The prune season is the best season

French Romantic/ Realist writers tended to want their lives as dramatic as their fiction and Balzac was no exception.


It took three passwords, each changed regularly, to gain entrance to Balzac’s home on the Rue des Batailles.For example, one could first have to go up to the porter and assure him that, “The prune season has arrived.”, then inform servant on the stairs that “I bring lace from Belgium.”, and, afterwards, assure the valet that “Madame Bertrand is in good health”.

Gee, You Shouldn't Have

To continue on in our exploration of Balzac, his mother had a very ambivalent relationship with him, eventually prefering his brother, the product of an illict affair with a local landowner, to her first-born, the Coffee Addict.

At least she did have some sense of who her son was, as, when she drew up her will in the cholera epidemic of 1830, she left everything to her son-born-of-adultery... save a small coffee pot, which she left to Balzac.

I bet he would be great at NaNoWriMo

Balzac's amazing productivity has other sources besides copious quantities of caffine. It seems to be attributed to a. a lot of debts, b. the necessity of making more money and c. self-will.

In an interesting combination of tthe three, Balzac was once called to court, having recieved several advances on a novel that was due two months ago. He was charged and his extremely angry editor demanded a novel within twenty-four hours.

Balzac managed to extend his sentance to twenty-four days, filled said days with coffee and had a finished novel in twenty.

(He did, however, lock himself in a room for twenty-four hours with nothing besides his writing supplies, coffee and a chamberpot and produced a short story. The Amateur Historian would like to profess her total lack of surprise that Balzac had heart troubles later in life and eventually died of a heart attack.)

Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz

I have, in the past, provided a list of guidelines to becoming a romantic poet. Now, Gentle Reader, I can just hear your protestations: "That's all well and good, but I prefer the novel!"

But of course, Gentle Reader! If you want to be a prolific Romantic novelist (well technically realist), try Balzac's routine:

1. Go to bed at 6pm.
2. Wake up at 1 am. Have coffee.
3. Write until 8am, at which point have more coffee, followed by a garganutuan meal of a consomme, steak, a salad, a desert and more coffee.
4. Write/correct printer's proofs/attend to extensive corespondance until 4pm. Have coffee.
5. Visit with friends until 6pm, then eat again and go to sleep.

The real secret to this success, however, is the fifty cups of coffee Balzac consumed every day. In fact,his first debt was to a servant at his boarding school, for coffee and sugar.

In short, Gentle Reader, coffee is the opium of novelists. Better go dig out those Starbuck's gift cards!