SOURCE: "In the Company of M.F.K. Fisher," in Boston Review, Vol. IX, No. 5, October, 1984, pp. 9-11.

In the following essay, Benfey offers an appreciation of Fisher's career, focusing on the autobiographical and "American" qualities of her writing.

If you go to a library to look for M.F.K. Fisher's books, you will find them scattered all through the stacks. If the library is big—big enough to hold a history of California wine-making, say, or a book about Aix-en-Provence (Fisher has written both)—you will have to climb up and downstairs searching through different categories. You will probably find more of her works among the cookbooks than elsewhere (in a university library these will be under some such heading as "Technology," next to books on building dams), but you will also find her works among books of fiction, travel, and autobiography. In its sheer diversity...