DENNIS LEARY PROLOGOMENA TO A FUTURE RESTAURANT

THIS IS NOT a preface or argument for something that may actually occur, be built or realized, be erected, conceived, traced in blueprint, or otherwise undertaken in earnest by myself, my peers, colleagues, and enemies, numerous though they may be. NO, herein I hold forth on nothing less than that long panorama we know as the future, the blank space a few minutes from now wherein you may get a sandwich, a promotion, or cancer. NOT FOR US a retailing of the warm womb, the chill birth, the tug of the teat and the slap of the midwife, the scraped knees at seven, erections at eleven, the backbiting, scheming, fornicating at twenty-eight, the dismissal of one’s manservant at thirty-two, then liverwurst on rye a moment ago, the moment after that but just before this, ad absurdum. NO, again NO, we are to look forward, heartily and with good cheer, to the blankness of SOON, to the promise of wealth, leisure, power, influence, and repletion.
       The restaurant of the future does not suckle, nor comfort with succession in china little soups or boneless prods from your ancestral table. It is the dead animal moved by mechanics to celebrate labor. That will be your home.
       How soft the modern metropolis, with its air-conditioned towers and wide thoroughfares, sanitation trucks and Braille subway maps, coffee-cup sleeves and crossing guards—how soft and how contented, how replete with conveniences, bright lights, and baubles is the city of Today, the city of narrow shoulders and no surprises. In this ectoplasm are lit the stages of dinner, lunch, and sometimes breakfast—the theater of restaurants that enforces ease, dependence, and status.

Back to ISSUE ONE