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Coffee and literature
We’ve collected a few of our favourite moments with coffee in literature, exploring the countless, every day interactions we have with it. Join us.
A Journey Through Coffee and Literature
In the words of our Master Roaster, Gaetano - "if you love coffee, it becomes your companion throughout your life" - its aroma; its rich, persistent taste; and the comfort of wrapping our hands around a warm cup. But what of coffee's intangible nature; the things you can?t directly feel? Scores of writers have sought to capture coffee and its significance within the full scope of human life. We've collected a few of our favourites, exploring the connection between coffee and the countless, every day interactions we have with it.
T.S.Eliot, The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
"I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." The act and the time taken to make and enjoy coffee is insignificant in isolation but, in its habitual essence - and presence over the years - it is definitive of a lifetime.
Virginia Woolf, The Waves
"How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here forever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself." Coffee is so ordinary a thing at face value and yet, for that very reason, it's where many of us pause to think and consider. Unconsciously, to take time for coffee is to take time for yourself and its meditative quality and repetitive, simple action is significant in relieving or enjoying the quieter moments of the day.
Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
"I went out the kitchen to make coffee - yards of coffee. Rich, strong, bitter, boiling, hot" Times of need aren't always quiet and reflective and, for some, call for the strength of black coffee to fuel them through hard times. If you look, you'll find references to black coffee everywhere - in music lyrics, in poetry, and in literature - propping up the weary protagonist.
J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
"that's something that annoys the hell out of me - I mean if somebody says the coffee's all ready and it isn't" With sugar, without; a dash of hot milk, or cold; how one takes their coffee is often prescriptive, and personal. How do you take yours?
Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
"Around nine Oshima roars up in his Miata, and we get the library ready to open. He's taught me how to do it just right. You grind the beans by hand, boil some water in a narrow-spouted pot, let it sit for a while, then slowly - and I mean slowly - pour the water through a paper filter. When the coffee's ready Oshima puts in the smallest pinch of sugar, just for show, basically, but no cream - the best way, he insists." Coffee is so much than just a beverage, often acting as a catalyst for serendipitous discoveries: the couple that fall in love across the coffee house; the friends that became meeting in the queue at the same time every day; and the friendly smile of the barista, sharing a small part of the day with you.
