Julia Child_ A Life - Laura Shapiro [24]
At the time Julia was taking this magisterial stand, the three authors had little in hand except the revised chapter on sauces and some early work on poultry. Even a “no-account” firm wouldn’t have signed up a trio of unknown women on the basis of their hollandaise recipe. What they needed was somebody knowledgeable about cookbook publishing who would fall in love with the project and steer this cumbersome, audacious dream toward the real world; and in the spring of 1952, that very person came into Julia’s life. Avis DeVoto was a writer, editor, and literary agent who lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband, Bernard DeVoto, a political journalist and historian with a regular column in Harper’s called “The Easy Chair.” One of his columns caught Julia’s attention because he was complaining about American knives. Why were they so inadequate? he demanded. Stainless steel knives were beautiful but useless; they wouldn’t hold an edge. Julia agreed wholeheartedly and went out and bought a good French knife, which she mailed to him. Avis, a sophisticated cook who had suggested the column in the first place, was delighted. She wrote a thank-you letter, Julia wrote back, and the two of them fell into an absorbing correspondence.
Since moving to Paris and discovering the passion that would shape her future, Julia had been growing into herself, experiencing more and more of the sense of rightness that had started to emerge back in the OSS. It was in the course of this evolution that Avis became her chief confidante, a wonderfully witty and perceptive recipient for all Julia’s musings, rants, and bouts of philosophy. Julia would type on and on, astonishing herself by how much she had to say to this faraway friend whom she’d never met in person. Sometimes she would sit under the hair dryer at the beauty parlor with paper and pen, scribbling away until, as she said, she was “baked to a turn.” Avis couldn’t stop talking either: the two of them scrambled from food to cookbook matters to reports on daily life to complaints and wishes and self-scrutiny, all the while pressing each other for opinions on everything from shallots to sex. Both their husbands, they discovered, liked “barbarian” food—roasts, steaks, lots of spices, lots of garlic. “I think that is very American male,” Julia decided. Avis thought the Kinsey reports were a big bore; Julia was riveted by them. (“Heaven knows, I am no authority on sex, but I think it is a fine institution which should be enjoyed by all to the fullest extent.”) Avis loved England, Julia much preferred France; Avis liked martinis, Julia begged her to try a good red wine. Early on, the two friends exchanged photographs. “That is a wonderfully worldly expression you have on,” Julia remarked admiringly. “It is the face I always try to wear when I am in New York, with no success.” She also added relevant physical details:
Paul, 5'11'', weight 175, very muscley. He has done lots of woodchopping, etc., and is a 3rd-degree black-belt Judo man (which is a remarkable thing).
Julia, 6 ft. plus, weight 150 to 160. Bosom not as copious as she would wish, but has noticed that Botticelli bosoms are not big either. Legs OK, according to husband. Freckles.
And she sent interior snapshots as well. Paul, she said, was an intellectual, always ready to probe new ideas, always working on training his mind. “Me, I am not an intellectual,” she admitted. “Except for La Cuisine, I find I have to push myself to build up a thirst for how the atomic bomb works, or a study of Buddhism.” She attributed this problem to her childhood in a “useless and wasteful