Oscar Wilde & Tea

I’m going to start by admitting that this was one of my favorite book clubs yet. But I am pretty sure I say that about all of our book clubs because the longer we have been going on the closer we get and the better our over all experience becomes. A good book club requires a level of investment. It’s going to take some time before it becomes what you want. Ours has been going on for over two years now, but we’ve continued to adapt over those years until we found what worked for us. And we love it.

A Brief Summary of Our Experience

The Planning

Sometimes we create an event around a book and other times we choose the book based on the event we want. This is the later of those. About once or twice a year, our book club does afternoon tea. If you don’t know what afternoon tea is, it’s when you have tea with a small meal. It typically involves finger sandwiches, scones, and small desserts. Oh, and FYI, before you think it’s not a filling meal and eat before time, it is actually quite filling.

Typically when we choose to do high tea, we select a British author because when I think high tea, I think British literature. We also often don fancy hats for the event, because if you’re going to go, you might as well go all in.

This year we decided to read Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest with our afternoon tea. Pairing books for book club can be a lot of fun. We’ve done it when when reading two short works (such as the two we selected here) for one event, or having  back to back events with similar books we want to intentionally compare and contrast. We have found it helps stimulate the conversation further when we have done it.

The Setting

This particular book club was an outing and while a simple tea service can be easy to do at home, there are so many lovely places in Los Angeles that do it and it feels extravagant to be served tea. If you have afternoon tea offered in your area, I recommend taking advantage of that. Even if you don’t have an actual tea house, you may still be able to find a local restaurant that does serve it occasionally.

We decided to go with some place new, and had the afternoon tea service at the Pacific Dining Car in Santa Monica. The atmosphere was just the right amount of gaudy for reading Wilde and helped set the mood for our discussion. The plush chairs gave the luxurious impression of both wealth and home that fits Wilde oh so perfectly. I could have been in taking my tea at Algernon’s home watching him eat all of those cucumber sandwiches greedily not sharing. (Please read The Importance of Being Earnest immediately if you do not get this reference)

The Food and Drinks

While all of this sounds so incredibly perfect, I hate admit that the meal itself was not nearly as good as going to a tea house. While I will be back to this location for their steak house menu, I’ll be sticking to our normal haunts for afternoon tea because the tea sandwiches (which lets face it, are the best part) were quite abysmal. Although the desserts were quite lovely, they were not enough to make up for the main feature being only mediocre. Proof of mediocre food follows.

Look at how thinly sliced those cucumbers are! Boooooooo!!

On top of the food being mediocre, we all enjoy a broader tea selection. Because if you’re going to go all out on afternoon tea, you want something special. Although, I will say serving afternoon tea with champagne was a nice touch though.

The Discussion (I’ll keep this to themes and not specifics to avoid spoilers)

Saving the best part of book club for last! And despite the food, this was still one of my favorite book clubs just because the conversation was completely fantastic AND we planned out our book selections until the end of the year, which is always exciting.

I completely approve of pairing Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest for a book club as they played off each other well and gave us a lot of wonderful topics to discuss. We got to compare Wilde at his most comfortable (doing a witty play) against a format he’s not as proficient with. Seeing him excel really exposed the shortcomings of Dorian Gray particularly in how his witty tone comes off far more shallow in the darker novel than in his light-hearted satire. The off putting sexist undertone that is the under current of Dorian Gray was a large part of that discussion and an example of where his satirical tone did not work within the novel. Whereas the shallowness of ALL of the characters in Being Earnest allowed for any sexist comments to be viewed more as a flaw in the character, in the novel those comments come off as Wilde’s own views and left a bad taste in our mouths. That being said, Dorian Gray has much meatier content than Being Earnest and his attempts to push himself were noted.

We also talked about how the book was used in part of Wilde’s trial to prove he was a homosexual and about the struggles of writing something honest in a period where being who you are was illegal. There’s a lot of implied debauchery in the book that, if you read between the lines, is likely partially homosexual in nature. And also, the absence of any meaningful connection between man and woman can be seen heavily throughout both texts. I know there was more, but that gives you some good content/ideas on places to start your own discussion.

Building Your Own Bookclub Takeaways

• Don’t be afraid of something different. The first time I mentioned high tea to my normally never without alcohol book club, they were not excited, but it has become a favorite tradition of ours. And really made us want to stretch the boundaries of what our book club could be. In a lot of ways, that first high tea is what inspired us to do more themed book events.
• Don’t be afraid of things not being perfect. Our meal may have left something to be desired (especially for our steeper than usual price point), but the conversation more than made up it.
• Choosing two small books is sometimes better than one larger book. Being able to compare and contrast two well paired books can had a lot of depth into the situation. Two very different works by the same author is an easy pairing that can make rise to healthy debate. Also, books with similar themes or from similar movements are also good choices.
• Not a fan of tea? Alternate Events for this book. I think this would also be really fun to do as a paint night. Chatting about the book over appetizers and then painting up your own creation to pour your soul into would be a lot of fun. Just try not to get into too much debauchery. Going to see the play and discussing the duo over pie after would also be great. Why pie? Because pie is amazing.
• Alternate Books for the event. Last time we did high tea, we did Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, but Jane Austen would be another lovely choice for it. As would the VERY obvious Alice in Wonderland (which I’m pretty sure is going to be our next tea event)

Conclusion

I hope that this inspired you to take a chance and do something new and fun with your book club. If you have a book club that does things a little differently, please reach out to me at getlitbc@gmail.com and I’d be happy to feature you and your book club on this blog. Let’s all band together to create better book clubs!