Mary Roach Quote
At one chew per second, the Fletcherizing of a single bite of shallot would take more than ten minutes. Supper conversation presented a challenge. Horace Fletcher came for a quiet dinner, sufficiently chewed, wrote the financier William Forbes in his journal from 1906. Woe befall the non-Fletcherizer forced to endure what historian Margaret Barnett called the tense and awful silence which . . . accompanies their excruciating tortures of mastication. Nutrition faddist John Harvey Kellogg, whose sanatorium briefly embraced Fletcherism,* tried to reenliven mealtimes by hiring a quartette to sing The Chewing Song,† an original Kellogg composition, while diners grimly toiled. I searched in vain for film footage, but Barnett was probably correct in assuming that Fletcherites at table were not an attractive sight. Franz Kafka’s father, she reports, hid behind a newspaper at dinnertime to avoid watching the writer Fletcherize.
At one chew per second, the Fletcherizing of a single bite of shallot would take more than ten minutes. Supper conversation presented a challenge. Horace Fletcher came for a quiet dinner, sufficiently chewed, wrote the financier William Forbes in his journal from 1906. Woe befall the non-Fletcherizer forced to endure what historian Margaret Barnett called the tense and awful silence which . . . accompanies their excruciating tortures of mastication. Nutrition faddist John Harvey Kellogg, whose sanatorium briefly embraced Fletcherism,* tried to reenliven mealtimes by hiring a quartette to sing The Chewing Song,† an original Kellogg composition, while diners grimly toiled. I searched in vain for film footage, but Barnett was probably correct in assuming that Fletcherites at table were not an attractive sight. Franz Kafka’s father, she reports, hid behind a newspaper at dinnertime to avoid watching the writer Fletcherize.
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