Addicted to The Brew

Artist Unknown

​The following post is adapted from the most recent Coffee Before Pants podcast.
 
Anyone who knows me knows I love coffee.  I have coffee in one form or the other every day.  We have a Nespresso machine, a pour-over coffee maker, I love cold brew as well.  Oh, and yes, we have a French press, too.  It’s one of those, what mood strikes me kind of things.  Normally, because it’s so convenient, Valerie and I both start the day off with a double espresso.  There are days, especially when I work from home for my job, that I will drink 2-3 double espressos throughout the day.

However, I am a rank amateur compared to the literary figures I want to talk about today.  Writers who were addicted to coffee and drank copious amounts each day.  I know, define copious.  Well, my up to three coffees a day routine is nothing compared to these writers’ consumption. When I was researching this, I was, well, let’s just say my stomach hurt just thinking about it.

I am always talking about how much I love coffee. I don’t drink as much as I used to, really.  Thirty years ago, and yes it does seem like a long time, I used to frequent Fuel Café, in the Riverwest neighborhood of Milwaukee.  I would spend hours there, reading and writing and drinking copious amounts of their very strong coffee. You would pay full price for the first cup and thereafter, refills were 25 cents.  It is safe to say that I would drink at least eight cups of coffee. I now try to limit myself to three cups maximum and usually try to stop by early afternoon. Usually, though, on a regular day I usually have one double espresso in the morning and that gets me through my day.

However, the people I want to talk about today go beyond just “coffee lover” with what I even would deem excessive. Remember the commercials about being a “coffee achiever?” (Author Kurt Vonnegut was in one of them) These folks were more like coffee over-achievers.

The first of these authors is Honore de Balzac.  He was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus.  His writing schedule was, to say the least, brutal. According to Writers Write, he woke at 1 am each day and wrote for seven hours. At 8 am he napped for 90 minutes, then wrote again from 9:30 to 4 pm. He said: ‘As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move…similes arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle.’ In his time awake, he drank fifty cups of coffee.  Each day, every day. Balzac died at the age of 51, from congestive heart failure, but it was never proven that this was a result of his overwhelming coffee consumption.

Next up, another French author, François-Marie Arouet, commonly known by his nom de plume, Voltaire.  He was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher, satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit and his criticism of Christianity (especially of the Roman Catholic Church) and of slavery, Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.
Voltaire favored coffee mixed with chocolate, of which he drank 30-40 cups per day.  Although his doctor warned him repeatedly that his coffee habit would kill him, Voltaire lived to the age of 83.  Given that the average life expectancy in the late 17th-early 18th centurt was 30 to 40 years, that is pretty remarkable.  Maybe it was the coffee….

Although not much is known about Getrude Stein’s coffee consumption, she did profess to love coffee.  Apparently she drank coffee every morning upon waking, but professed to do so against her will.  She told people she was “nervous about becoming nervous” from the caffeine.  Right, Gertrude, we understand.

Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on organized religion, Christianity, morality, ethics, psychology, and the philosophy of religion, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony, and parables.

Kierkegaard had an interesting coffee ritual. He poured sugar into a coffee cup until it was piled up above the rim. Next came the incredibly strong, black coffee, which slowly dissolved the white pyramid. Then he gulped the whole thing down in one go. He wrote: ‘At any rate, I prize coffee.’
I guess so….

Marcel Proust, French essayist, critic, and novelist best known for his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time, had an altogether more reserved approach to coffee consumption. However, it is clear from his strict regimen that revered the brew. His housekeeper was rather puzzled by her employer’s habit of consuming exactly two bowls of café au lait along with two croissants every single day upon waking. She wondered how one might live on such a restricted diet. Note that Proust also had another peculiar habit and that is that he apparently rose out of bed not in early morning, but in late afternoon.

One of our illustrious founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin was also a coffee enthusiast. So much so, in fact, that he had his mail forwarded directly to his favorite coffee-house, where he spent numerous hours in conversation with his peers and the business elite of his time. Franklin so loved coffee that he never embarked on a sea voyage without his own supply of coffee. He also said, “Among the numerous luxuries of the table…coffee may be considered as one of the most valuable.” Interestingly, politician, postmaster, inventor, author, activist, statesman and diplomat Ben Franklin was born on Milk Street, Boston.

Not necessarily a coffee addict, but author Shirley Jackson, along with being a chain smoker and an amphetamine abuser, was addicted to Coke.  No, not cocaine.  Coca-Cola.  In case, for some reason, you have never heard of Shirley Jackson, she was an American writer known primarily for her works of horror and mystery. Her writing career spanned over two decades, during which she composed six novels, two memoirs, and more than 200 short stories. She is the author of The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in a Castle, and over 200 short stories, which include The Lottery and, one of my favorites, The Summer People.

I am sure there are a lot of writers and artists that love their coffee.  These are, from what I understand, the most notable coffee addicts in the creative world.