Everyday America

About ten years ago, a small chain of coffee shops opened in Lund and Malmö. They served three different blends of coffee, a double espresso cost 13 Swedish kronor, and the sandwiches were tasty. I have many good memories from those days – summer afternoons in their courtyard on Skomakaregatan in Malmö, listening to her share dreams of faraway places.

Today, that coffee chain has been sold to an overseas investment bank. On the walls are city scenes from New York – scenes in which people reach out for their Espresso House paper mugs. If you ever thought that reality was socially constructed, here you have it. Just imagine that art director in Malmö packing empty paper mugs into suitcases and then flying over for the photo session, desperate to convey the image that Espresso House is an integrated part of everyday America.

On a more serious note, this weekend Süddeutsche Zeitung carries an excerpt from a new book written by a German, Jens Söring, who is serving two life sentences in a Virginia prison. Images from a very different everyday America. Confined to Brunswick Correctional Center – which, by American standards, counts as a relatively small prison despite its 700 inmates – Söring has spent the last seven years writing his book. In less than a week, it will be published by Gütersloher Verlagshaus.

I remember visiting a maximum-security prison in Kumla, Sweden. Though years ago, it left me with a host of similarly unsettling images: the basic angst of being locked behind doors without handles, the razor-sharp barbed wire on the horizon, and the odour of male anxiety and violence. Those images return every time someone accuses the Swedish criminal justice system of being “soft”.