There’s a startling passage about the power of the hospitality experience in the novella, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. Carson McCullers writes (and I apologize for this paraphrase of a great work of art) that, for many people, the judgments and deprivations of the world they encounter every day make them feel that their lives aren’t valued by society and commerce.
Accordingly, partaking of hospitality (in her example, spending an evening at a café) provides them with a time and place where, “for a few hours at least, the deep bitter knowing that you are not worth much in this world could be laid low.”
It’s true that McCullers’ vision of hospitality expects a lot from the customers as well. They tidy up as if they’re children going to dinner at a neighbor’s house; they wash up beforehand and “scrape their feet very politely on the threshold as they enter the cafe.”
Tour buses outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
getty
…
