Chipotle cups now showcase the work of Toni Morrison, Malcolm Gladwell, George Saunders, and sanctimony.

Starting today, Chipotle's cups and bags are featuring new, short-form work by a variety of high profile writers, including Toni Morrison, Malcolm Gladwell, George Saunders, Michael Lewis, and Jonathan Safran Foer.

It's a cute idea. Have famous modern writers jot down something small and quaint to read while you're eating your burrito.

Then listen to Vanity Fair explain Jonathan Safran Foer (the writer of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Eating Animals) and his involvement in Chipotle's marketing:


"Jonathan Safran Foer was sitting at a Chipotle one day, when he realized that he had nothing to do while noshing on his burrito. He had neglected to bring a book or magazine, and he didn’t yet own a smartphone. “I really just wanted to die with frustration,” Foer told VF Daily."


A plea for death. That's subtle. Yes, those ten minutes it's going to take you to eat a middling burrito from a fast food chain restaurant is a soul crusher of frustration that has led lesser humans to take their own lives just to avoid having to listen to themselves think for awhile. Does Foer usually get this easily frustrated in life? Does eating an ice cream on a hot July afternoon just make him want to strangle himself because he has to spoon frozen deliciousness into his mouth without being stimulated from an iPhone app?

But Foer--a vegetarian, eating at a chain restaurant that kills thousands upon thousands of animals every year for its own profit--continues to explain to Vanity Fair why he felt justified in his involvement:


"I mean, I wouldn’t have done it if it was for another company like a McDonald’s, but what interested me is 800,000 Americans of extremely diverse backgrounds having access to good writing. A lot of those people don’t have access to libraries, or bookstores. Something felt very democratic and good about this."


Well, thank God. For a second there I was worried Foer would sound pretentious. Literacy has come to the plebeian masses via two minutes of text on the back of a paper cup. The poor schmucks with closed libraries nearby, who live too far from a Barnes & Noble, are now saved from budding illiteracy because a messianic Chipotle cup features the snappy writing of Foer, Toni Morrison, and others--and it can be theirs if they fork over $10 first. Hoooray, $10 democracy! Screw offering that good writing for free! Make those losers pay a ten spot first!

Drew Magary at The Concourse shares a similar sentiment in questioning Foer and friends:


Think about how arrogant you have to be to put your writing on a soda cup (FYI, soda will kill you) from a burrito joint (a chicken burrito from Chipotle has 1,300 calories), and then calling it "democratic and good." As if some poor bastard out there will be like, "Well, my town couldn't afford to keep its library open. THANK GOD FOR THIS CHIPOTLE CUP [dies of heart disease from eating too much guacamole.]"


Magary continues:


This is Silicon Valley in a bag. It's regular-old commerce gussied up like runway food and presented to you as some kind of noble humanitarian effort. Why not just say you did this for money? Is it so fucking hard? There's nothing crass or ignoble about licensing your work for money. [...] The crassness comes when you try to fool people into believing this is some kind of exercise in burrito-funded utopianism. Lunch is lunch, and it doesn't need to be more than lunch.


Exactly.

Give me a plain white bag and a crayon and that will serve my artistic impulses and synaptic stimulation needs more than any sanctimony from Foer and friends.