Last year, writer-art director Dinah Fried posted five “photographic recreations of meals from classic and contemporary literature,” dishes she assembled and styled herself. As a result, her site www.dinahfried.com got more than 200,000 hits and was mentioned on TV shows and blog sites, and in newspapers and magazines.
Now comes Fictitious Dishes: An Album of Literature’s Most Memorable Meals (HarperCollins, $19.99), in which she expands the concept to include 50 pairings. They include the Mad Hatter’s tea party from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, cupcakes and chardonnay from The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, apple pie a la mode from On the Road by Jack Kerouac, and fried chicken with beans and tomatoes from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
Each dish is accompanied by the relevant passage. For instance, this is from The Catcher In the Rye by J.D. Salinger: “When I’m out somewhere, I generally just eat a Swiss cheese sandwich and a malted milk. It isn’t much, but you get a lot of vitamins in the malted milk.”
— Allen Pierleoni
Sacramento Bee