Customer Reviews

Drinking, Smoking and Screwing: Great Writers on Good Times

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's a puritanical society we live in, and it sucks. This book makes for a fine release from that straightjacket.

This fabulous short story collection is pure, unadulterated (perhaps adulterous?), almost-illegal fun. Bukowski's unabashedly macho "Women", Erica Jong's Zipless...(can I say the word in a public review?), Eve Babitz's revelations on something called "The Green Death" (I must find some one day and see if it really is that good); well, it's everything your mother and the Surgeon General told you not to do, but you do anyway. Or at least you should.

Speaking of the Surgeon General, my favorite here is Fran Lebowitz's "When Smoke Gets In Your Eyes...Shut Them" (page 192), and I quote from it quite often in today's smokist, nicotine gum, get the patch society. For air pollution and my blood pressure, one would do better outlawing those pretentious, gas guzzling Suburban Utility Vehicles. I suspect that many of the writers in this book BECAME writers to be able to smoke on the job in peace.

I would quibble with a few of the inclusions. For instance, I would have used Anne Sexton's "Fury Of The Cocks" instead if "When A Man Enters A Woman". I would have picked one of Dorthy Parkers acerbic poems about love and sex rather than using "You Were Perfectly Fine". I would have left out the "Lotlita" excerpt altogether for something more overtly satisfying and taboo, such as Pat Califia's "Calyx of Isis". And I'd never have even touched the vapid, sexist, nonsensical and needlessly trashy "Candy", by Southern and Hoffenberg, which is in this collection is rather like a pimple on the chest of an otherwise exquisitely beautiful stripper.

However, the good "bad" stuff more than makes up for the, well, bad "bad" stuff, and this is a book I go back to again and again. Call it my bedtime reading, if you will....a book that goes deliciously well with a good Dunhill cigarette, a nice shot of Baileys, and a half dressed...oh, nevermind. There are kids here.

For my generation, the road to depravity was ostensibly via sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. For the contributors to this anthology, most born in the previous generation, moral and physical ruin came from DRINKING, SMOKING & SCREWING. It's comforting to note that there's at least one vice the two generations can agree upon.

It should come as no surprise that the subject of screwing dominates eleven of the book's twenty-four chapters, followed by drinking (7), smoking (4), and a combination of the last two (2).

The subtitle of DS&S is "Great Writers on Good Times", which implies that the three vices necessarily lead to such. But this isn't the case. The twenty-six contributing authors - 19 men and 7 women - present, rather, non-judgemental evidence of the human condition that both causes and results from indulgence in the title sins. The individual pieces, like Mark Twain's "Concerning Tobacco" and Art Buchwald's "Some Heady Phrases on Wine", are personal commentary on the subject at hand, or, like Terry Southern's and Mason Hoffenberg's "Candy" and Anais Nin's "Henry and June", are excerpts from longer works of fiction. There are even a couple of short poems.

As related to the overall topic, no chapter is less than three stars, and a couple are worth five. My personal faves are "The Ginger Man" by J.P. Donleavy, about the aftermath of a cad's argument with his long-suffering wife, and "Women" by Charles Bukowski, the perfect illustration of male Homo sapiens as Sexual Pig.

Were the book to be compiled today for the current generation, I imagine the title would be something like "Sugar-Laden Sodas, Fatty Fast Foods & Unprotected Screwing." Time marches on.

I found this an entertaining introduction into the work of some great authors I hadn't read before, and of course the subject matter is fascinating.

I realized part way through that this is a very modern American product. Take short excerpts of famous writers works that involve debauchery, have it short enough to read in a couple of days, and market with bright red, white and blue with the word SCREWING on the cover. Maybe this is an ingenious way to hook regular Joes into reading a little good literature. In any case it worked for me.

Sara Nickles' "Drinking, Smoking & Screwing" (she's the editor) is a terrific collection of essays on some of our favorite vices--you know what they are! She's done a great job of collecting pieces from the beginning of the 20th century--Dorothy Parker's quaintly flapperish "You Were Perfectly Fine" launches the volume--to the hard-knocks modern-day writing of Charles Bukowski.

Funniest among these--and most of them are indeed funny--is the late, great Spalding Grey's "College Girls." All his inhibitions, all his fears, all his trepidation comes across loud and clear in this recounting of his fumblings--some successful, some not--with college girls of his acquaintance. Don Marquis writes elegantly of the sundry subtle skills of rolling and then smoking a cigarette; Mary McCarthy addresses loss of virginity with an excerpt from her classic novel "The Group;" Corey Ford recounts an office party gone hellishly, hilariously wrong with alcohol; and Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg write the strangest piece of all, about an attractive woman irresistibly drawn to a homeless hunchback.

The range of human experience, as seen through our predilection for things that feel good but might not be so good for us, is laid bare here--pun intended--and it makes for a wonderful afternoon's reading.

It is rare that the vices mentioned in the title of this book get the fair, impartial treatment that is shown here. Too often, writers (especially modern) take either the "moral high ground" and decry such behavior or attempt to glorify it mindlessly with no regard for its consequences. Neither make for very interesting reading. With a few minor exceptions, this collection, however, discusses drinking, smoking, and screwing with a nod to both our intellect and our basest instincts. Truly a book with both an open mind and open eyes.

What an excellent read. Drinking, Smoking, and Screwing is an excellent collection of laugh out loud literature. I could not put it down. A definite must-read.

This collection of writings on the "fun" things in life is entertaining and indulgent. A good read.

This book is an anthology of some of the best writers of our time. It will send you running to the nearest bookstore or library to find works by the authors included in this treasure. If I read this in High School, I might have been much more interested in literature!

A collection of essays and reminiscences about what the title says, written or set in the first three-quarters of the twentieth century. The editor's purpose, according to Shacochis's introduction, is to show that we have now become humorless puritans and that D S and S are victimless indulgences. There was once a happier time when we were less inhibited about these things and life was the better for it.
This purpose fails. Victims abound. The male authors (all heterosexual) come across as boasting about sexual conquests. Erica Jong cheerfully describes a rape and Nabokov describes you-know-what. St. Paul would have found a lot of justification here.
The drinkers all seem to be problem drinkers and I can't say the smokers make their habit sound positively enjoyable.
However there is some wonderful writing from a starry assembly of the century's finest American writers (if we included Nabokov and Anais Nin as American). Some of the humor dates a little. For example Art Buchwald's satire on wine talk has been repeated many times (although I don't think anyone has improved on Thurber's "It's a naïve little burgundy but I think you'll be amused at its pretensions.")
It's well worth reading. I don't think it will lead anyone astray.

I picked this up because it had a Richard Brautigan poem in it. Turned out to be one I already had. Anyway, the title's pretty self-explanatory. Short stories, novel excerpts, and a few poems with similar topics. The authors included are indeed some of the best. My favorites were by Spalding Gray, Mary McCarthy, Corey Ford, J.P. Donleavy, Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg, and James Thurber. The one I hated most was by Fran Lebowitz.