I have been reading Judith Freeman’s excellent book, The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved (Pantheon, 2007). I was struck by her assertion about the cultural significance fast food took on in Los Angeles. She argues that the rise of fast food in L.A. was, in part, due to the idleness and loneliness of the (older) population. In the following passage, she is talking about Clifton’s Sliver Spoon, a once famous cafeteria (now closed) located not far from the Bank of Italy building on South Olive Street where Chandler worked in the offices of the Dabney Oil Syndicate from 1923-1932. She writes:
In cafeterias like Clifton’s, fast food, cheap food, food you selected yourself and put on a tray and pushed along a metal railing, became inextricably wed not to mere nourishment but to the possibility of escaping a haunting emptiness for a while. The popularity of the cafeteria in L.A. was primarily due to the loneliness of the people. It was a friendlier type of eating place than a normal restaurant. . . . This was the true lure of fast food, and perhaps it helps explain why it has assumed such an important place in American culture. Fast food is about estrangement and existential ennui, about loneliness, and boredom, and absence, and an arresting of traditional patterns of family life and social context. Who cares if the meal is inferior? If it gets you out in the world. (80)
As I read this passage, I couldn’t help but think of Ernest Hemingway’s short story, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” (1933), also a story of isolation, existential loneliness, and the nothingness or “nada” of contemporary existence. Hemingway, too, associates the café or cafeteria with a person’s need for companionship. Yet he pursues the issue in a different way. In Hemingway’s story, an old man likes to sit late into the night in a café—the clean, well-lighted place—and drink brandy, often leaving the place when he’s very drunk. Why does the old man find comfort in the café? Why does the old man drink to excess? The older waiter at the café seems to understand the old man’s despair (“Our nada who art in nada”). Of course, Hemingway’s story is set in Spain, not Los Angeles, and it draws on Hemingway’s memories of his life after he returned home from the war. Colloquially, to “drink” means to consume alcohol, but “drink” also implies “thirst.” In contrast, “hunger” implies something else. Hunger, or appetite, is to sexual fulfillment what thirst is to spiritual fulfillment; both terms are used as figurations of human longing and desire: “sexual appetite” and “spiritual thirst.” Hunger and appetite, drink and thirst are tropes that function in different ways, suggesting different desires. In The Little Sister (1949), Chandler associates fast food restaurants with restlessness: “They have to get the car out and go somewhere,” he writes. Is loneliness alleviated by being around other people? Restlessness leads to hunger, while thirst leads to solitary reflection. The old man in Hemingway’s story thirsts; he doesn’t hunger.
A Few Songs To Drink To Late At Night in a Sad Café:
John Anderson – Straight Tequila Night
Jimmy Buffett – Margaritaville
Johnny Cash – Sunday Morning Coming Down
Kenny Chesney – Hemingway’s Whiskey
Neil Diamond – Red Red Wine
The Eagles – Tequila Sunrise
Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians - Raymond Chandler Evening
Rupert Holmes – Escape (The Piña Colada Song)
Tommy James – Sweet Cherry Wine
George Jones – Tennessee Whiskey
Don McLean – American Pie
Willie Nelson – Drinking Champagne
Jimmie Rodgers – Kisses Sweeter Than Wine
Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood – Summer Wine
Steely Dan – Deacon Blues
George Strait – Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind
Tom Waits - Warm Beer Cold Women
Bob Wills – Bubbles in my Beer
