A Matter of Taste

1

“You’d better start with the cognac circle,” I said to Katerina Wetstein during dessert after the lunch interview at Panorama. 

“Hm,” she said, taking a sip of her Hennessy, “that’s a pretty small one. I’m talking Joyce, Proust, Mishima, Thomas Mann. That’s about it. Maybe Hermann Broch.”

“Fair enough, fair enough. How about the vodka crew?”

“There I’ve got Dante first and foremost, followed by Kerouac and Herbert Hunke–clichéd, but there you have it. Also, Jhumpa Lahiri and Nicola Barker.” 

“Nice.”

“I’d have to add Faulkner to that list, as well as Djuna Barnes. Also Cather, though I couldn’t imagine why.”

“Cather and vodka—it makes sense. With The Professor’s House, for instance?”

“The first and last parts, yes, but I’ve found the Tom Outland section is best paired with an earthy mescal. Then back to Smirnoff for the final section. Odd, isn’t it?”

I didn’t find this strange at all. I wanted Katerina for my assistant, and I was going to have her, whatever she said. If she thought people should read Pudd’nhead Wilson while sipping Singha lager, I wasn’t going to be the one to disagree with her. 

She said Burroughs should be read with a fine Riesling. It didn’t really matter which. For Chekhov she preferred a red wine, French, Châteauneuf-du-Pape if possible but one of the nicer low-end Rothschild’s would do. Bunin she would only read with scotch, Glenlivet or Glenfiddich. As for Tolstoy, the matter was perfectly clear: the Sapporo summer beer that came in the big cans, three cases for War and Peace, two for Anna Karenina. Gabriel Garcia Marquez she read with port, Vargas Llosa with sweet winter sake, Octavio Paz with Italian wines, usually Antinori.

Susan Sontag she read with Laphroaig, Joyce Carol Oates with CousiñoMacul 2000, Toni Morrison with CousiñoMacul 1999. Rick Moody? Best with an Australian red. David Foster Wallace? Jamaican rum—a lot of it. Michael Chabon required discrimination: tequila for the novels, brandy for the stories. 

Saul Bellow? Well, that was complicated, but one thing was perfectly clear: she only read him with beer, the first two novels with Heineken. Then a strange thing happened. The Adventures of Augie March went better with Warsteiner than anything else. It was probably the premier Warsteiner novel out there, vying with An American Dream oddly enough. Seize the Day went with Guang, a local beer out of Guangzhou, not very easy to get but then again she only read the novella once a year. Bellow’s short stories went as well with Stella Artois as did chicken wings and nachos. Henderson and Herzog she only read with Guinness. Mr. Sammler’s Planet was the only Bellow book she read drinking Olympia, the kind that came in the monochrome cans. Humboldt’s Gift was a Tiger Beer novel if she’d ever read one. The Dean’s December seemed best with Dos Equis, while More Die of Heartbreak was more suited to Sleeman’s Ale. A Theft and The Bellarosa Connection couldn’t be better than with San Miguel. The Actual was a Tuborg book, the blue cans; Ravelstein went with Holsten.

Katerina’s knowledge and preferences were more than enough to qualify her as my assistant in my little office down in the liquor store of the Simulife Centre. I offered her the job and asked her to begin the following Monday.

2

An inveterate bibliophile and imbiber of alcohol, I had conceptualized a career for myself as an advisor to the literary public. A few months earlier, I had proposed to Gloria Beckenbauer—who owned the Magenta Bookstore across from the liquor store—that I be hired, with funding from the bookstore, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario and, finally, with the aid of the Canada Council for the Arts, as a reading and drinking consultant in the liquor store, where patrons were to be directed by bookstore staff after making purchases.

Gloria liked the novelty of my idea and when I showed her the little bookmark I had taken the liberty of having printed up, she agreed to my terms on the spot. The bookmark superimposed a bottle of Kenyan palm wine over a movie poster of Fabulous Nobodies. Across the bottom, in Latin, read the motto of the enterprise: In vino veritas. The reverse advertised A Matter of Taste: Free Advice to the Literary Public and directed shoppers to the liquor store across the mall from the bookstore’s lower-level entrance. 

