"I've got a colleague," said Arnold, "who says there are only seven plots, and that writing them can be automated."
I nodded. "That's structural literary theory. It holds that since there are a limited number of plots possible, there are only a limited number of stories. We just keep dressing them up with different characters and settings."
We'd just come from an exhausting afternoon meeting — hours and hours long — and desperately needed a drink to unwind. I had no idea how we ended up at Zoe's, on 24th, a few blocks off Mission. There are so many other great spots in the area, and Zoe's does nothing on the outside to stand out.
The inside seemed fairly typical too — a dimly lit long bar and restaurant with tables and some "quirky signs" almost seems like it's striving for normcore — but a few rococo flourishes suggested this was a bar with an understated poetic soul. Which, if you've known any poets, is the best kind.
Perhaps it was the gorgeous stained glasswork at the back, or the subtle wood and gold plant pattern facade above the bar, or maybe we glanced at the menu from outside, and were both impressed by the cocktail list: drinks that included a Gold Rush (bourbon, lemon, crab apple, honey, cinnamon, apple bitters), a Southpaw Fizz (gin, lemon, hibiscus syrup, Prosecco), and a Vermont Mule (bourbon, lime, ginger orange syrup, mint, ginger beer).
But when I asked the bartender what he did exceptionally well, he looked around at the nearly empty joint (still just opening on a Saturday afternoon) and said, "How about I make you up something?"
I always say yes to that. It's the first sign that a bartender is shooting for greatness.
Arnold asked me to explain more about structural literary theory — kids these days — and so I told him that there are differing arguments for how many stories there really are in the world: 36, 14, seven ... even one.
"Just one story?" Arnold asked.
"Right. King Arthur. Some say that between its various characters and their destinies — Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot, Guinevere, the Holy Grail — it's got every plot possible, and we just retell smaller versions of it over again."
Arnold considered that as the bartender walked back up. "You guys like heat?" he asked.
"Sure," we said.
"Good, because I'm experimenting with distilled hot peppers."
We grinned. Poetic souls can bring the heat.
"Now I once heard an interview with Toni Morrison," I told Arnold as the bartender started to mix, "in which she said that there are only two stories in the world. Death and love."
"Yeah," he said, considering. "Okay."
The bartender put two glasses in front of us and stepped away. We raised and sipped — and it was damn good, with an incredible kick. Neither of us had ever had anything like it.
"But," I said, "while sometimes a useful way of looking at stories, and even life, structural literary theory isn't actually true."
"I was just going to ask," Arnold said as the fries we ordered were put down in front of us. Zoe's has a gourmet pub menu, unusually strong on vegetable options, and the fries were good enough to make us give dinner here some serious thought. The longer we stayed, the more hidden depths were revealed.
"To get to the structure of a plot, you have to strip away all the details — and the details count. 'The man killed the woman' is a plot, and structurally it's identical to 'the old man killed the young woman.' But fundamentally something different has happened — and it's different from what happens in 'the old man killed the old woman,' or 'the young man killed the old women.' The plots may be structurally identical, but we have three different stories here. So even if you think that all the world's stories can be reduced to a few plots — you're measuring the wrong thing. The world is bigger and more interesting than what you're measuring."
Arnold nodded. "I feel like that happens a lot. Like we live in a world where people are constantly measuring the wrong things."
The bartender came back. "Fix us something special again?" I asked.
He looked around. The place was filling up. But he clearly wanted to play. "Can you do drinks with egg whites?"
"That," I said, "would be the Holy Grail."
"I see what you did there," said Arnold.
The bartender made us something we liked even better. There was no evidence outside the bar that he could do this. But under the surface Zoe's has its own, fascinating, story to tell.
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