Abstract
A café ekes out a miserable existence in a small and dusty town in the novel Kerengő (The Peripatetic) by the Hungarian writer György Spiro. A stranger arrives in town and opens another café, just across the street from the old one. Everybody thinks him a fool, since the town can scarcely support the old café. Soon, however, both cafés begin to flourish. People now have a choice, and two groups of steady customers form, one for each café, individuals expressing their identities by patronizing one café or the other. Severe conflicts arise between guests of the opposing cafés. Occasionally, a guest passionately withdraws his allegiance from one café and bestows it on the other. Perhaps the only person to frequent both cafés is the novel’s protagonist, and even he was not a habitué of the original café when it was the only game in town.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1998 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mérő, L. (1998). Competition for a Common Goal. In: Moral Calculations. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-1654-4_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-1654-4_7
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-7232-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-1654-4
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive