As Meat Loves Salt

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Because the ultimate endpoint of keeping out mitts off experience that doesn’t belong to us is that there is no fiction. Someone like me only permits herself to write from the perspective of a straight white female born in North Carolina, closing on sixty, able-bodied but with bad knees, skint for years but finally able to buy the odd new shirt. All that’s left is memoir. I made this same point in relation to gender in Melbourne last week: both as writers and as people, we should be seeking to push beyond the constraining categories into which we have been arbitrarily dropped by birth. If we embrace narrow group-based identities too fiercely, we cling to the very cages in which others would seek to trap us. We pigeonhole ourselves. We limit our own notion of who we are, and in presenting ourselves as one of a membership, a representative of our type, an ambassador of an amalgam, we ask not to be seen. Source: Andrew Lang, The Green Fairy Book (London: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1892), pp. 180-85. Maria McCann is an English novelist. She was born in Liverpool in 1956 and worked as a lecturer in English at Strode College, Street, Somerset since 1985, until starting work with Arden.

The prince thought some witchcraft must be at work, and he hastened away before the return of the shepherdess, who became that evening the butt of everybody's jests. They waited until the hen-woman came out, and then the queen said to her, "Why are you always crying so, goody? But, indeed, you're not goody, but a beautiful young girl, and I won't have you stay there any longer."Like the man in the story, we take it for granted. There it sits, in our salt pigs, grinders and shakers, ready to be scattered liberally into pasta water and with caution into soups and sauces. Yet the reason this dazzling white crystal permeates the languages, stories and cuisines of the world is that without it, we wouldn't be here. Once upon a time there was a king, and this king had three daughters. One fine day he took it into his head to call these three daughters, and to ask them, one after another, if they loved him. McCann also contributed a short story titled Minimal to the anthology New Writing 12 pu Maria McCann is an English novelist. She was born in Liverpool in 1956 and worked as a lecturer in English at Strode College, Street, Somerset since 1985, until starting work with Arden.

That day at dinner the king had no salt in the soup, no salt in the boiled meat, no salt in the roast, no salt in the fried. Then the king could not hold his peace any longer. The remorse he felt -- the dinner without salt -- the bride who was so like his daughter -- all made his heart so full, that it was ready to burst, and he was obliged to speak.Well, the master’s son he got well very soon, and they were to be married in a little time. It was to be a very grand wedding, and every one was asked far and near. And Cap o’ Rushes’ father was asked. But she never told anybody who she was.