The etymology of "barbecue" is vaut le détour: the word derives from the Haitian barbacado, a rack-frame system used to suspend off the ground such items as beds. We may conjecture the device's use as an instrument of torture or cannibalism.... The act of setting fire is a deep human imperative that continues to be celebrated in the potent suburban ritual of charcoal briquettes and lighter fluid--a direct link with man's ancestral past, with the magical acts of painting, followed by hunting, followed by an open fire, followed by the tribal feast on freshly killed mammoth-flesh, paralleling the composition of the shopping list, the expedition to the supermarket, the barbecue itself, and the ceremonial male feat of dismemberment or, as it is quaintly known, "carving."
John Lanchester, from The Debt to Pleasure
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Barbecue at our House
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