A month after I’d approached Gloria, I was installed in my little space at the liquor store and started to dole out advice, availing myself of the ‘unlimited research tab’ at the store. Basically, I could have whatever I wanted and as much. It was a perk that didn’t count as ‘income’ for tax purposes, which was more important than you might think.

Things got off to a good start after an interview I did with TV Ontario, in the city section of a news program during prime time. I was interviewed by Harvey Winters, a veteran with the channel. He told me afterwards that he was particularly impressed with my advice to callers, who seemed to find my recommendations astute. 

My salary of sixty thousand dollars was sufficient for my needs, and the twenty thousand that came from the Canada Council was awarded tax free: my work was considered an artistic enterprise that benefited society. 

Soon I had a faithful clientele, and I was making a noticeable difference in the profit margins of the liquor store and the bookstore. A trend began. People bought gift books and matching liquor in discount package deals. My recommendations acquired a reputation. People were happy when they received their copy of The Great Gatsby along with a cute little bottle of bubbly. One package was very successful: a six-pack of Baby Sham with Murakami’s The Elephant Vanishes. Another package was equally popular: I Married a Communist coupled with a case of Cacique. 

3

Needless to say, I didn’t develop my expertise in text matching overnight. For twenty years I had been keeping a diary of my findings. My entire adult life had consisted—as much as anything else—of sitting down with good drinkies and reading good books. Carefully organized by year on my hard disk were over a million words in diary entries, my research database, if you will. (I applied for a Guggenheim, but it didn’t go through.) It only seems à propos that I include a few entries here.

 

12 April 1983—Anchorage

 

All day sitting in Earthquake Park reading The Brothers Karamazov and sipping from a bottle of Hungarian rum in a brown paper bag. The bag sits in my backpack, and I drink the rum through a telescoping tube I created by amalgamating six McDonald’s straws. 

 

13 April 1983—Anchorage

 

Back to Earthquake Park with Dostoevsky and Stolichnaya. Much better. The vodka sounds like a character in the novel! On the rum, I related to Alyosha, but on the Stoli, my allegiance has shifted decisively to Ivan.

 

30 September 1990—Osaka

 

At the Prefectural Library in Nakanoshima Park, reading Wole Soyinka and sipping Johnnie Walker Red Label through a tube running up my shirt sleeve. Seems like a bit of a mismatch, but I soldier through.

 

7 October 1990—Osaka

 

Back in Nakanoshima Park, this time perched on a bench in the Rose Garden, finishing up The Man Died with a bottle of Absolut I bought in Nagai. Perfect.

 

17 March 1994—Montreal

 

Hurston’s autobiography with four glasses of LaBatt’s Blue after lunch at Napoli on Saint Denis. Doesn’t seem to be working.

 

20 March 1994—Montreal

 

Zora again, this time by the lions on the McGill campus. The Valpolicello I’ve dumped into my Slurpee cup goes much better with Dust Tracks on the Road.

 

24 March 1994—Montreal

 

Sartre and cognac on the balcon of Lunatique. Car alarms keep going off on the street below. Two burly bikers strike back at the annoyance by subjecting the alarms to the ignominy of a mock interpretive dance. 

 

5 July 1998—Toronto

 

Black Russians and Virginia Woolf’s diaries on the back patio of the Green Room, brilliant. Must continue to experiment with mixed drinks. 

 

10 July 1998—Toronto

 

Steam Whistle Lager is the perfect adjunct to DeLillo’s Underworld—I see this clearly by the time I’ve rolled off the Fox and Fiddle patio in the Danforth.

 

17 July 1998—Toronto

 

You don’t have to be a bibliophile—or even a bibulist—to know that when you’re reading Carver on the patio of the Black Bull on Queen Street, you’re drinking Bourbon. Must head over to Seagull in Kensington Market to check out my hypothesis about reading Barbara Gowdy with Rum and Cokes. Bob calls to say I was right about martinis and Alice Munro. I’m getting good at this.

 

18 August 2001—Lake District

 

On the Arndale patio in Arnside, sucking back The Magic Mountain with six pints of Boddington’s, a match made in heaven. No reading on the beach here for me: turns out that Arnside is the quicksand capital of the world! When Hans Castorp gets his first glimpse of Madame Chauchat, the siren announcing the approach of the tidal bore sounds: an apt coincidence!

