A Hallmark movie has quoted “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”: the line about measuring out life with coffee spoons. Yes, someone runs a café. And the reply: “You’re an Eliot fan too?” OMG they’re made for each other.
[The movie is Love Always, Santa (dir. Brian Herzlinger, 2016). I’ve been misremembering the Eliot line as “in coffee spoons” for, like, forever. OMG.]
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
New directions
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comments: 8
Oh, wow! I was wondering what a coffee spoon is--assuming it was larger than a teaspoon-- so why did Eliot use it?
But no--it's smaller, as you probably know:
"Much less common is the coffee spoon, which is a smaller version of the teaspoon, intended for use with the small type of coffee cup."
--from Wikipedia, which even quotes the Eliot poem.
P.S. It cracks me up that it's in a Hallmark movie.
But... would someone who loved T. S. Eliot ever refer to themselves as a "Eliot fan"?
Thanks for the info on the coffee spoon. I wonder now if that’s the name for some small spoons we have. (No idea why we have them.)
As for “Eliot fan,” in this movie anything goes. There’s a Hemingway element too: the café is called The Bun Also Rises. And that’s just for starters.
I think ours are demitasse spoons — tinier.
Oh, my--found a whole post about the diminutive demitasse spoon (and cup):
www.thecoffeebrewers.com/about-demitasse-spoons.html
The Bun Also Rises--do you sense a recent English grad behind this script?
Hm.. or perhaps the degree was long ago, and this is nostalgia.
Anyway--thanks for writing about it--gave me the nudge to learn about spoons--
the things you have to know to read literature... :)
Yes, I think someone is having fun with, or at the expense of, an English-major background.
I have to admit: I never thought about the size of the spoon in TSE. I just thought repetition, social world, living by convention. But it makes even better sense if Prufrock thinks in terms of a small spoon.
Hi! I’m the guy who wrote that line. I was an English major back in olden times and always enjoyed how silly the entire enterprise was. More than that, though, I love trying to slide as much unexpected weirdness into my family friendly flicks as possible. I had two pages devoted to Epicurus in one last year before it was caught and eliminated by the keepers of the brand. But still, the fight continues.
Epicurus, huh? I’m guessing that you’re kidding, but I’m also guessing that you really are one of the two writers. My affection for Hallmark Christmas movies is an affection for the sheer hokiness. The weirdness in Love Always, Santa — especially the open-mic night — is a special holiday bonus. Thank you for that.
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