Gastronomic opinion in Bon ViveurGastronomy in the intimate story of the Nobel Prize winner Annie ErnauxThose of us who are moved by the recent award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to the French Annie Ernaux, do so because of what the triumph of her work means: the recognition of intimate inquiry through literature in a woman's body.And this inquiry is political and also gastronomic.In Memoria de chica she recounts how she starts having sex subject to "an indisputable, universal law, that of a male brutality that, of all of them, sooner or later, she would have had to suffer".After the experience, he falls into periods of provoked hunger that he cannot overcome ("I only think about food. I entered into the dynamic of existing based on what I could consume at the next meal, according to the caloric power of the content of my plate . The description of a meal, in a novel, stops me as brutally as a sexual scene").This is followed by episodes of bulimia ("She does not know that she is going to become prey to the saddest passion that exists, that of food, the object of an incessant and rejected desire that can only be satisfied in excess and shame. That has entered into an alternation of purity and stain").The body as biopolitical reality.His, that of others, that of too many people.Her mother is an important part of her life and her literary work.In I haven't left my night, she recounts the degradation she experiences due to Alzheimer's and describes how old fears of poverty return, accumulating sugar cubes in her pockets.Crumbs later.Shit in the drawers.And the love in the cakes that her daughter offers her every time she goes to see her at her residence and that her hand is no longer enough to bring to her mouth.A mother who is no longer the one who took her to eat in The Frozen Woman at an elegant place, where the girl lived (like so many others have lived) the anxiety of the first time, the discomfort of not belonging to that place and the fear of not knowing if they will have enough when the bill arrives.And the saving strength of her mother.And there we are in a restaurant forced to choose unknown dishes, my first scallop, the anxious wait, and if I don't like it and if I have to leave it, then the hesitant island to explore with the spoon and the tongue, the fear later, we'll have enough money to pay for all this, but she quietly takes out the bills, don't worry, today we are rich.The girl becomes The Frozen Woman after her marriage from which two children are born and the desire to learn to cook.She then remembers the mother of a friend who one day invited her to her house where everything was nice, quiet and the food was prepared waiting on the table (nothing like in her home as a child): "Order and peace. paradise. Ten years later, I am the one with the resplendent and mute kitchen, the one with strawberries and flour, traced, and I burst".In almost all of her books, the family grocery store that is also a bar appears.Perhaps it is that fixed memory of her that she both loves and hates that leads her to write in Look at the lights, my love about the hyper Alcampo in the Les Trois-Fontaines shopping center in Paris where she usually shops.It is an essay from the intimate.An essay that complements others such as the well-documented and thoughtful one by Carolyn Steel (Hungry Cities), which concludes that the public place (square, market) has been hijacked by these private companies, which, as Annie Ernaux well understands, are "a space of freedom and equal access, open to all without distinction of income, dress or identity".The hyper, without xenophobic fears, she - she adds - "adapts to the cultural diversity of the clientele, scrupulously following their festivities. No ethics, just ethnic marketing."And she masterfully explains a feeling that has overwhelmed me so many times, the clumsiness in the self-checkout boxes.They are part of the game: "the irritation caused by a cashier considered slow is transferred to the client".And among the rules, the "dream" of the freedom to be able to choose between 50,000 food references ("I use around 100, there are 49,900 that I don't know").But there is no variety on the property.Everything belongs to them: "For a long time I ignored that Alcampo belonged to a family, the Mulliez, who also own Leroy Merlin, Decathlon, Midas, Flange, Joules, etc. Of the people who have come here today, I imagine that few know I wonder what knowing about it has changed for me. They are shadows. Mythical beings."In Los años she registers the change of the conversation in the French after-meals.After World War II, the story is monopolized by war and famine.In the 60s we talk about how some buildings disappear and others appear and in the 70s we talk about the best car brands, new houses and the next vacation.And so, he assures, the memory of the family table deserted.I could go on reviewing the rest of his work, which thanks to the edition of Cabaret Voltaire —was rejected at the time by Planeta, which retains only a few titles until the contract expires in a few years— and to the translation by Lydia Vázquez Jiménez we are enjoying in its breadth.And she could continue talking about the gastronomy that the writer observes, because literature is a gaze and food is there or not in it.In the case of Annie Ernaux, gastronomy is part of the discourse that starts from the intimate to become a social and political mirror.A narrative that invites you to stop at the cracks of the soul.Yours, mine, ours.Writer, journalist and university professor.She director of the Master of Communication and Gastronomic Journalism of The Foodie Studies.Two decades of work and study dedicated to gastronomy and food.I read my contemporaries and I still don't get bored (© Photo Ariadna Acosta)