 

25 August 2001—Lake District

 

In a rowboat on Lake Windermere, rereading Settembrini's speeches and sipping Alexander Keith’s through a tube running up the leg of my jeans from my Wellies. Bliss.

 

Multiply these entries by a few thousand and you have the entire record of my life. I was glad, therefore, to have turned my lifelong search into a decent career with my proposal about the bookshop and the liquor store. I was on my way, I felt, to achieving fortune and even a sort of attenuated fame. Certainly, the local celebrities seemed anxious to know my advice. On my website, people paid five dollars a pop for a single line of advice. 

A few sample emails:

 

Dear Mr. Cotter,

Thank you very much for recommending that I inebriate Jane Austen with Kirin Beer. I’d been reading her for weeks with Asahi Super Dry, and I knew I wasn’t getting it right. Kirin has completely changed my opinion of Emma Woodhouse. While drinking Asahi, I found her to be a tiresome prude, a snob, and a patriarchal sellout, but since I’ve taken to rereading Emma on Kirin, I’ve found her to be an engaging heroine and a great character. Miss Bates’s speech about baked apples didn’t seem funny on the Asahi, but when I reread it after a good swig of Kirin, I nearly fell off my orthopedic chair laughing! Thank you again for your wonderfully insightful advice—it has made all the difference and has greatly improved my reading life!

 

Dear Mr. Cotter,

I can’t thank you enough for your wonderful advice. Maupassant seemed like a different author when I read him while on Kronenbourg. It must have something to do with the Franco-Prussian War, don’t you think? Also, thank you for that Robert Musil tip. I consumed twenty-six bottles of Madeira while reading Der Mann Ohne Eigenshaften, and it made all the difference, although at one point I will admit that I became convinced Ulrich was the brilliant German cyclist.

4

But it wasn’t just me that was popular. Within a short time, Katerina was also a hit with customers. Her recommendations were regarded as unorthodox by many of my clients, but quickly she began to develop a following of her own. Women, especially, seemed to trust her judgment more than mine. She had an intuitive sense of what went with what, an intuition all the more intriguing—it seemed to me—for often seeming to be counterintuitive. Myself, I will admit, I never would have thought of recommending Thai coconut rum with the stories of Eudora Welty, but both author and drink sold out in no time, so many readers shared the idea of Katerina’s combination with their friends. Another of her brilliant discoveries—John Updike and Taiwanese plum wine—further staked out her territory as where the East meets the West: Yu Hua with those cute little bottles of Boris beer; Banana Yoshimoto with Nastro Azzuro; Chin-Myong Kim with Harp. 

Katerina found her niche alright, and things went well between us for some time. Our little office down in the liquor store was expanded and upgraded three months after she was hired, plus we acquired a small office in the northern tower of the Simulife Centre, where we kept our computers, our customer databases, purchase records, and gifts. 

Yes, people were often so happy about our recommendations that they often brought us gifts to show their gratitude. Old Mrs. Trellis, for instance. I’d recommended that she read The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka while drinking Pilsner Urquell, and she was impressed. 

“In all my life,” she told me afterwards, “I’ve never known such perfect synchronicity between what I was drinking and what I was reading.”

I wasn’t about to tangle with a retired judge over her misuse of a Jungian term, although I did want to make one thing perfectly clear. Mrs. Trellis had said she was surprised that she hadn’t thought of drinking a Czech beer while reading Kafka—it was so logical. The fact that Kafka wrote in German had thrown her off. She’d only ever read him while drinking Marca Bavaria (which was Brazilian, but I didn’t say anything). I could not, however, let Mrs. Trellis off the hook with her comment about logic.

“With all due respect, Mrs. Trellis,” I said, “you must allow me to venture, if not a disagreement, a qualification: I am convinced that logic is the enemy of choice. It is intuition, intuition my dear, and intuition alone, which gives those of us fortunate enough to have been endowed with its mystical powers the ability to discern—not to reckon!—the perfect libationary adjunct for a text. Logic is a fine tool when we are examining the irregularities in our checking accounts, but for capturing the nuances of an articulated imagination in full flight, for catapulting ourselves into a realm of pure abstraction and then (while in the throes of this sublime locomotion) being able to adopt that perspectival position from which alone we can discern the precise counternarrative of inebriation necessary to effect the complicated task of uniting the optimal concomitants of the states represented and those in which they are apprehended—for this, intuition alone will suffice!”

