
The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee (1830) - occamschainsaw
http://blissbat.net/balzac.html
======
ballsyballsman
Great writing of Mr Balzac about coffee.

According to research he came out as a man of extremes - "Overweight,
workaholic, and a caffeine abuser, Honoré de Balzac lived a life of excess. He
prematurely died at the age of 51 owing to gangrene associated with congestive
heart failure."

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27638234](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27638234)

~~~
bertil
Not just extremes in what he swallowed: he’s notorious for “La Comédie
Humaine” [0] his dozens of novels are actually set in the same fictional
world, with consistent characters across decades. You can take excerpts from
several books to tell a completely original story. It’s the most detailed
world ever described —from individual thoughts to gruesome details about
poverty, up to overarching consequences of the industrial revolution on the
remaining aristocracy.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Com%C3%A9die_humaine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Com%C3%A9die_humaine)

~~~
redwall_hp
That sounds a lot like the basic idea behind Terry Pratchett's Discworld.

~~~
bertil
It is, although more XIXth-Century realism, so darker: someone who was
drinking at a bar reappears as a ruined alcoholic later. Someone who got rich
suddenly turned mean.

A lot of the speculation on the forty-something unfinished books are based on
those trajectories.

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GuiA
While writing _La Comédie Humaine_ \- 92 books and many more unfinished, from
1829 to 1850 - Balzac is said to have started his days around midnight. He
would write till 8am, with some breaks for walks, rest for an hour, then write
again till 4p. At that time he would bathe, receive friends for dinner, and go
to bed at 6p or 7p. He drank a lot of coffee.

~~~
LeoTinnitus
He had the dream job back in the 1800's

~~~
burntoutfire
He's a fascinating figure - I recommend his biography by Zweig.

Regarding the "dream job", he was thoroughly jealous of aristocracy and their
prestige and wealth and saw writing mostly as a way to accumulate similar
wealth and join their ranks - which was impossible because writers didn't make
that much and even if they did, the aristocracy would shun the nouveau-riche
anyway. Interestingly, aristocracy was fascinated by his writing and wanted to
rub elbows with him, which he completely missed (which is hilarious, given
that he was a master of social observation) and so he spent all his earning on
expensive furniture and such (which of course couldn't make any impression of
the rich - they had the same trinkets, only better).

He also once hired a team of writers to write him book on a tight deadline.
IIRC, the deadline was 48 hours and each writer was supposed to deliver a
chapter of the novel, with little coordination of plot and characters. You can
imagine the results...

Another interesting tidbit was that he spend multiple years wooing a bored
Polish aristocrat, convincing her to abandon her husband and marry him
instead. Of course, it was just another plot to get to the riches. There was
also investing into silver mines in Corsica. He would make a great character
in his novels...

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ramimac
Some really interesting comments in the previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13647098](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13647098)

~~~
dang
That one's from 2017.

There's also 2014:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7921691](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7921691)

and 2011:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2880196](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2880196)

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bryanrasmussen
Beware the first sip of ol' demon coffee.

[https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/20/books/books-of-the-
times-...](https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/20/books/books-of-the-times-beware-
the-first-sip-of-ol-demon-coffee.html)

------
flocial
Imagine posting this today: cite your sources, anecdotes are meaningless, n of
1, etc. It's interesting that "Many people claim coffee inspires them, but, as
everybody knows, coffee only makes boring people even more boring." aligns
with the recent post about caffeine boosting work capacity but no effect on
creativity.

~~~
tdy721
[https://erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Caffeine.shtml](https://erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Caffeine.shtml)
These are some modern takes on the same idea. Now that we know the “barely
perceptible radations” from stomach to brain have a formula.

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ahmed123alami
bonne page

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LeonigMig
sublime

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ryannevius
Heads-up if you're thinking about clicking the credit/original source link at
the bottom of the post...it's very NSFW and likely doesn't contain the
original content.

~~~
_bxg1
Weird. Maybe it was misspelled?

~~~
saagarjha
archive.org shows that it seems like the domain registration seems to have
expired and likely changed hands mid-decade or so.

