The Author For People Who Think That Commencement Speeches Are a Major Contribution to American Intellectual Discourse
By Noted Deep Thinker Jonathan Safran Foer is “curating” some reading material for Chipotle packaging. He has some thoughts on the matter he wishes to share (annotated by Maria Bustillos):
I mean, I wouldn’t have done it if it was for another company like a McDonald’s [well, why not, exactly?] but what interested me is 800,000 Americans of extremely diverse backgrounds [wat] having access [!] to good [!] writing [!]. A lot of those people [‘those people’] don’t have access to libraries [?!] [(why not, if so)], or bookstores [?!]. Something felt very democratic [?!] and good [?!] about this.
Bustillos continues:
(a) Jonathan Safran Foer: how much are you getting paid for this exercise in democracy?
(b) Is there anyone in America who has “access” to a Chipotle, but not to a library or bookstore? If so, who? Who are “those people.”
(c) exactly how is a two-minute story on a fast-food cup, even one written by Toni Morrison or George Saunders, making up for the lack of “those people”’s access to a library?
The reviews of the work Foer solicited are equally outstanding. Whether Foer or Malcolm Gladwell has made the very worst contribution to this landmark of American letters seems hard to evaluate.