Oysters High and Low

Chincoteagues, Willapoints, Blue Points, Olympias, Portugaises, and Whitestaples. Oysters sizzled in butter, simmered in cream, boiled in their own juices, baked with breadcrumbs, broiled over rock salt, roasted whole, thrown on grills, chopped into soups, mashed into bisques, fried with eggs, stuffed into turkeys, and served raw on the half shell over beds of shaved ice. Oysters eaten in Whittier, Doylestown, New Orleans, Toulon, Dijon, Marseille, Nuremberg, Liverpool, and Geneva. Oyster history, oyster biology, oyster recipes, oyster fiction, and oyster sex.In Consider the Oyster, M.F.K. Fisher considers the oyster from every possible angle. Despite its seemingly small topic and slender girth, this remains one of her best-known books, partly because it inspired David Foster Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster” and partly because its prose is every bit as succulent as its protagonist. Fisher writes, “There are three kinds of oyster-eaters: those loose-minded sports who will eat anything, hot, cold, thin, thick, dead or alive, as long as it is oyster; those who will eat them raw and only raw; and those who with equal severity will eat them cooked and no way other.” She belongs to group...