margaret visser - HarperCollins Publishers

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The Rituals of Dinner

MARGARET VISSER

© Copyright 2001 by HarperCollinsPublishersLtd All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews. For information address HarperCollinsPublishersLtd, Suite 2900, Hazelton Lanes, 55 Avenue Road, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5R 3L2. This author guide has been written by Samarra Hyde.

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Contents · 2

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABOUT

The Rituals of Dinner 0-00-639105-2; $19.95 HarperPerennialCanada paperback edition

Margaret Visser was born in northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. The landscape of her childhood was dry, hot, and colourful. Raised in a mining town, she recalls huge anthills covered with morning glories in her own and the neighbouring gardens. Her family became known for their Siamese cats, as they were the only people in town to have them. As a child one of their cats went missing, and it was returned to them tied by its feet to a pole which was carried between two men. Thankfully, the cat was fine.

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She left Africa at the age of seventeen to study journalism in London, England. She quickly realized that journalism was not for her, after working at her first journalistic job for the obituary section of a newspaper. Aside from visiting and having to question the bereaved, her job entailed answering the phone, something that she found quite terrifying as there were no phones in the Rhodesia of her childhood. Leaving journalism behind, she decided to study French at the Sorbonne. In Paris, she met and married Colin Visser. Margaret and Colin both taught English for the British Council in Baghdad for two years, but they imagined a life filled with travels and adventures, living a couple of years here and there, for the rest of their lives. Their next stop was America. Colin Visser, who had studied at Oxford, decided to finish his graduate work in Rochester, New York. They found it difficult to adjust to American culture, and shortly thereafter they moved to Canada. In Toronto, Margaret decided to take an undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto. Initially, she had wanted to study archeology, which she had learned to love during her time in Baghdad. She recalls her fascination with the ancient cities surrounding Baghdad, many of which dated from 3000 B.C. and earlier. No degree in archaeology existed at the undergraduate level, and her advisor suggested that she study an ancient language. When she suggested Latin, her advisor said that she must also study Greek. Margaret Visser grew to love the Greek language and the study of the Classics. She earned a Ph.D. at U of T, and then taught Classics at York University for eighteen years.

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Introduction · 3

A classicist by training, Margaret Visser often shares her wisdom with the masses. She has contributed to CBC Radio’s Morningside, The Arts Tonight, Ideas, Open House, Radio Noon and Women’s Hour on BBC4 in Britain. She also researched and wrote twenty television programs on Food and Festivals which were shown on PBS in the United States. Margaret Visser has appeared on such television programs as CTV’s Lifetime, Canada AM, CBC’s The Journal, the Today Show in the U.S. and BBC Television’s Barbara Live in Britain, and has been interviewed on Australian radio and television. A feature program on her life was produced in 1988 and aired on CBC’s Monitor, and a television feature on her work was made for ABC in Australia. She also wrote a six-part series on everyday life in six European cities that was broadcast by BBC Radio Four in the winter of 1998. Margaret Visser is the author of three bestselling books: Much Depends on Dinner, The Rituals of Dinner and The Way We Are. All three of these titles were recently re-released in paperback format in PerennialCanada editions.

The Way We Are is a collection of vignettes from Margaret Visser’s column in Saturday Night magazine; she was a contributing editor to the magazine from 1988 to 1994. John Fraser, who was editor of Saturday Night magazine at the time, describes the typical experience of reading a Visser column as starting off “from a comfy, well-bolstered position— a nice tan makes us look healthier, for example, or Valentine’s Day cards are tacky—and then, before we even have our seatbelts fastened, find ourselves whisked away in a series of brisk paragraphs through historical contexts and cultural cross-references to a destination that is neither comfy nor commonplace.” Margaret Visser recently published The Geometry of Love: Space, Time, Mystery, and Meaning in an Ordinary Church with HarperFlamingoCanada. She currently divides her time among Toronto, Barcelona, and southwestern France.

AN INTERVIEW WITH MARGARET VISSER While chopping onions for sauce soubise, the idea came to her for Much Depends on Dinner. “Chopping onions is not an occupation which favours dreaming. Perhaps it was boredom or annoyance or simply that when you chop onions you had better keep your mind alert, and my concentration spilled over, but I started wondering about onions.” A search for the where, how, and wherefore of onions led her to “at least eleven different collections of books and…articles in scientific periodicals, journals of anthropology, sociology, and folklore, histories of religion, culinary-historical writings in various journals, business, and trade magazines…” and the realization that the subject of food was in need of a book. The resulting Much Depends on Dinner won the Glenfiddich Award in Britain for the Food Book of the Year in 1989, and was named one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly and The New York Times Book Review. The Rituals of Dinner, a sequel of sorts to Much Depends on Dinner, explores how and where we eat. It won the International Association of Culinary Professionals’ Literary Food Writing Award and the Jane Grigson Award in the U.S. It was also a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year. perennialcanada AUTHOR

