![]() ![]() Yet for all its exotic locations and excursions, for all the press-potted histories of Guatemala and Costa Rica, Pendergrast's coffee all ends up in the United States. He tells the tales of the pickers and the packers, the exporters and importers, the roasters, cuppers and traders who at various times have prescribed a nice hot cup as an "aphrodisiac, enema, nerve tonic, or life-extender". Gershom Scholem reports Walter Benjamin as saying, "A philosophy that does not include the possibility of soothsaying from coffee grounds and cannot explicate it cannot be a true philosophy." Pendergrast forsakes soothsaying and makes no attempt at philosophy, but he dutifully grinds through the old myths and stories: about the discovery of coffee by the Ethiopian goatherd Kaldi and his dancing goats, about colonialism and commodification. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |