Word: oyster
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...OYSTERS OF LOCMARIAQUER, by Eleanor Clark. In describing the care and feeding of the world's best oysters and the Bretons who do it, Eleanor Clark has written a book that virtually defies criticism, so warm is her writing, so precise her knowledge of the oyster and the sea, so unstinting the love and care she has lavished on her subject...
...OYSTERS OF LOCMARIAQUER, by Eleanor Clark. By weaving history, topography, marine biology and lyrical gastronomy around the arduous everyday lives of the French seacoast villagers who tend and harvest the Ostrea edulis, Author Clark has written a book-length monograph on the world's most prized oyster with the same beguiling erudition that characterized her Rome and a Villa...
...OYSTERS OF LOCMARIAQUER, by Eleanor Clark. By weaving history, topography, marine biology and lyrical gastronomy around -the arduous everyday lives of the French seacoast villagers who tend and harvest the Ostrea edulis, Author Clark has written a book-length monograph on the world's most prized oyster with the same beguiling erudition that characterized her Rome and a Villa...
There is a bit too much air in Author Clark's book. She lards her account with odd facts (the pearl producer is not an oyster at all but a mollusk known as Meleagrina), sketches of local characters, and wordy, impressionistic evocations of the Breton countryside. At such moments a reader's attention may well wander, but for the most part Author Clark holds him with wit and verbal polish. It is the process known as tromper le lecteur...
Touch & Go. Things were not too bad until the early 18th century, when "the drag," otherwise known in France as "the oyster guillotine," was invented. That instrument, a convex iron blade 5 ft. or 6 ft. long, denuded the coasts of Europe and the U.S. by ripping up the oyster beds. It was touch and go whether the oyster would survive at all, until an inspired French marine biologist, Victor Coste, discovered in the mid-1800s the secret of collecting larvae and raising seed, making it possible to grow oysters in waters where for various reasons they are unable...