Far from being offended, however, either by the inane formalities I adopted when counseling clients or by the disputatious expressive impulse behind my determination—in so casual a context as a chat across my counter—to insist in such doctrinaire fashion on a distinction (however crucial) between what she was saying and the truth, Mrs. Trellis chose to express her admiration and gratitude by having delivered to my office the next morning nothing other than a stuffed Siberian wolf. The animal, its fur thick and white, was mounted on a mahogany stand (an endangered species of animal, I noted, standing on wood from an endangered tree). The animal was frozen in the posture of howling, its jaws wide open, fangs exposed, its tongue and inner mouth bright red. 

Katerina let out a yelp when she walked through the door and was confronted by the animal, which, it is true (facing the door as it was) appeared to be in the very act of being about to spring upon whoever opened it. Because the animal had a tendency, although dead, to make small children cry, I had Katerina help me to carry it up to our office in the tower, where it took up its place as a sort of guardian spirit of all the other tokens of gratitude we received from clients. 

I named the animal Buck, after the Jack London hero.

Katerina and I enjoyed the suspense of anticipating which donations would come our way next, and before long Buck became Cerberus to a panoply of treasures: Spanish Doubloons, embroidered shawls from Surubaya, a Gianfranco Ferre watch, original issue Pez dispensers, rare Matchbox models of the Lamborghini Miura and the Maserati Ghibli Spyder, a Bugatti waistcoat, ruby-studded Japanese earpicks, a plaster replica of the Seokguram Buddha on its lotus plinth.

5

I suppose the peak of the harmony between Katerina and I was reached during the day on which a professor from a local college came in and asked us (in his ‘I’m-so-harmless’ academic way) what exactly we would recommend that he drink while reading Post-Structuralist theorists. I took it that this was his own area of expertise: I had met academics often and knew their ways. Katerina seemed amused by the question and its transparent intent. I replied cautiously.

“That’s a big question, so I hope you don’t mind an extensive answer.”

“Not at all, not at all,” said the learned professor, removing his spectacles and polishing them with a corner of his Ascot.

Katerina took up the challenge.

“Derrida should only be sipped with beer: the Husserl book with Grolsch, Writing and Difference with Pabst, Of Grammatology with Maudite.”

“Whereas Glas”—I interjected, bolstering Katerina’s move to nominate classic Quebec brews—“is more of a Fin du Monde book.”

“Exactly,” she agreed, as Professor Blankenship (for this, we were to learn in due course, was his name) could only be said to have snuffled and snarled at our recommendations. There was something peculiarly nasal about the professorial response, but the illustrious Doctor Blankenship urged us to continue, asking next for our recommendations on Foucault.

“One must lubricate,” Katerina said with a wry smile, “The History of Sexuality with Mosel-Saar-Ruwer. It’s easy to find,” she added with another smile, “—the bottle is in the shape of a cat.”

I took up the thread at this point.

“Madness and Civilization is best negotiated with a Château de Courteillac 2001, while Discipline and Punish should be consumed with Bud Lite.”

“Althusser’s autobiographies,” Katerina added, “are the perfect complement to Jack Daniels. Kristeva, on the other hand, should be read with a good single malt.”

“Except for the interviews,” I added, “which tend to read better on gin.”

Katerina continued our stereophonic response.

“Todorov with Moretti; Barthes with Carlsberg.”

“I apologize for the sparseness of our coverage,” I interjected. “But let me add that Lacan should be read on Absinthe, if you can get it.”

Katerina took over. “Deleuze and Guattari are problematic. The best solution is to read the Deleuze parts with Miller and the Guattari bits with Molson.”

Blankenship changed his direction of inquiry slightly at this point.

“I would also like to hear your recommendations for the Frankfurt School.” 

