How Should A Dinner Be?

The last thing I imagined I would have to contend with at a literary event was how to crack open a Kinder Surprise egg without dropping my cocktail. Literary Dinners run events with a difference, however, as evidenced by the dinner held last Thursday, themed to complement Sheila Heti’s controversial novel How Should A Person Be?. Literary Dinners are trying to create unrepeatable, memorable events which are more intimate than some of the other literary cabarets and salons that have sprung up. Perhaps it is the addition of food that creates such an unstuffy atmosphere, with agents, editors and readers ultimately sharing their chips with each other. 

The bittersweet cocktail we were handed on arrival at The Rag Factory, in Spitalfields, was designed to put guests ‘in a state of flux’. It was less unsettling than I had imagined: a delicious mix of gin, Cointreau and grapefruit juice. Whilst I was still working out how to drink my drink without whacking anyone with my handbag or melting my Kinder egg in my palm, Sheila read from How Should A Person Be?. The novel contains real dialogue and emails from her life but this didn’t stop anyone from laughing at the character Sholem, who managed to create a painting so ugly that he was unable to look at it.  Sheila explained this was based on a real-life incident of an artist whose paintings were judged to be child pornography so they had to be locked away, unseen for ten years. Sheila had then been shown the paintings after this period and was amazed at how beautiful they were. As Sheila talked, someone began pinning back the tarpaulin from the glass roof of The Rag Factory so that light flooded in. Someone else from Kosher Roast (who were catering the event) began frying a steak, the sizzling of which was so loud that Sheila abandoned the makeshift stage and her reading.

We were told that the carnivores at the feast were to be given either ‘adult’ steaks, or ‘childish’ portions of sausage and mash. Tellingly, vegetarians were all judged to be adults and given vegetable pies. Having finally eaten my Kinder Surprise egg, I realised that the famous yellow capsule inside didn’t contain a fiddly toy but mottos instead, taken from How Should A Person Be? Mine read ‘There are certain people who do not feel like they were raised by wolves, and these are the ones who make the world tick.’ I was mainly worried that this might disqualify me from having a steak. As it turned out, there was only one steak left when I was served and both I and the woman sitting next to me wanted it. ‘You’ll have to scissors, paper, rock for it,’ the waitress reasoned. ‘Scissors, paper, rock is the best way to resolve anything’, my opponent argued.  Suddenly feeling clammy-handed, I was relieved that one of the men at the table offered to give up his steak so that we could avoid this contest.

Sheila came to join our table and asked us what section of the book she should read from next. Someone suggested she read one of the sections of dialogue, unwittingly realising that by proposing this he was also volunteering himself as a co-reader. In the end, he and two other diners read alongside Sheila from ‘The White Men Go to Africa’ chapter of the book. 

As Sheila read the line ‘Shall I bring out the dessert?’, the caterers began pouring our desserts into bowls. I had heard an ugly rumour that we were to share this course, because the evening was supposed to teach us how to share. Thankfully, this idea appeared to have been abandoned and we were given individual bowls of the ‘Early Bird’ dessert which Sheila’s mother used to make for her father. In the book, these are described as ‘custard soup with egg clouds floating on top’. In France, this dish would be called ‘ile flottante’ and in fact, they are single meringues served floating in crème anglaise. 

Before the evening was over, Sheila fielded questions.  I was apprehensive about whether people would feel they could ask her questions about this novel as so much of it appears to be autobiographical. No one else seemed to share my caution and one of the first questions was, ‘What percentage of the book is fiction?’ Sheila described a scene from the book in which she and her friend Margaux are in Miami and they watch the Paris Hilton sex tape. ‘Well, I didn’t watch the tape with Margaux and I didn’t watch it in Miami but I did watch it.’ 

Natasha Walter, one of the judges of the Women’s Prize for Fiction has defended shortlisting How Should A Person Be? by saying, ‘If someone says their novel is a novel, then their novel is a novel.’ Certainly, the alchemical process by which Sheila has transformed her life into art is important to her and she rounded off the Q & A by saying, ‘Art saves life; it redeems everything.’ It has, at times, been quite a profane evening (the most quoted line of the book is ‘We live in an age of some really great blow-job artists.’) but all the bawdy laughter dissipates as she says this.

I ask Sheila to sign my copy of her book and anticipate her scrawling her name, as there is a queue building up behind me. Instead, she writes, ‘Hi Alex! Thanks for eating floating clouds with me xo Sheila.’