Hunger

While reading Allegra Goodman's The Cookbook Collector, I posed the question to myself (and now to the rest of the class): How does Goodman explore the theme of hunger in The Cookbook Collector? I did not want to look at hunger in the traditional sense (the need or desire for food) but in the sense of hunger for success and hunger for love or acceptance. Orion and Molly’s insatiable desire for success ultimately drives them away from each other and from happiness, whereas George’s constant search for companionship is a painful process that eventually results in him finding love with Jess.

In some way or another, every single character in the novel hungers for success, however he or she may personally define success to be. While the desire for success is not an inherently bad or immoral goal, the problem arises when success becomes the only driving factor in one’s life, and especially when success is equated with financial gains. For Orion and Molly, their hunger for success becomes a serious problem. Following a big fight, they conclude that “They didn’t have the money yet, but they would in six months. They could solve almost all their problems soon” (149). However, once Orion makes his millions, he is still unsatisfied with his life and his position at ISIS: “Heading a new group, he would step up. He had a chance to justify his wealth, to prove that his success was more than accidental, to become a self-made man” (253). Orion continues to hunger for something bigger and better than what he already has. Essentially his drive for success is really the search for his purpose. In the end he leaves both ISIS and Molly when he realizes what it is that he truly is looking for—a relationship with Sorel.

Hunger is also portrayed through the oft-misunderstood bibliophile, George. Of the over 40 major and minor characters in The Cookbook Collector, George is the only one who knows how to cook and takes pleasure in gastronomy. As the years pass by and he remains unmarried, his desire grows to find a woman that he may share his life with: “Endlessly he had searched for his love, and when he couldn’t find her, he looked for signs, traces of her beauty in books and maps…The one he couldn’t find became the one he couldn’t have” (186). This hunger is whetted when he falls hard for Jess, longing for her companionship from afar. It takes several years before she realizes that she too loves him, and at last George no longer feels starved.