‘Traveling Feast’: Fill up on wisdom
Writers get together for dinner, and sharing
Defeated from a divorce and searching for meaning in middle age, a renowned writer seeks answers through travel, cooking and community.
In “The Traveling Feast: On the Road and at the Table with My Heroes” (Little, Brown, 288 pp., ★★★☆), Rick Bass brings his writing apprentices to the homes of his own mentors and wellknown writers he admires, to offer a meal, express gratitude and connect generations in the industry.
Bass, 60, an accomplished writer and teacher, is emerging from years of relative isolation in Montana while in the midst of a divorce. Keenly aware of time passing and age advancing (his own and that of his contemporaries), he’s eager to glean wisdom from his favorite writers — Gordon Lish, Joyce Carol Oates and David Sedaris among them — while he can.
Over the course of three years, he flies and drives to whomever is available to accept a meal, with four or five aspiring writers in tow.
Bass brings frozen cuts of an elk he hunted in Montana, along with whatever he and his travel companions can prep in advance, to serve a meal of meat and seasonal accompaniments in each host’s kitchen, “something ceremonial beyond the unimaginative twenty-firstcentury gesture of picking up the damned tab.”
Bass and nearly ever writer featured prove to be astute cooks, borderline food snobs in their own local ways (Bass forages and hunts at home while a New Jersey writer prefers fine restaurants), and the conversations tend to revolve around food and life lessons more than writing.
Each chapter retells one visit to a writer, whether for a picnic or dinner party, and each experience is brief and to the point. Some end abruptly without a mention of what the writer shared with the younger visitors, but we learn something at each stop.
Bass finds almost every friend has a neat and organized private writing space, and less expectedly, many face away from scenic windows while working. On a deeper level, each host’s approach to life, love, nature or time is revealed with quotes that will stick with you.
“Traveling Feast” is a series of stories about travel and food, as each menu is meticulously detailed, and the adventurous and challenging aspects of road trips (and travel abroad) are inevitably explored. But it becomes more a story of life morals. Bass is collecting advice and credos from each host in search of inspiration to move forward in his life and career.
Bass is admittedly running, unraveling and procrastinating in this attempt to process or cure his pain and perhaps redefine his identity. Is his intention to help other writers or leave a legacy of his own? Only time and literature will tell if either effort succeeds.