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Saul Bellow: Coffee Achieverby Myron Joshua Page 1 | Page 2 Elitism and Democracy: Coffee in the Life and Literature of Saul Bellow The fine line between coffee afficionado and coffee snob is finer than that which divides a perfect espresso from one over-extracted. Coffee lovers may be a truckdriver on the highway in need of an invigorating drink or someone with a love for great taste. He/she may be a person who brings a broader knowledge into his/her experience, or a snob who can not believe that others "really" appreciate the nuances of the blend, etc. When one tries to develop his taste, and increase his knowledge, he may be viewed upon by others as a snob.
Coffee is at once the most democratic beverage and one that allows for endless cultivation of individual taste and the chance to achieve excellence. Add to this the social aspect of coffee drinking and you have the makings a beverage that can server as a complex social icon. Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow seems to be living in tension between his admiration of excellence and achievement and his connectedness with humanity as such. Viennese professor of English Literature, Prof. Kurt Meyer makes a distinction between a modernist "elitist" trend in American literature and a postmodern trend that makes a series of moves toward democratic notions. “You are right,” he wrote me, “in assessing Saul Bellow as straddling the dividing line between the two”. It will not be difficult for us coffee lovers to understand how the motif of coffee can be used to express the tension between elitist trends and more democratic values of basic human experience. This article will show how this happens in the novels and autobiographic thoughts of Bellow when he relates to coffee-a drink he really appreciates. Bellow and the Culinary Arts: In a New York Times Review of Books article appearing on May 18, 1983 Mimi Sheraton quotes the Nobel Prize winning author as saying: ''I eat in ethnic restaurants in Chicago and at my club, Les Nomades, which has a good French kitchen - maybe the best in the city. It's a private dining club, but it's not too hard to become a member. In this line we can feel the ambivalence that Bellow feels about catering to his refined taste (best French restaurant in the city) and not wanting to be an elitist removed from the people (private club BUT not too hard to become a member.). We read that "Mr. Bellow likes wine. 'But I don't believe in becoming a feinschmecker,' he said. 'Most of all I adore good French and Italian cooking, but I'm not willing to endure all of the rudeness one is subjected to in so many fancy restaurants. I hate refined restaurant esthetes - the gourmet bullies who treat you as though you are part of the ugly crowd.'" Here again we feel Bellow's appreciation of quality but his despise for rudeness of elitist esthetes. He seems to be claiming that the "feinschmeckery" attitude of the refined is actually uncouth.
Bellow and Coffee: For us Coffee Lovers this stance should be quite familiar. Being particular about wine makes one a feinshcmecker, being particular about a certain Cola means means that you are a fanatic but-being concerned about coffee-well, that could go either way or, hopefully, may be something else altogether. We will not be surprised that Bellow has specific tastes about coffee as well: "'I still do the cooking if Alexandra (his wife-mj) is busy and I prepare (tea and) coffee,' he continued. 'I'm very particular about both. I never use tap water for either because it's so awful here in Chicago. I use bottled water…' The coffee blend Mr. Bellow prefers is a combination of Colombian and Armenian beans that he buys at a local supermarket and grinds just before brewing them in a filter-lined drip coffee pot. 'Sometimes I make cowboy coffee,' he said. 'I put the grounds in a saucepan full of water and just let them come to first boil -the first bubble. Then I let the whole thing settle.'" Page 1 | Page 2 |
