It's not really that far from New Haven to New York, but when the path leads from the Skull & Bones "tomb" at Yale to a Starbucks on the Upper West Side, it's a life journey worth describing. Which Michael Gates Gill does in Starbucks Saved My Life.
A story of more than passing interest to me because the author, son of the respected New Yorker writer and editor Brendan Gill, was classmate of mine at Yale. Also in that cohort: Presidential adviser David Gergen, New Yorker theater critic John Lahr, Yale President Benno Schmidt, Oklahoma governor and US Sen. David Boren. Dick Cheney, too (never knew him; he soon flunked out); Sen. Joe Lieberman was there, too, one class back.
"Gates," as he was known, was even then a larger-than-life figure, with a Dylan-Thomas-like propensity for excess. He continues to cut a wide swath after college, but adversity eventually undermines his comfortable existence: he loses his high-level job in advertising, he loses his wife and family, he loses his health insurance.
Bummed, he feels more and more like a bum. He finally claws his way into a menial job at a Starbucks in a mean part of town. And he finds redemption as a barista.
So what was Gill's original sin? To be born into privilege, it would seem. This is a real-life John Cheever kind of story, of mortals confronted not with their mortality so much as their self-awareness. "There but for the grace of God go I," we think, should we even deign to notice the panhandler, the derelict on the bus. But it's the wrong response. As Gates discovers, we find ourselves changing places with the derelict and--surprise!--not nearly as miserable or self-pitying as we might have expected. (A perfect movie role for Tom Hanks.)
Gill's message, rather, is an affirmation, familiar to saints and sinners alike: "Here, with the grace of God, go I."
Posted by Ronald Holden at September 24, 2007 9:39 AM
The International Kitchen
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