My quest for coffee stories yields not a latte

Note: I consulted ChatGPT for assistance in researching literary references to coffee.

Like many of my fellow writers, my brain runs on coffee. It takes a couple of cups of flavorful, strongly brewed dark roast to prep me for the writing flow. I’m on my third cup of the morning as I sit down to write this, and will probably pause at some point to pour a fourth.

As popular as coffee is among Americans–it is, by far, our nation’s most popular drink, according to Coffeenatics–the magical elixir it does not seem to figure prominently in our literature.

Oh, yes, there’s the grizzled detective, hungover and bleary-eyed, who downs a brackish cup of joe at over breakfast at the greasy spoon diner, or the harried barista/college student struggling to make ends meet. But has there ever been a Great American Coffee Story? Or novel? Or poem, even? I’m not aware of any. It seems we spill a lot of words about alcohol and cigarettes in our writing, but we don’t seem to spill many drops about our most-beloved brew.

So, as I looked ahead to today, which is International Coffee Day, I wanted to compile some American short stories that feature coffee, coffeehouses, or cafes. Off the top of my head, I could only think of two–one, an Ernest Hemingway tale that takes place in a cafe but only mentions the word “coffee” one time, and another recent piece from the New Yorker, where coffee figures more prominently–so I took to Google and AI (ChatGPT) to expand my knowledge. After perusing several sources and stories, I found a few I thought worth sharing.

Maybe one day, as coffee becomes more scarce due to environmental factors, or more expensive due to tariffs, we writers will stop taking our love affair with this brew for granted and start grinding out more coffee-inspired literature. Perhaps some heavily caffeinated soul will even be inspired to write a dystopian novel about a world without coffee. Until then, please enjoy one or two of them as you enjoy your beverage of choice today–whether it’s coffee or something else.

• “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” that classic Ernest Hemingway short story I mention in the paragraph above. It’s set in a cafe, but the only mention of coffee comes near the end, and is not essential to the plot or the narrative. Even so, this story presents a compact, insightful reflection on 1920s nihilism and existentialism–a perfect accompaniment for those who like to sip their coffee while staring into the abyss of existence.
• “The World’s Best Coffee,” by C.D. Reimer. This story about a coffee theft gone awry was published in Plan B Magazine, which is devoted to crime and mystery stories. “Mark stepped in front of Georgia to sweep the counter in one perfect motion to pick up the drink, a heat sleeve, and some napkins. He was out the door before anyone noticed that something was amiss. Once around the corner, he slowed down his pace to blend into the crowd and sip his drink for the first time.”
• “Instructions for Your High-End Italian Espresso Machine,” humor from screenwriter and satirist Heidi Lux and published in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. “Remove the machine from the box. Carefully. You want to make a good first impression. Use a firm, yet gentle grip to establish trust. Too weak a grip, and your high-end Italian espresso machine will never respect you.”
• “Last Coffeehouse on Travis,” by Bryan Washington, published in The New Yorker. A first-rate bit of literary fiction, as you’d expect from this magazine. “Sometimes, when things were slow, Margo would ask me to make her a cup of coffee. It was June, and through the windows the heat traced waves. I’d sigh, making a production of stretching my arms, squatting on the wood floor, before I addressed the beans. She’d watch my hands as I ground them, and then while I warmed the water, and then as I filled the filter and balanced my wrist as I poured, making loops around the coffee.”
• “The No-Barista Cafe,” a cautionary tale for our times, self-published on Medium by Marty Nemko. “I explained to my employees that it was just a one-week trial, and even in the trial, I’ll need people to welcome customers, stock, clean, and so on, but the next day, not one employee showed up, and there was a note under the door: ‘We all quit.'”
• “A Reminder to Submit Your First Week Attendance to the Registrar, in the Style of Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses.” McSweeney’s Internet Tendency strikes again. This short piece, by Ben Steere (“an archaeologist who tries not to take himself too seriously”), like Hemingway’s, barely mentions coffee–one character “drank coffee from a chipped blue enamel mug”–but for fans of McCarthy and for anyone who’s ever worked in higher education, it’s worth a read.

Photo via Pexels.