I'm deeply disturbed by the notion of food as fashion. Millions of people around the world go without basic nutrition while we have "foodies" in this country who treat a fundamental human survival need as entertainment, as a fad? What happened to the belief of food as being something sacred, as being a sacrifice that the earth makes for our sustenance? Are we Salon readers so decadent in our upper middle class hyper-intellectual mindset that we forget the humbling truth of this?

Salon, please have some integrity with regard to your progressive philosophy. Give us articles than challenge us, question our assumptions, and enrich our understanding. We don't need more inane solipsistic confessionals.

Self-absorbed? Nah.

The author's approach to food writing involved connecting with real people and their lives. A food article about a restaurant that is feeding the homeless out back? I think I'd like to read that. An article about organic pig farmers? I'm pretty sure I'd like to read that. And the observation that the foodies (at least the women) are tasting but not eating? That doesn't sound self absorbed to me; it sounds like the novelist's instinct for observing actual life comes through.

This is an article about foodies in a particular kind of up-scale food scene. It involves the author being sucked into that scene, and then leaving it. The author's experience serves as a lense for for viewing one kind of relationship with food and another, but the story is not about her, and it's theme is not "poor me." Too bad some readers found it boring. I didn't.

Gosh, Harri, I am a writer. If I ever wrote anything as egregiously nasty as your review of this article, I would be worried. About karmic payback. May you be treated as generously as you treat others!

It is reader responses like the ones above that remind me (just in the nick of time, before I'm tempted again) why I stay out of Table Talk these days.

Uber-yuppies.... what a collection of mental driftwood!

~AS~

I am a food writer. A young one, just like the one who replaced you. And if I ever submitted anything close to as overwrought and (forgive me) ham-fisted as that, I'd have been fired long ago. I used to be outraged, but now I'm just bored by writers like you -- and it's not just you; there are a thousand others just like you -- who think it's sufficient to describe scallops as sunbursts and truffles as explosions and then call it a night. Yawn; over. The Ladies' Home Journal called; they want their aesthetic back.

So please understand if the tears dropping into my beer (Pinot's been passe for ages -- I'm not sure what world you inhabit, but it sure as hell ain't mine) are a little crocodile.

The problem is not that the world you're covering is banal, but it's that you lack the talent to make it not be. Good luck with the novel.

PS: Salon -- I've been reading you since high school, and a premium subscriber since Day 1. No offense, but what are you people thinking?

Thanks for reminding me once again why I didn't renew my subscription, Salon. This makes an excellent partner for the whiny Slate article from last week about how opening a coffee shop requires actual work if you want it to be profitable.

I think I'll pass on the novels.

And she had such qualms about her work that she kept doing it until she got replaced by someone cheaper. Oh, mercy!

So she paced her three bedroom house -- bought with her novel's advance -- and felt so curiously lonely. Oh, angels of heaven!

No comfort, those tedious children, who lived on hamburger, popcorn, and oranges. Oh, fiends!

Then enter Salon, whose soul-starved readers hunger for such hand-wringing. Oh, plebs!

And finally our successfull writer can return to her savory meal. Oh, salvation!

Story of my life...

You're discovering what visual artists who enter the world of advertising have had to learn many a time over in the last 100 years: Selling out hurts - at least after a while.

I'll also wager you'd probably do it again if given the opportunity. Jobs can be "soul-sucking" because they're too "hip" and hectic. They can be as equally "soul-sucking" if they're unchallenging and boring. At least you got the former.

That's why I'm still with Madison Ave. I'd at least like to be entertained while my professional psyche is devoured!