The office of Matthew Fisher, an assistant professor in English, resembles that of a typical college professor ““ books and papers arranged, deliberately or otherwise, in a pattern of contained chaos; framed photos of loved ones glint in the natural light filtering through the large window; a comfortably upholstered armchair is angled to face his desk for the leisure of visiting colleagues or students trailing in for office hours.
Even the giant cup of Kerckhoff coffee sitting on his desk is normal by some standards ““ perhaps for those with a high tolerance for caffeine and well-tamed blood pressure levels, and a lot to do and little time.
But then Fisher, who researches medieval English literature, in addition to teaching classes in the English 10 series, describes his daily coffee routine, and normal seems like a stretch.
“I have a pot of coffee before I leave the house and then I get coffee when I get to campus,” Fisher said. “And then I think it’s another cup or two somewhere throughout the day. “¦ I drink a lot of coffee. It’s not a routine so much as just a perfectly ingrained way of punctuating the day.”
Daily Bruin: What kind of coffee do you drink at home?
Matthew Fisher: I sort of gets all sorts of different stuff from Trader Joe’s to fancy shmancy stuff. … I try not to be a coffee snob. I enjoy good coffee but I’m willing to allow it to be multiply defined. I spend enough of my time obsessing over details that I’m not sure coffee is where I absolutely need to know everything about it.
DB: How do you usually drink your coffee?
MF: Black, always. It’s cheaper and it’s faster too. It’s very convenient to walk to the front of the line and just order a large coffee while everyone is waiting for complicated beverages.
DB: Which campus coffeehouses do you go to?
MF: I’ll go to all of them. I’ll go to Northern Lights if I’m coming in from the parking lot or if I’m up by the library “¦ or if I have a class at Rolfe. If I’m teaching at Perloff, (I’ll go to) Lu Valle. If I’m sort of more (centrally located), I’ll go to Kerckhoff. They’re mostly (on the north) side of campus, I suppose. I don’t really care who sells me the coffee. They’re all perfectly pleasant. And I don’t spend (much) time sitting there typically. I’m just getting coffee either to teach or to bring back to my office.
DB: Do you feel like coffee makes you more productive? Or is it more of a habit?
MF: I enjoy the beverage, certainly. I would assume that I’m incredibly addicted to coffee given how much I drink. I don’t really want to find out at this point in my life what would happen without it. I don’t know if it makes me more productive, so much as the threat of going without might make me less productive. I suppose it’s just a textbook addiction ““ you know, like many textbook addictions, there’s real pleasure to be had in it.
DB: When did you first start drinking coffee?
MF: High school. And certainly, it became a full-blown performance. In college I started drinking a lot more coffee, as students do. … I did my undergrad at (UC) Berkeley and there was a drink at this cafe that’s no longer there called The Hammerhead, which was two shots of espresso, an iced coffee and a shot of coffee syrup, and then (half and half) and whipped cream and then chocolate-covered espresso beans on top. It was just this insane concoction of more caffeine and sugar than anyone should consume in one sitting. At first I think I was getting them to write a paper or study for a midterm. And then I had a sort of two or three cup a day habit of these things. … I’ve drunk vast quantities of coffee ever since then.
DB: Would you say that there’s an additional social or aesthetic side to drinking coffee?
MF: Well, yes, it’s absolutely social. I meet colleagues for coffee, I meet students for coffee, I meet friends for coffee, I meet family for coffee, “¦ it is inherently social. That’s one of the great pleasures of it. An aesthetic aspect? …There’s an affectation to it. An affectation to drinking nothing but black coffee, rather than more frou frou drinks. It’s not a terribly performative affectation. It’s not quite walking down the streets of Paris with your turtle on a leash being a flaneur in the 19th century. I think, really since Starbucks became ubiquitous in the last five or 10 years, that coffee has stopped being an affectation and really become just profoundly ubiquitous.
I lived in England for six or seven years for graduate school, and when I first got there, there was almost no place to get coffee. There were a couple of specialty coffee and tea stores where you could make (the) coffee at home, but no one sold coffee on the street. There was one chain called Seattle’s Finest. Then over time more and more Starbucks knockoffs pervaded England, and it went from a country where you could only drink tea to where you could find coffee (too). And then Starbucks invaded as well. But I do think that sort of affectation or a cache of coffee has declined a long with its sort (of) omnipresent availability.
At Starbucks you know exactly how terrible the coffee you’re going to get is, but it’s perfectly consistent in being terrible, and they have free Wi-Fi, and they’re open on Christmas day. So you can now walk around London from Starbucks to Starbucks where a decade ago there were no such things. There were no Starbucks in Oxford when I started, and now there are three within a block of each other. It’s like Westwood, it’s a college town. But I think with that density and that ubiquity, “¦ the cultural resonance of coffee has stopped being so significant or even identifiable because it’s so prominent in so many people’s lives. You can’t point at it and be like, “Oh yes, it means that you’re an all-black-wearing art student of some form or another.”
DB: You mentioned how terrible you think Starbucks coffee is. With that said, would you still go and get Starbucks coffee?
MF: Yes. I still drink Starbucks ““ it’s hard not to. I think it’s difficult not to buy Starbucks coffee at some point. Whether you’re on the road or traveling or you’re in an airport, at some point, you’re going to run up against a Coffee Bean (and Tea Leaf), a Peet’s or a Starbucks. I try to sort of remain faithless to all of them and not fetishize one of their mass-produced products.
DB: Do you have a favorite coffee?
MF: No.