Books: Ostrea Edulis & Others

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THE OYSTERS OF LOCMARIAQUER by Eleanor Clark. 203 pages. Pantheon. $4.95.

Was one Sergius Orata the noblest and least appreciated Roman of them all? While more militant Romans were battling the Cimbri along the Rhine toward the end of the 2nd century B.C. and the poet Lucilius was pouring out his satires, Sergius Orata was pouring his considerable fortune into his single passion—the cultivation of the oyster. The ups and downs of that bivalvular mollusk ever since are the subject of Novelist Clark's book—a witty blend of fact, fable and fine poetic nonsense.

Author Clark, wife of Novelist Robert Penn Warren, became an oyster addict while living in the village of Locmariaquer on the coast of Brittany, chief breeding ground of the world's most prized oyster. The Locmariaquer oyster is known to science as the Ostrea edulis. To the locals it is known simply as the plate (the flat one), to distinguish it from the bumpy Portuguese oyster, which is sometimes foisted off on innocent diners as a true edulis, and which ostreophiles regard as little better than a mussel or even a clam.

Fathers & Mothers. Ostrea edulis is fast disappearing from the Atlantic coast of Europe. But the diner lucky enough to encounter one will not soon forget it: "Intimations of the ages of man, some piercing intuition of the sea and all its weeds and breezes shiver you a split second from that little stimulus on the palate. You are eating the sea and are on the verge of remembering something connected with the flavor of life itself."

When she can muzzle her metaphors, Author Clark is a mine of oyster lore. Millions of years older than man, the oyster is "prolific to the point of indecency." Since oysters are hermaphrodites, a single oyster may be both a father and a mother, changing roles several times in the course of a year. In the best of all possible worlds, an oyster might live 15 years, but only one in 10,000 makes it to maturity. The tingle-snail can bore through the shell of a full-grown oyster and scoop out the meat in six hours. The starfish pries open the shell of the oyster and devours it. And of course there is man.

Touch & Go. Things were not too bad until the early 18th century, when "the drag," otherwise known in France as "the oyster guillotine," was invented. That instrument, a convex iron blade 5 ft. or 6 ft. long, denuded the coasts of Europe and the U.S. by ripping up the oyster beds. It was touch and go whether the oyster would survive at all, until an inspired French marine biologist, Victor Coste, discovered in the mid-1800s the secret of collecting larvae and raising seed, making it possible to grow oysters in waters where for various reasons they are unable to breed. The oysters of Locmariaquer, for instance, are transplanted three times before they are shipped to market. The success of the process depends on what the French call tromper I'huître ("fooling the oysters"), an ingenious method of making the oyster clean itself out and preventing it from "yawning" and losing its liquid when it is exposed to the air.