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Q. In the essay “Yes, But What Does It Mean?” you write about the culture shock that you felt when you saw a packet of mustard in a New York restaurant. You wrote “I have been trying to understand what we participate in and what is going on around us ever since.” Can you comment on this? A. The culture shock that I felt at the time far surpassed what the essay conveyed. We’d gone to New York City straight from Baghdad, and we were disappointed when we were told that we couldn’t go to Rochester, New York, by the canal that was so clearly marked on the maps. So we took the train. All our worldly goods were wrapped in carpets and we had a beautiful trunk that we had bought in Baghdad because it was so cheap but it is now one of the finest pieces of furniture we possess. We reached Rochester feeling raw. Colin was studying at the time, and I remember feeling hysterical at the height of the buildings and the speed of the cars. My husband had to come fetch me from a phone booth because I couldn’t walk home. We had no idea what America was going to be like. It’s very valuable remembering what it’s like not to belong. How amazing, bizarre, and extraordinary a culture is that of North America.

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Q. Through the media of radio, television, and books, you have taken potentially academic subjects and made them both accessible and entertaining. Did you choose to make these ideas popular with a general audience? A. I was pushed into writing. While teaching at York University in Toronto, I didn’t have a car and was given a lift home one afternoon. My friend asked me, “Do you ever listen to Morningside?” “No” “I was on Morningside yesterday. You should try it; it’s fun.” So I called Morningside and said that I wanted to be on the show and that I wanted to talk about Ancient Greek mythology. They showed a lack of interest. It was the eighties at the time and so I said, “You know nothing about Toronto society in the 1980s if you know nothing about Greek mythology.” Five months later they called and asked me if I was the woman who wanted to talk about Toronto and Ancient Greece and would I like to come down to the studios and show them what I meant. I wanted to talk about something interesting, something that would intrigue people. So I explained how it is that in Zambia, which was northern Rhodesia, Africans eat insects but no one in Toronto does. Why is this? You have to understand anthropology to understand Ancient Greece. And the answer to this question can be reached through the study of anthropology. After that I was asked to return to Morningside. I talked about different everyday things and why it is that they are important in our culture, like oranges, potatoes, and sugar. This interest grew into a general fascination with food. My mother is an English lady who never had much time for food. She can’t imagine how it came about that I became interested in it. I spoke with Peter Gzowski about food quite a bit. People would call in and ask me about my book. I hadn’t written a book so I decided to do so. That was Much Depends on Dinner. I’d been teaching Classics at York University for about eighteen years and so after publishing my first book, I decided to give up teaching for writing. Q. You blend together many disciplines in your work. Where did this approach to research arise from? A. Studying the Classics is the study of a whole culture. It includes history, language, anthropology, philosophy, art history, and methodology. It’s what being a Classicist is about. perennialcanada AUTHOR

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Modern people who are specialists tend to dig down a narrow but deep hole. Many new truths and insights come from outside of that hole, from things all around. So when I research, I go off the subject, research around it, and that research often gives a whole new point of view. So it’s partly from the way I was educated and partly curiosity, which leads me to take in more than you need. In radio I had to think “what will I talk about?” Modern people are so educated, how will I know if people already know that? Will it be boring? So I take a thing and try to account for that thing. Like a church or an orange. I try to account for an object and not an idea. An idea can be put into someone’s mind, but not an object. Taking an object for a subject enables you to digress, to talk about all sorts of things. Everybody has a mystical experience whether or not they want to call it that. I try to account for it, talk about it. For instance how a mystical experience is turned into a building, which is the subject of my new book, The Geometry of Love. Q. Many of your observations concern the role of men and women throughout history and in different cultures. Was there any particular incident or experience that shaped your beliefs or led to your interest in gender politics? A. A new view of male and female relations is one of the great discoveries of the twentieth century. It has been a horrible century and perhaps because of all the destruction, a new way of looking at women has been able to emerge. It’s more interesting than even the technological revolution. Before this century men and women were caught in a system where it wasn’t possible to look without prejudice at women. This new way of seeing humanity is the one good thing that happened in our century. It’s the revolution of the twentieth century and it’s as big as the agricultural revolution. Being alive in our time it is impossible not to react and think about the way we see the roles and lives of men and women. I was also raised by nuns and as a child I was only around women. This may sound medieval, but it meant that I was never under the thumb of men, I had to learn to be crushed after I had left school! Although there was nothing fluffy about those nuns either.

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THE RITUALS OF DINNER Table manners have a history, ancient and complex: each society has gradually evolved its system, altering its ways sometimes to suit circumstances, but also vigilantly maintaining its customs in order to support its ideals and its aesthetic style, and to buttress its identity. Our own society has made choices in order to arrive at the table manners we now observe. Other people, in other parts of the world today, have rules that are different from ours, and it is important to try to comprehend the reasoning that lies behind what they do if we are to understand what we do and why. My aim has been to enrich anyone’s experience of a meal in the European and American tradition, to heighten our awareness and interest on the occasions when we might be invited to share meals in other cultures, and to give the reader some idea of the great range of tradition, significance, and social sophistication which is inherent in the actions performed during the simplest dinner eaten with family or friends. —Margaret Visser