Katerina didn’t miss a beat. “Horkheimer and Adorno go best with Marnier-Lapostolle. Walter Benjamin I prefer with a Bishop’s Finger. Marcuse requires a stronger punch: I usually recommend a Kikkoman sake. 

“As for the Second Generation, I suggest a nice Gato Negro for the Habermas lectures on Modernity.”

“Moving on to the Third Generation,” Katerina continued, “I find that Honneth’s Critique of Power demands a fine Ontario ice wine.”

Blankenship was getting a little weary and thanked us for our suggestions. 

“Allow me to introduce myself,” he said portentously as he pulled a small leather pouch from the ticket pocket of his tweed jacket and placed two of his cards on the counter between us. I took one of the cards and read it:

Dr. Morgan H. Blankenship

National Bank of Canada Professor of Post-Structural Thought

Department of Critical Theory

Southern Ontario Provincial College

 

He thanked us again for our most intriguing suggestions and said he had to leave.

6

Tension began to rise between Katerina and I soon after Blankenship’s visit, when I added a new branch to our enterprise: Children’s Literature. I developed—an ally of the Matter of Taste campaign—the Sense and Cereal project, recommending various breakfast cereals for consumption with children’s books (since young children were, obviously, unable to sample the pleasures of alcohol).

After a brief consultation with the management and cereal buyers of the Valumart supermarket just around the corner from us in the Simulife Centre Mall, I began by making recommendations for the Harry Potter series: Lucky Charms for the first volume; Apple Jacks for the second; Cap’n Crunch for the third, Shreddies for the fourth, Froot Loops for the fifth, Frosted Flakes for the sixth, Cheerios for the Seventh.

Within a month my salary had jumped another fifteen thousand dollars and Valumart’s cereal section started to take off. I continued apace with my new enterprise: Alice in Wonderland with Alpha Bits. The Hobbit with Honeycomb. Anne of Green Gables with Wheetabix. The Snow Queen with Frosted Mini Wheats. Treasure Island with Golden Nuggets. Andersen’s Fairy Tales with Alpen, Grimm’s with Cornflakes, Oscar Wilde’s with Variety Packs, Joseph Jacobs with Puffa Puffa Rice. 

But Katerina had been opposed to the Sense and Cereal project from the start. It’s difficult for me to say why. I can only assume she was jealous of the fact that I came up with the idea myself. She took to going up to the office in the north tower every day and sulking. One day, when things were slow in the store, I went up there and found her straddling Buck and rocking back and forth wildly, the model of the Seokguram Buddha held upright in the palm of her right hand. She claimed this was a sort of yoga therapy, but I suspected this was not the case. Finally, she denounced me publicly as I recommended to a young teacher that her pupils read The Wind in the Willows with Quaker Oats. Katerina’s outbreak left me no choice. I went to Gloria, explained the situation, and had her fired, but my problems didn’t end there. The reader can only imagine my surprise and dismay when Katerina came by the liquor store not long afterwards in the company of Blankenship himself!

A week after this, my website was inundated with emails from students of Semiotics, a program apparently aligned with Blankenship’s. The thrust of the missives was of a piece: I was a naked capitalist, exploiting the sanctity of the reading process for my own financial gain. Many questioned my opinions and matchings, claiming they were ‘theoretically problematic.’ Sales fell off quickly. Gloria had me in her office and told me that if things continued like this, my entire project would likely be consigned to the trash heap of history. 

Then a damning article appeared in The Globe and Mail, denouncing me as a ‘profiteer’ and insinuating strongly that I was nothing but a fraud and that I knew nothing about literature. Gloria, of course, did not like this publicity one bit, and I knew the writing was on the wall when, a few days after the article was published, old Mrs. Trellis came to my counter in the liquor store and demanded the return of her wolf.

Diplomacy seemed to be required of me above all. I immediately walked over to the north tower—not without a degree of regret, as I’m sure my sensitive readers will appreciate—and retrieved Buck for his previous owner. Alone, I lugged him down in the elevator, but as I wrestled with him on the mezzanine escalator, an eager shopper brushed by me, causing me to lose my balance, and—it is with genuine regret that I confess—Buck’s front paws were badly damaged when they got caught in the escalator’s teeth.