The younger ones may not remember it, but the Briefs from the counter by Jean-Marie Gourio (around fifteen volumes from 1987 to 2015) were a huge success in bookstores (as well as on television and in the theater thanks to Jean-Michel Ribes). This former Charlie Hebdo and of Hara-kiri had the good idea of collecting the pearls thrown by the regulars of the bars of the bistros, the place of catharsis par excellence, witticisms full of common sense or slightly vulgar retorts. “China is thousands of years old, and they sell us socks that don’t even last a day!”, “You know, death comes and goes”, “Leonardo da Vinci, the telephone, TV, radio , he didn’t see it coming!” In short, this epicurean observer was ideally suited to offer us his Coffee lovers dictionary (Plon).
That’s almost 700 vaguely nostalgic pages on the France of PMU, early morning white balls, the “worker’s” menu, table football, pinball, jukebox, 421 and “one-last-for-the-road”. The fact is that from 200,000 estaminets in 1954, we have gone to 30,000 today, says the author, who points out the virtues of integration of the neighborhood or village café. As in any good dictionary, we learn vocabulary: “Push your giblets!” means “Get out!” ; “put the kids back on”, “put them back on”; “to get the cherry”, “to get away without paying or without postponing your tour”; “being in apnea”, “spending hours clinging to zinc”; “to be on the stove”, “to rekindle the pot from the day before”… Some entries are intriguing, like “Aaaaaaah!”, when the café finally opens, followed by “However!”, “Be careful when walking”, “Rocking shoes” for a drunk person who can no longer stand; or “René Descartes”, from the Le Descartes café, rue Thouin in Paris and his “I am at the café, therefore I am”.
Gourio is inexhaustible, he can talk to you endlessly about the mop, the percolator, the lemonade maker, hard-boiled eggs, postman’s wine… all while quoting Aragon, Apollinaire, Verlaine, Queneau, Perec, Simenon, Fallet, Blondin or Zola again. He also rails against the smartphone, “small, bright, cold, clever, hypnotic, irresistible and devastating screen” and against the end, in 1981, of the “pilot drinks” operation blocking the price of coffee, a glass of wine or of a beer, “a touch of equality between the counters of the cities and those of the countryside, between the rich cafés and the poor cafés”. In fact, Gourio knows everything. We will conclude with this beautiful figure of speech from Raoul Ponchon, a Rabelaisian poet: “When my glass is full, I empty it; when my glass is empty, I pity it.” To read without moderation.
Coffee lovers dictionaryby Jean-Marie Gourio. Plon, 684 p., €28.