creators of Literary Starbucks blog
My student Windy Vorwick, who seems always on the outlook for literary blogs, has alerted me to yet another, this one featuring Starbucks. The conceit is that authors (or their characters) order a coffee in a way that reveals something about their lives or works.
The bloggers are students at Carleton College, which caught my eye as that is where I attended college. Maybe there’s something about my alma mater that produces bloggers. Anyway, it’s nice to see students paying attention to literature outside of class.
As one would expect, the items are hit and miss but some are a lot of fun and the blog as a whole works as a test of one’s literary knowledge. There’s also potential for the authors to grow into the idea as they go along, especially honing their skills at parody. Here’s a sampling. Enjoy:
Lady Macbeth goes up to the counter and sees three female baristas intently hovering over the espresso machine, chanting something unintelligible. She decides to order a Passion tea and proceeds to spill it all over her clothes and hands. She runs screaming to the bathroom. The three baristas cackle in uncanny unison.
Marlowe goes up to the counter and begins ordering a coffee, but before he can finish he is stabbed to death. No one will ever know what he was going to order, but some say it would have been better than what Shakespeare ordered.
William Carlos
Williams
orders shaken iced
tea lemonade.
It is delicious
so sweet
and so cold
J.D. Salinger goes up to the counter and orders an iced skinny flavored latte. He pays for it, but when the barista tries to give it to him, he instead attempts to engage her in conversation, claiming that he didn’t really want the coffee in the first place. Also, everyone is a phony.
Charlotte Brontë goes up to the counter for a cup of tea and Reader, she orders it!
