Volume 26, Number 20 · December 20, 1979
The Indigestible
By M.F.K. Fisher
Hunger is, to describe it most simply, an urgent need for food. It is a craving, a desire. It is, I would guess, much older than man as we now think of him, and probably synonymous with the beginnings of sex. It is strange that we feel that anything as intrinsic as this must continually be wooed and excited, as if it were an unwilling and capricious part of us. If someone is not hungry, it indicates that his body does not, for a time and a reason, want to be fed. The logical thing, then, is to let him rest. He will either die, which he may have been meant to do, or he will once more feel the craving, the desire, the urgency to eat. He will have to do that before he can satisfy most of his other needs. Then he will revive again, which apparently he was meant to do.
Feature, 4257 words
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