Review for Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Love Letters to Possibility

Before I finished my graduate degree back in October, for five years I really only bought books that were on my syllabi. Any extra money that I had in my bank account from summer savings, side jobs, or my TA position was almost always needed for rent, utilities, or food. The whole of bookstagram was lost on me as all my focus was tirelessly grabbed by 14th century plays, 16th century sonnets, and 19th century novels that continue to be borderline magical sleep aids for me. In other words, it gives me such happiness to know that now when I read prose, plays, and poetry written in the last couple years, I’m part of the conversations that currently matter. And I think Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold is one of those stories that sparks the kind of conversation that truly pertains to the now.

Kawaguchi’s novel is the first I’ve read in awhile that does not necessarily have a person as it’s main character, but rather a place. Originally written as a play, the whole of the story occurs in a small basement café in Tokyo called “Funiculi Funicula,” which is a fascinating call back to Luigi Denza’s 1880 Neapolitan song by the same title. Interestingly, the two words are made-up rhythmic ones that seem to be a reference towards what inspired Denza to write the song: the first funicular railway installed on Mount Vesuvius in Southern Italy. In other words, a linear mode of travel that can take its passengers from one place to another, similar to how the café (also established in the late 19th century) seems to lift its passengers from one moment to another through its unique time travelling abilities. The novel, then, is split into four sections (or interconnected stories) and four passengers of time travel, all aware of the six seemingly obscene rules that one must follow for the time travel to work. Of course, the paramount rule is to drink the time-transporting coffee before it gets cold in order to return to the present.

I think as with any story about time travel, there is bound to be a bit of a mess. There is a wide plethora of theory surrounding the possibility that has undeniably become a scorching topic of today, especially with films like Back to the Future, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Avengers: Endgame, Tenet, Midnight in Paris, and the upcoming Loki show sparking such attention. They all beg the questions: Does our experience of time flow in a linear line? If so, and I should time travel, will it alter the course of the future life of everyone I interact with? Or, if time is linear, did such an event already happen? And I am powerless to change or stop what has already happened from happening? Or, contrariwise, by meddling, will my actions fracture an already messy line of temporality into even more possible universes? The conversation folds in on itself every time as the possibilities, ultimately rooted in the selfish idea that one person can cause a monumental disruption to all theories of temporal flow, never consider all the factors involved. It is always chaotic, and I honestly believe that such a problem is of no concern to Kawaguchi’s story. There does not need to be any scientific answer to the café’s time travelling abilities because the novel is more concerned with possibility than the answers of how the minutia of it all works.

So, what I think we’re working with, instead, is more a series of love letters to the possibilities of what can be done with the reclamation of time. Throughout the stories, not only are all the characters constantly looking at their watches, but the hands of the clocks on the walls are also all in different positions and there are no windows for natural light. Expressly, it is impossible to tell the correct time (with the clocks and with life in general) for any stranger walking into the café. Further, each time traveler is faced with regrets, and each confront the undeniable truth that they were unable to decipher the right moment to say something crucial, perhaps because they live according to the time that shows on their personal watch. This is then reinforced by such a strong presence of letters throughout, representing the things that need to be said but cannot be spoken out loud. I also found it interesting that with such a limited amount of time in the past, the person that the traveler is looking for is never in the café exactly when the traveler arrives. So, no matter how badly someone may want a chance to reconcile a problem, there is always a period of waiting. If there is any moral lesson in these stories, then I think that might be it.

I say this because I don’t believe there is any higher moral lesson being written into this overarching idea of time travel. There is no triumphant crescendo towards "carpe diem," nor does it ever read as though there is going to be. Because the novel is so strongly rooted in impossibility, it felt more like a recognition that, sometimes, the right moment never comes; we inevitably miss it while caught up in whatever blocked it from happening. With this novel, Kawaguchi then allows a certain kind of fantasy to transpire. With his character Kazu (I’m sure lovingly shortened from his own first name, Toshikazu), the coffee of possibility is poured into every cup and facilitates the readers into a life of what could be or could have been for a little while. And I think that’s pretty beautiful!