The Pleasantries of Famous Family, the French, Having "As Much Wine as Possible [Forced] Down Your Throat" and Race

That person with a three piece suit of "pale green with blue pinstripes" and a blue hankie sticking out of the breast pocket might also be known as "The floor manager- or maitre d', or supervisor, the host, the headwaiter, or whatever you call someone like that in restaurants like this," and is our fumbling, bumbling character that seems to be tongue tied by the Lohmans.  He represents a restaurant was formerly "a dairy ... or a sewage disposal plant." I don't know about you, but I would love to pay hundreds of dollars to consume fine wine and 'snacks' for meals in a building that used to be a sewage treatment plant.  (Keep this detail in mind when you read about the dark pond next to the building...)  Back to our floor manager.  Recurring attributes are his hand and how he presents the food.  Our narrator, Paul Lohman, takes constant note at the height of the floor manager's hand above the food, approximated to only be a centimeter or so, largely a jest at the intrusiveness of the floor managers and how they constantly 'check in' to make sure the food is good.  The other attribute is how at first he uses just his pinky to point to the different parts of the food on the plate.  This drives our narrator to winder why, what was he hiding, and "was that supposed to be chic?"  Conclusion, "perhaps they were covered with flaky eczema or symptoms of some untreatable disease." Sounds appeal into have a centimeter above your food right?  Later on we find out that the fingers that had been curled underneath had nothing wrong with them. This gets at both the dangers of giving others the perception that you have something to hide, but also making assumptions simply based on the fact that they appear to be hiding it.

Food and its cost is an interesting consideration when choosing and ordering at restaurants.  For our narrator this is of particular fascination at the most 'high end' restaurants.  His reasoning and interest is in how the "yawning chasm between the dish itself and the price you have to pay for it."  For many paying 30 or 50 dollars for a clean plate and a little bit of lamb on it is unfathomable.  As the saying goes; 'would you like some lamb with that plate?'  It's "as though the two variables - money on one side, food on the other - have nothing to do with each other." And then comes the apparent practice of only Dutch fine restaurants to "top up your glass, [and] cast a wistful eye at the bottle when it seems to be getting empty.  Our narrator recounts a friend telling him that their tactic was "to actually force as much wine as possible down your throat, wine they sell for seven times what the importer charges for it."  And then waiting a long time between bringing the appetizer and taking orders for the entree so that "people will order more wine out of pure boredom."  And lastly when "the customers [begin] to look around impatiently were the plates shoved into the microwave." Sounds like fine dinning to me.  Reminds me in part of the argument against monopolies.  Once you sit down at their table, although it's possible to leave, you are basically tied to it from ordering your appetizer to getting the check.  The argument against monopolies is that they will abuse their control on their customers, which sounds eerily consistent with these restaurants.  This also can bring about the question of what the responsibilities are for the restaurant to allow you to complete a dinner in a reasonable time and wont be abused by them.  

Even been eating with your family and notice that the atmosphere in the restaurant suddenly changes, or happen to notice that someone famous has just entered and the staff are all bumping around?  Well, as you might have expected there is a noticeable difference when Serge Lohman, Paul's brother, and Holland Prime Minister shoo-in strolled in beaming.  Many of the customers attempted not to display recognition that Serge and Babette, his wife, had walked in.  Yet "they all seemed to lean a few fractions of an inch closer to their plates, all apparently doing their best at the same time to forge ahead with their conversations, to avoid falling silent, because the volume of the general hubbub increased audibly."  Interestingly people, well at least those who don't blanket stare at the new guest, make an effort to make it appear as if they are oblivious to the entrance of the famous person. An interesting social observation that Paul mentions later is that whether you stare or forge on with your conversation you are effectively doing the same thing, taking note that they are there.  In someways, unless you are used to them or seeing famous people, you are stuck noting their being there once you see them.