B Drawing upon a rich blend of traditions, including anthropology, sociology, and history, Margaret Visser looks at both how we eat and why we eat as we do. The symbolism and history of forks, the history of tablecloths, the way napkins are folded, and the origins of words in French, Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic are all touched upon in this study. Differing philosophies on manners from Erasmus to Emily Post are also served up in this fascinating and amusing feast of the rituals of dining. It has been claimed that “table manners are as old as human society itself,” and that all societies have rules governing the way people eat. Even “eating people was hedged about with ceremony and elaborate care.” The ancient Fijians “ate everyday meals with their hands; when it came to eating human flesh, and only then, they used a special wooden fork.” perennialcanada AUTHOR

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The practice of cannibalism is now a rarity. However, “behind every rule of table etiquette lurks the determination of each person present to be a diner, not a dish.” For instance in 1669, pointed knives were banned from tables in France both to discourage their use as toothpicks and to prevent mealtime assassinations. Polite restraint is exhibited by Asian cultures that use chopsticks. The Chinese knife is used for “splitting firewood, gutting and scaling fish, slicing vegetables, mincing meat, crushing garlic (with the dull side of the blade), cutting one’s nails, sharpening pencils, whittling new chopsticks, killing pigs, shaving (it is kept sharp enough, or supposedly is), and settling old and new scores with one’s enemies.” It is interesting, however, that it is banned from the dinner table. While we eat to live, how we eat ties us closer together. From correct form at a Ugandan beer party to table talk in Katmandu, dining is a social act. A meal is a drama in which our social mores are exhibited. Manners are meant to take into account the sensibilities and needs of fellow diners and to protect us from roughness, greed, and the baser instincts. Just as often, manners are used as a means to exclude people. In France during the time of Louis XIV, aristocrats “performed an important experiment in manners.” In order to exclude the rapidly rising bourgeois class, French aristocrats developed the idea of the ideal courtier. This courtier exuded an innate and effortless grace. Their manners helped them to separate those born into the upper class from those who aspired to be a part of that class. Through a comparison of old and new world manners, from the medieval concept of “courtesy” to the common man’s manner system or “civility,” Margaret Visser takes us on a journey through time and space revealing the meanings and symbolism of our mannerly behaviour. She leaves us with the observation that although we are becoming more informal because “modern society has more than enough devices for keeping people apart,” we still adhere to a mannerly system based on the principles of neatness, cleanliness, and noiselessness. And while the acceleration of time is impacting both what we eat and how we eat it, going to McDonald’s or Burger King is as cloaked in ritual as fine dining at a French or Italian restaurant.

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QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1)

2)

3)

Visser writes that “most of the picturesque details that strike travellers as weird have to do with table manners” and that we are startled when confronted with a different way of drinking, eating, or preparing food. Do you agree with this idea? Have you ever experienced culture shock around food? “Food is tradition, largely because a taste acquired is rarely lost and taste and smells which we have known in the past recall for us, as nothing else can, the memories associated with them.” Are there certain foods or dishes that remind you of past events? Margaret Visser suggests that adults have one of two attitudes towards food. The first is “the fear of the new” in which people are conservative in their choices, eating mainly what they ate growing up. The second is “the love of the new” in which people seek out variety, trying new ways of cooking, new combinations of tastes, and new ingredients. Why do you think the second pattern is now common?

4)

“Sharing is the foundation of civilized behavior; it is what links individuals, families, villages, and tribes together.” Do you agree that sharing is the foundation of civilized behavior?

5)

Manners are usually taught in childhood and so become effortless over time. Since manners are learned behaviour, they often divide groups of people along cultural and class lines. Taking etiquette classes, including the proper manners during a business meal, is rising in popularity in Canada. Are the class walls in Canada permeable or are they more difficult to surmount than they seem?

6)

In ancient Greek society, a symposium or drinking party with lively preplanned discussions of either serious or trivial matters would follow dinner. Some of the ideas discussed were: “What is love,” “Why meat spoils more readily in moonlight than in sunlight,” and “Whether people of old did better with portions served to each, or people of today, who dine from a

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common supply.” Do you enter into discussions during or after a common meal? If you do, what sorts of topics arise? 7)

In nineteenth-century Europe, women were not expected to ask for wine at the table; the man was to supply it, and every time a man filled his own glass, he also offered to fill the woman’s glass. The woman was expected not to accept the wine each time it was offered. Are there still established roles for men and women to follow at formal dining tables?

8)

Margaret Visser writes: “modern manners increasingly force us to be casual.” Formality allows for distance between both individuals and groups, while informality reduces this distance. We tend to live such private lives in our separate houses and cars, moving in “anonymous, hurrying crowds,” that we often have to seek out opportunities to meet other people and don’t have the luxury of time in order to be formal. Do you agree with this argument?

9)

Cleanliness is essential to social acceptance and mobility in our culture. As an extension of this, Margaret Visser suggests that our standards for cleanliness and good manners could become more important to us than our morals. For instance, at a cocktail party a known yet clean and well-dressed murderer or thief may receive a warmer welcome than a dirty yet innocent tramp. Do you agree that there is a trend in our society to view the “unclean” and socially downtrodden in such a suspicious and contemptuous light?

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