American women like quiet men. They imagine they are listening.
To be serious though, hard as it is to be a genuine Epicurean, one of the defining characteristics of the Epicurean garden was, and ought to be, the fact that you shouldn’t simply expound, you should listen. By actually listening, in contradistinction to simply hearing, you not only possibly learn something but others think you wise and respectful.
For years I thought it incumbent upon me to entertain, usually with monologues and loquacious stories. And then my new wife encouraged me to shut, listen and ask questions. Good advice, and the trigger of a true revelation.
It turns out that one can sit through a three or four hour dinner party, engaging the people to left and right of you: “Really! How did you get to become and Arctic explorer? or “What is it like to be a TV chef?” At the end of the evening one has some insights into the difficulties of managing teams of huskies and the joys of Uzbekh cooking, but you realize that at the end of the evening that one’s companions have no recollection of your name, nor have they asked a single question about you.
This is all very modern and is no doubt approved of by the babyboom generation. But it is deeply un-Epicurean and downright rude. I leaves you with a dismal feeling of superfluity. But of course one’s dinner companions have had a most rewarding time.
Epicureanism is based on friendship. Friends interact.