The Odor of Coffee: Dany Laferrière and Science

The coffee's dripping and I'm thinking about how good it smells.  Since last night one of my library discussion groups talked about Dany Laferrière's The Return, the work of this Haitian-Québécois member of the Académie française is on my mind.

The verdict about Laferrière's novel about a man's return to Haiti to scatter his father's ashes was not clear.  Some loved it, others found it too scattered.  Much more successful, I think, is his account of a period spent with his grandmother as a 10 year old, The Aroma of Coffee.

Reading this is pure pleasure, both for the descriptions of life in a Haitian village and for the strong portrait of a grandmother who cares for her sick grandson with love and firmness.  She also makes a terrific cup of coffee.  As is the case for many writers, Laferrière spent a time of enforced isolation as a pre-adolescent, and then was faced with integrating into a wider world rather suddenly.  In his case, it was a fever that kept him inactive and allowed him to read a lot.  When he was better, he went back to Haiti's main city Port-au-Prince where he found a swirling world that he had to make sense of.

The book is not an auto-fiction.  That is Laferrière uses elements from his own life, but transforms them to make something that is art, not life.  (In fact, he spent a much longer time  with his grandmother, and he returned to the capital at an older age.) The result is very much worth reading.

So is The Return, for that matter, particularly if you haven't read much Laferrière because he returns to many themes he's written about earlier, but refined them here.  If  you have followed his career, you might find it verging on the same old, same old. 

Both books were translated by David Homel, who does a terrific job. 

And as for the great attraction of coffee, The New York Times has an interesting story today that explains how the ability to make caffeine evolved in coffee trees as a double-whammy tool for the plant's survival.  In large amounts, as when coffee leaves fall to the ground and degrade, caffeine prevents other plants from germinating and competing with the tres.  But in small amounts, as in the nectar of coffee flowers, the chemical gives pollinating insects a little buzz that encourages them to return to the flowers.

Same thing for us, I guess.  The smell of coffee is divine and the small energy hit of one cup is great, but too much can give you palpitations or worse.

Okay, I've finished my cup.  Quite procrastinating on the Net and get to work....