Several pages of this section are dedicated to the recount of the events in France with both families sons including the adopted one.  Paul notes that Serge and Babette "belonged to that class of Dutch people who think everything French is 'great.' " However, he makes sure to point out that if they looked deeper and simply didn't "fail to see" that they were unwelcome quests.  There was graffiti that featured "Anti-Dutch slogans" but were shrugged off for being only the thoughts of " ' a tiny minority' " when in fact that is not the case.  One of the reasons the French are unhappy with the wealthy Dutch moving in is because they are being displaced by rising housing prices.  This is extremely relevent today in California.  All the time we hear about protest about the skyrocketing prices in San Francisco and the whole Silicon Valley area.  We don't know yet what the French people do, if anything, but it could be interesting to compare reactions.

What would a Dinner be without discussing which movie is the most racist and arguing on how races should present themselves.  The conversation drifts to black men who dress in suits as white men do.  Claire notes that " 'at least [violent blacks from the worst neighborhoods] were themselves. They were no longer some watered-down version of a white man.' "  Serge brings up the point of whether we would rather have them remain that way and "go on killing each other in their ghettos." Obviously this isn't what the world wants, but this reminded me of Song of Solomon as we know Macon the second as being very similar to a white man in contrast with the men in Solomon's General Store that Milkman fights with.  The conversation goes on to talk about how "Dutch people, white people, Europeans - look at other cultures. The things [they're] afraid of." A universal perception that we know is not always true. And the final comment on race, or rather sexuality in this case is of a woman who was interviewed on a TV show.  She referred to them as " ' ' Such sweet boys!' ' ", but Paul thinks that what she "Meant to say was that even though her two neighbors were homosexual, the way they took care of her cats when she was gone showed that they were still people like you and me." Then he goes on to say that "you have to turn the situation around.  If [they had] instead had pelted [the cats] with stones or tossed poisoned pork chops ... they would have been just plain dirty faggots."  This holds two parts, one is that it could be a jest at societies values or perhaps just a reflection of our narrators, but the other gets at the real meaning or understanding behind people's words, even if it's through a TV.

Interesting pieces from the section:

The idea of the "uninitiated."  In this case the initiated or the knowledgeable are Paul and Claire of each other.  This gets at the depth of understanding that can come between two people that have spent time and interacted with each other.  Think of twins, or some couples who know the other so well that they can seemingly finish their sentences or convey a world of meaning in a single nod.  This allows for a sort of hidden conversation, something that fosters this knowledge in the first place.

Paul, the narrator also presents an alternate use for the "Law of drama.  The law that says no pistol must appear if no one's going to fire it."  In The Dinner's  case the pistol is the unhappiness that Babette has for her husband, something Paul wants to come out.  The law of drama comes in in that he knows that it will come out before the end of the night

Adoption, a usually positive action, as it is in The Dinner takes on a slightly different note.  In this case Serge and Babette support a child in Burkina Faso and then formally adopt him after some time.  Paul on the other hand notes that it's "a sort of rent-to-own agreement ... Or like a cat you bring home from the animal shelter; if the cat scratches the sofa to bits or pisses all over the house, you take it back."  This a more ownership based view, and this might remind you of indentured servants or slavery.  Of course these are interesting things to pair alongside adoption.  This could be a comment on Serge, the adopter, or our narrator himself and how he views the world rather pessimistically.

Relationships can be fineky, as Paul pointed out all happy families are alike but "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."  It seems that Serge and Babette don't exactly see eye to eye.  This is bubbling up to a major argument which Paul wants to bring out, as I have mentioned elsewhere.  Paul cites the way Babette takes about how Serge went to go "tasting wine in the Loire Valley," and how Babette from his observations made an effort to let him know that she had been crying on the ride there, and then later Babette storms off from the table.  Yet Babette has stayed with Serge which Paul attests to being like "the way you don't put aside a bad book when you're halfway through it." Is this a real function of relationships?  I would guess yes with the addition that it depends on the personality of the unhappy person.

Appearance versus reality also comes in with the lamb's lettuce on one of the plates.  Paul recalls that they reminded him of "the little leaves [they] would push through the bars of the cage each morning," in elementary school, to the hamster or guinea pig.  Something like what he fed to animals is now being served at a fine restaurant.  This part also may give some foreshadowing when Paul remembers "one morning [finding the hamster] was dead, just like the little turtle, the two white mice, and the stick insects that had preceded it."  Are we going to see some casualties or death later on? I guess we'll just have to read on down the menu.