The Futurist Cookbook

No other cultural force except the early twentieth-century avant-garde movement Futurism has produced a provocative work about art disguised as an easy-to-read cookbook. Part manifesto, part artistic joke, Fillippo Marinetti's The Futurist Cookbook is a collection of recipes, experiments, declamations and allegorical tales. Here are recipes for ice cream on the moon; candied atmospheric electricities; nocturnal love feasts; sculpted meats. Marinetti also sets out his argument for abolishing pasta as ill-suited to modernity, and advocates a style of cuisine that will increase creativity. Although at times betraying its author's nationalistic sympathies, The Futurist Cookbook is funny, provocative, whimsical, disdainful of sluggish traditions and delighted by the velocity and promise of modernity.