Image: Wikipedia. Used by CC license.
First, there was Ernest Hemingway, Yelper:
Infusion Tea and Coffee House
Category: Coffee & Tea
THREE STARSI got up late and the sun was already high and I had been drunk the night before. The barista brought me a cup of coffee and asked if I wanted anything else and when I said no she left. The coffee was good and very hot. I sat at the table for a while. When I was done the barista came and cleared my mug and went back behind the counter. I ordered a muffin to go and walked out into the street. By that time it was two in the afternoon and my headache was not as strong as it had been.
Now someone’s taken a page from McSweeney’s and created the Tumblr site Yelping with Cormac, in which “Cormac McCarthy” airs his opinions on everything from Ikea to Whole Foods to the Apple Store. No, really:
The Apple Store
Union Square – San Francisco, CA
Cormac M. | Author | Lost in the chaparral, NMTwo stars.
Given the way my uncle died havin a drink directly after his funeral just didnt seem right so I went for a walk instead. One of them downtowns where all there is is stores. Came across a store was a big cube. Two stories tall and all silver. There was folks outside just standin there. Line stretchin round the block. Maybe a hundred people. I saw a man who’d brought his own chair. He had a shirt on with the same logo as the one on the store. I figured he worked there so I asked him what the line was all about. What were all these people waitin for. He told me it was for a apple phone or some such. I said dont these folks have telephones already? He told me they all had apple phones but it was the older one. I asked him what would happen to the old apple phones. He told me about a fella named Craig had a list and everbody sold their old telephones on it. A telephone sellin list.
Well I told him that all made about as much sense as a horse with two heads and he laughed like that was the funniest thing he ever did hear. Said he was goin to twinkle it. I left before he said anythin else that didnt make no sense and I went to the nearest bar and ordered a double whiskey and sat there drinkin it. I guess I sat there for a long time. Wonderin if when Rome was fallin all the Romans was standin in line waitin to get that new chariot or the like. The barbarians at the gates and them just standin there waitin.
No word yet on what the real Cormac McCarthy thinks of his Yelping self. But Yelping with Cormac could be just the first in a string of such sites. Can you imagine Yelping with Whitman? Yelping with Faulkner? Which authors, living or dead, would you like to see on Yelp?
Further Reading
- Thoughts on “parafiction”, where fictional characters blog and tweet
- If Joyce had tweeted Ulysses, it might have resembled this.
- Despite the title, Coffee with Hemingway is not a Yelp review—but it will give you some insight into the (real) author’s mind.
