Book Review: The Rituals of Dinner - The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities and Meaning of Table Manners by Margaret Visser

The purpose of table manners is to stop us killing each other. That's the rather provocative assertion in Margaret Visser's excellent deconstruction of why we have such elaborate and infuriating rituals around eating.

It starts, naturally enough, with a chapter on human sacrifice. It is grim, violent, and soaked in blood. A delightful amuse-bouche this isn't! But it makes the case that this is (part) of the origin of our modern table manners.

We no longer need to appease the gods and secure a plentiful harvest, but those rituals echo down because they are hewn into our culture.

Ritual is action frequently repeated, in a form largely laid down in advance; it aims to get those actions right. Everyone present knows what should happen, and notices when it does not. Dinner too is habitual

Food is performance. It is something I think I instinctively knew, but it is fascinating having it spelled out in such a blunt fashion.

a meal can be thought of as a ritual and a work of art, with limits laid down, desires aroused and fulfilled, enticements, variety, patterning, and plot.

A meal has a plot?!? Well, of course! The starter, main, and dessert are our beginning, middle, and end. A meal that starts with chocolate mixed with cauliflower and finishes with a roast drenched in porridge is as nonsensical as a murder mystery with no murder and a Hobbit scarecrow as the protagonist.

For a book about dinner, it is quick to point out that manners and ritual invade every aspect of our life. The prose is stunningly prescient:

This is a time of transition, when old manners are dying and new ones are still being forged. A good many of our uncertainties, discomforts, and disagreements stem from this state of flux. Sometimes we hold the terrifying conviction that the social fabric is breaking up altogether, and that human life is becoming brutish and ugly because of a general backsliding from previous social agreements that everyone should habitually behave with consideration for others.

As a teenager, you probably whinged about all the "unjust" rules foisted on you by your parents and schools. Everything seemed so petty and counter-intuitive. Why can't you keep your elbows on the table and talk with your mouth full? Visser is a kind and patient teacher.

Other people inevitably make demands on us and inhibit us, partly in order to make room for themselves; we learn that it is in our best interests to play the game, because we also require the freedom which other people’s restraint allows to us.

Unlike other cultural books, this doesn't just focus on WEIRD nations; we're happily trundled off to explore the rituals of a dozen cultures. This could quite easily have fallen into the trap of "aren't other people strange!" but Visser is as clinical as an alien anthropologist. She perfectly observes our cultural foibles as well - making it clear that every culture is strange.

The formality of hamburgers lies in their relentlessly predictable shape, and in the superimposed and separate layers of food which make sophisticated references to parts of the sequential model for a formal meal.

The book is a delight. It would benefit from a few illustrations to help make some of the points clearer, but it is a fun and educational read.