I suppose we have the movie "Seven" to thank for the reintroduction of the Seven Deadly Sins into popular consciousness. That flick, a humorless updating of the much more entertaining Vincent Price theme death movies of the early seventies ("Abominable Dr. Phibes," "Theater of Blood"), reacquainted its audience with Thomas Acquinas' medieval iconography and gave us the memorable image of a house-bound fat man who'd been tortured and force-fed to death. It was easily one of the grossest images in a movie that thrived on 'em.

On the heels of that edifying entertainment, an enterprising publisher has started a series of theme anthologies devoted to the Seven Deadlies, "The Chronicles of Sin." Second to appears in the series after Lust is a small (132 pages) collection of essays and fiction edited by John Miller and Benedict Cosgrove on the subject of Gluttony (Chronicle Books, 1996).

Most Fat Admirers have an ambiguous relationship with gluttony, I suspect. And yet the existence of websites like the sporadically updated www.feeder.com or newsgroups such as alt.sex.weight-gain testify to the power it plays in our imaginations. While growing evidence (and size acceptance ideology) downplays the relationship between size and consumption, the majority of us grew up equating gormandizing with the forms we love. Breathes there an FA who has never fantasized about gluttony and its perceived results? (If so, they're probably not on this home page!) Whether you find the results or the process itself exciting, the act of overeating recurs so strongly in FA fantasy that it can't be ignored.

That brings us to this collection, which includes some of literature's most famous odes to gluttony (Ben Jonson's "Hymm to the Belly;" Petronius' description of an epic feast from "The Satyricon;" a soliloquy from Shakespeare's Falstaff) along with more modern ruminations on the subject. Of these, probably the peak is food writer M.F.K. Fisher's "G is for Gluttony," an honest appreciation of the joy of overindulgence by a writer unafraid to admit her own urges. Fisher's essay is only one of two pieces written by women in the book (the second: an unfunny piece by Fran Lebowitz, this era's most overrated humorist). Historically, gluttony has been most typically presented in literature as a male vice.

Consider the image of the gout-ridden gentleman, an exemplar of the ill-effects of gluttony. Or Henry Fairlie's short essay, "Gluttony or Gula," which presents us with the image of a pop-eyed fat man overeating at table. Or the hero of John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces, who unabashedly gluts himself on hot dogs. While Western Lit abounds in descriptions of fulsome women, their size is more traditionally equated with matronly lovingness, not with sin.

Another point from this collection: in those days preceding Twelve Step Programs, alcoholism was seen as a form of gluttony. When Falstaff - arguably the greatest gluttonous creation in literature - glowingly describes his vice, he focuses on the consumption of sack. Most FA fantasy refuses to truck with this, though, if only because so few of us find drunkenness sexy. And though the folks in OA have tried to appropriate the central theses of AA, it doesn't quite wash in the popular mind.

Face it: overeating is fun. And - unlike overdrinking - it doesn't result in our making stupid, insulting statements to our loved ones. Compare it to any of the other Seven Deadlies (Anger, Greed, Envy, Sloth, Sneezy or Dopey); as so-called Sins go, eating to "excess" should be the most guilt-free. In our diet frenzy society, though, taking that extra meatball has become the moral equivalent of incest.

As a sort of mini-overview of the way that Western Lit has handled the topic, Gluttony is an elucidating read. I could quibble with some of the omissions (why leave out Joyce Carol Oates' description of family table gluttony from Wonderland if you're gonna excerpt from novels? And what about Henry Kressing's The Cook?) and inclusions - but anthologies were made to elicit such second guessing. Don't go to this book expecting "Emblems, Inc." (how's that for sneakily plugging one of my own stories?) or any other FA fantasies, though. At this cultural juncture, that type of material is still considered too far removed from the mainstream.

Copyright 1997 - Oakhaus Designs

---Wilson Barbers