. Alkon surveys a wide range of works while Delmendo concentrates on novels by Richard Bachman, a pseudonym of Stephen King. The critic believes that the auto-consumption points to the nature of late American capitalist and consumer society. The essays of Peter Fitting and Brett Cooke enlarge the scope ofthe volume by focusing on utopias and dystopias. Fitting asserts that behind the social Darwinism ofHeinlein and Herbert are longings for more communal ideal groups; the title of the essay is more relevant to the theme ofthe book...