Friday, June 25: Bandersnatches
STEAMING HOT WORDS
by Steven Steinbock
This morning I jumpstarted my brain with a cup of coffee and a crossword puzzle. I finished the puzzle except for two intersecting words. One of the troublesome clues was Ace (slang). All I could think of were playing cards, WWI pilots, and news reporters, but I couldn’t fit anything into W-blank-I-Z. I obviously needed more coffee.
When the coffee didnt do the trick, I cheated. I went to Thesaurus.com (the sister site of Dictionary.com) and looked up ace.
I found my answer. But what interested me even more was the related blog, The Hot Word. The Hot Word of the day (as I’m writing this, on Wednesday, June 23) happens to be Coffee. I didn’t learn anything new except that new research shows that drinking four or more cups of joe per day may reduce the chance of certain head and neck cancers. I know from my own drinking habits that it can also lead to insomnia and hypertension.
(Incidentally, does anyone know how the word joe came to be associated with coffee? Dictionary.com suggests that it derives from Stephen Fosters 1860 song Old Black Joe, but I don’t see the connection).
I hope I don’t offend anybody with this next observation, but I find the weird metamorphosis of the classic macchiato into a weasely candy-ass drink completely bizarre. A macchiato is a cup of pure, straight espresso marked (hence the name macchiato) with a light spoonful of milk foam. I don’t know what a Caramel Macchiato is, but it isn’t a macchiato.
[End of rant]
We often hear of great authors whose work was fueled by alcohol, nicotine, and melancholia. There’s some truth in it, but methinks the legend depressed artist is a dangerous exaggeration. For every successful Hemingway, there are millions upon millions of alcoholics, suicides, and lung cancer victims who left behind no body of work save for sadness. Besides, look where Hemingway ended up.
What we don’t hear about are the authors who caffeinate their creativity. Most but not all authors I know are coffee drinkers. A few prefer tea. Some avoid coffee for health, religious, or taste reasons. One writer friend of mine finds the idea of warm drinks revolting. Soup is okay, but he won’t touch coffee, tea, or cocoa unless etiquette absolutely demands it.
The only writer I can think of whose coffee consumption is the stuff of legends in Honoré de Balzac. The English-speaking mystery community doesn’t talk much of Balzac, but he was certainly a part of our tradition. I can imagine him sitting around a coffee house table with Elmore Leonard, Lawrence Block, and John Harvey.
Balzac drank an obscene amount of coffee each day. Have a look at Balzac’s essay on the subject, The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee (published 1838 or 1839 in Balzac’sTraite des excitants moderns). The piece is short, beautifully written and translated, yet graphic enough to cause me to alternately laugh out loud and suffer gastric distress.
Read it. Tell me what you think. And tell me how you like to jumpstart your brain.
Steve, I think I drank enough coffee in college and the Air Force to last me the rest of my life. Now and then I’d have a cup during allnighters at IBM (Leigh knows what I mean), but since my wife’s never been a coffee drinker I finally fell out of the habit, and haven’t had a cup in years. Now it’s tea, mostly.
Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately), it’s never been hard to jumpstart my brain.
I drank coffee with cream and suger until I joined the Navy, when it became too great a hassle to add all that crap to the cup, so I’ve been drinking it black for thirty years. I wouldn’t describe myself as an addict, but I do love my three or four morning cups of joe.
Every American sailor knows that “joe” is named after Josephus Daniels, Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of the Navy, who outlawed booze on ships in 1914. After that, the strongest drink available on board was a cup of Joe.
However, this theory, which I categorically believe, is not universally accepted. Here is what Michael Quinion says about it (also explaining where Dictionary.com got its theory).
I’m going to Starbucks and order a candy-ass macchito.
Enjoyed the article.
I jumpstart with diet coke.
My parents were both prodigious drinkers of black coffee, and I have followed in their footsteps. As far as I know, it hasn’t affected me adversely, though I don’t know what I’d be like without it. I do know that I’ll get a headache if I don’t drink it in the morning. As for decaf, I never saw the point.
Jon,
I never saw the point of decaf either, until I realized, after a couple years of gastric distress, that my stomach no longer tolerates caffeine. I still very much enjoy the taste of coffee, though, so now I make my Americano decaf (is that a “weasely candy-ass drink,” too, Steve?).
Another avid coffee drinker here. I’ve always been amazed at the legends about writers who worked drunk, and wondered how many of them are exaggerated or apocryphal. I can’t write a word after a couple beers, let alone on a full-blown bender.
Balzac’s essay is good stuff.
I’m sitting in a coffee shop at this very moment, enjoying a dripped dark roast with a dash of non-fat milk.
I’m another one who doesn’t understand the purpose of decaf. Echoing what Jon said, what’s the point?
Alisa, you’re a friend even if you drink candy-ass coffee and diet Coke. But hey, I once ordered a chocolate Martini. So I have no right to throw rocks.
Hamilton, I’ve been known to order Americanos (espresso watered down with hot water). No, it’s not a candy drink unless you add frou-frou syrup flavorings to it.
Drive-by espresso stands usually don’t have brewed coffee (i.e. drip or French-pressed). So even though Don Vito Corleone might scratch his chin in wonder, an Americano is a reasonable alternative.
The coffee filters are lasting a long time now;) Eldest is now drinking green tea only as well. Where does that fit adverb wise? Healthy?;)
I drink way too much canned pop in the mornings. I’m cutting down. Hey, didn’t Dr. Johnson die from caffene poisoning?