Who is Garcia?

June 23, 2023 5:40 AM

In the book " Seize the Day" by Saul Bellow. He saw his reflection in the glass cupboard full of cigar boxes, among the grand seals and paper damask and the gold- embossed portraits of famous men, Garcia, Edward the Seventh, Cxrus the Great. Please tell me who Garcia is.
posted by mizukko to Writing & Language (6 answers total)

Best answer: Garcia is Eduardo Garcia, one of the founders of Garcia y Vega cigars. The character is looking at cigar boxes, with most of the cigars being named after genuinely famous men and having their pictures on the boxes. Garcia used his own name as a brand for his cigars.
posted by FencingGal at 6:00 AM on June 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

Also, for what it's worth, I don't know how people would have thought of Garcia y Vega cigars in the 50s, when Seize the Day was written, but in the late 60s, I had a "smoke a Garcia" ring that was made to look like a cigar band, so it must have been a pretty recognizable brand. In that sense, Garcia may have been considered famous.

(I really wish I'd kept that ring.)
posted by FencingGal at 6:03 AM on June 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: It doesn't say which brand it's from, but at the bottom of this page there's a gold-embossed cigar box portrait of Calixto García.
posted by offog at 6:36 AM on June 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Also possibly worth being aware of - there is a phrase that was famous in the early 20th century (but is not used today), to "carry a message to Garcia," meaning to successfully complete a difficult task - it relates to Calixto Garcia.
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:59 AM on June 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Oddly, an image search for Garcia cigar box brings up nothing with a male face that I can see. Searching specifically for 'Calixto Garcia cigar box' or cigarro brings up two separate isolated images with his face - offog's and this one. Calixto does seem a more likely reference than Garcia y Vega since the latter's logo was (always? mostly?) an image of a woman. (For comparison, Edward VII and Cyrus.)

Interestingly, a search for just 'Calixto cigar box' brings up lots of pictures of boxes bearing the face of Calixto López, and that brand is old enough to qualify, though I haven't checked if that box design is. It would be funny (but unlikely) if Bellow had somehow mixed up the two Calixtos.
posted by trig at 12:09 PM on June 23, 2023

Response by poster: Thank you to everyone who answered my question. I came to think Garcia is Calixto Garcia, not Eduardo Garcia.
posted by mizukko at 11:06 PM on June 25, 2023