I speak, of course, of existentialism in the American tradition, the kind found in dingy middleclass diners in a rainy postwar hustling city, inside the cups of black coffee that aren’t really even coffee to begin with, just dirt and maybe you’ll get luck and maybe there’ll be a worm in your coffee and everything just turns into some kind of surreality with the worm rambling on about coconuts and the weather and whether or not it wants to die and be in your stomach at all. But the coffee’s not the important part. The reason why you go to these places in the first place is not for the coffee or the waitresses or the odd f