Like a modern Ruth Benedict immersed in classical literature, Visser (Much Depends on Dinner
) examines what it really means, in the course of human interaction, to be thankful. Her kindly book turns on itself in an exhaustive but continually engrossing fashion. Beginning with the assumption that “[g]ratitude must be freely given; otherwise, it might be a polite show, but it is not gratitude,” Visser asks many questions of cultures East and West and provides a plethora of answers. The obscured and deeper meaning of giving thanks is probed through such divergent cultural markers as the work of Georg Simmel and Dickens; the Bible and Proust; Japanese sumimasen
, which is both a thanking and an apologizing, and C.C. Baxter in Bill Wilder's The Apartment
; Plato's Laws and Seneca's massive treatise on gift giving and the slipperiness of saying “you're welcome” in today's U.K. What is tipping all about? What is the etymological relationship between “votive,” “vow,” “favors,” “grace” and “gratitude”? What might the gestures of courtesy—the curtsy for example—be? Overall, this is a delightful and graceful gift of a book, for which any fortunate recipient will be thankful. (Nov. 19)
