Claude on the Cannibals

Larry's been haunting the obituary pages again where he finds this from the account of Claude Lévi-Strauss, who died October 31 at 100. Among other things he chose to

consider the differences in meaning of roasted and boiled food (cannibals, he suggested, tended to boil their friends and roast their enemies.

[But ah, how that takes me back: I had a girlfriend in the old days who figured that Lévi-Strauss' stories would brighten up any party. "Let's ask Claude," she would say. Now that I think of it, Larry's would, too.]