I Spy

Matt Yglesias is entirely correct to point out that Julia Child was a pretty awesome spy before she brought French cooking to America, and that the ads for Julie & Julia, the new movie based on Child's memoir, My Life in France, and Julie Powell's memoir of cooking her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking, totally elide that fact, suggesting that Julia Child was lost and looking for a calling when she headed off to cooking school in Paris. I agree that I would watch a movie about Julia Child's spy years in a heartbeat, and I think it would be a good thing if folks knew that she was able to write Mastering the Art of French Cooking in part because federal employment brought her and her husband overseas, and provided a salary Paul and Julia could live on. But I also think that Child didn't view spying as her calling. Cooking was what it turned out to be, and it's okay to portray her life as a search for that.