Les fins de la faim
A playful fairy tale about hunger and curiosity.
Earlier this year, I visited the British Library to read Angela Carter’s personal papers for my master’s thesis. In a file titled “Miscellanous Fairy Tale Material,” I found many treasures including Carter’s teaching notes from a creative writing class at Brown.
I have been hurtling myself at Carter’s work from the first time I read it, my admiration powerfully compelling me to crack it open and better understand it by re-reading it, emulating it in my own writing, dissecting it and dedicating my master’s thesis research to it. I felt like I was learning from Carter through the veil as I transcribed her notes.
Her teaching model seems to have been giving her students a fairy tale to read, helping them to find the core or essential elements that defined the tale—similar to the identifying elements in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther index, but not so formally defined—then to recontextualize those elements in a new setting or situation. In short, it was a primer for what Carter had done, masterfully, in her short story collection The Bloody Chamber.
One of her lesson plans was about The Wise Girl, who answers a series of riddles by putting a mirror up to the questioner. When I read the Les Cassettes theme I knew I also wanted to bake in elements from Peau d’Ane, who loses her ring as she bakes for the Prince. I consider this version to be a first draft of “Les fins de la faim,” and hope to rewrite and expand it in time.
For now, you can read it on Les Cassette’s substack, as well as listen to me reading it aloud in their podcast (at 6min), along with a little song.
The Cook stole glances at the dessert she had prepared, until she could not help herself, and stole the cake itself. Each bite caressed her tongue like a lover’s embrace, and then the last slice was gone as it was time to bring it upstairs.
The Cook went herself to announce that she had nothing more to serve that night.
—Truly, nothing? asked the Mistress of the house.
—I have not a thing to serve you, because I stole your cake to eat myself.
—And why did you steal the cake to eat it?
—Because I was curious to know whether it could be as good as I imagined it to be.
—And was it?