Julie & Julia's better half

Much has already been said about the best and worst parts of Julie & Julia--and about the charm and richness of the Julia-in-Paris storyline versus the comparatively meager Julie Powell narrative. So I won't rehash that critique here. Instead I'd like to focus on the biography/memoir from which half this film was drawn: My Life in France.

The vibrant voice of Julia Child comes through remarkably via Meryl Streep, but the book (co-written with her grandnephew, Alex Prud'homme) is, obviously, even closer to the bone. Julia spent the last years of her life working on it, and a tone of wistful nostalgia for the period she spent in France, from her first taste of sole meuniere through her exam at the Cordon Bleu and beyond, is clear.

My favorite part, though, is that in which she describes her kitchen at 103 Irving Street (the street on which I happen to live) and her life in Cambridge. By then, Mastering the Art of French Cooking had been published, and she was no longer the "loud and unserious Californian" she had been at the beginning of her time in Paris. Which is not to say that she couldn't still be loud and unserious.

Par exemple, this remembrance from the Cambridge era:

"With our first royalty check [from Mastering the Art of French Cooking], we bought a book on how not to let plants die (for me), a dry-mount press (for Paul), and the latest edition of Webster's dictionary (for both of us), which led us to scream at each other about the proper use of language. He was a language-by-use type, while I was an against-the-prostitution-of-language type. We also bought our first television set...that was so ugly we hid it in an unused fireplace."

This passage is typical of the gung-ho, conversational style in which she recounts the details of her life and her marriage to Paul. For me, it's almost like sitting across from her at the table--perhaps in the Irving St kitchen she describes as "the soul of our house...and a real wowzer."

If you have seen the film and been enchanted, you should, as they say, read the book. As Julia writes, it is "about some of the things I have loved most in my life: my husband, Paul Child; la belle France; and the many pleasures of cooking and eating." And on these three points, she could never be said to hide her enthusiasm.

Photographs are from Savenor's on Kirkland St. in Cambridge--one of Julia's favorite places to shop. Her signature phrase, signed "JC," remains in the sidewalk outside.