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Drinking, Smoking and Screwing: Great Writers on Good Times Paperback – August 1, 1994

by Sara Nickles (Author), Bob Shacochis (Author)

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Before the notion of "political correctness" encroached on the ways people spoke, wrote, and conducted themselves in public and private, some of America's best writers embraced unsafe sex, excessive alcohol, and a good cigar. From the classically libidinous Henry Miller to the hilariously contemporary Fran Lebowitz, Drinking, Smoking and Screwing includes novel excerpts, essays, poems, and short stories in a bawdy and thoroughly entertaining anthology with no warnings -- and no apologies.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Here's to the three greatest pleasures in life: a cigarette before and a martini after. Drinking, Smoking & Screwing celebrates these less-than-holy pursuits and unlocks the sweet mystery of sin with a sordid selection of essays, stories, excerpts, and poetry from noted libertines such as Mark Twain, Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, Vladimir Nabokov, Spalding Gray, and Dorothy Parker. Also deliciously wicked is the introduction, penned by Bob Shacochis, author of Swimming the Volcano and not one to shy away from a drink, a smoke, and a... Well, you get the point. He writes, "Not to defend smokers, drinkers, and fuckers would be a terrible mistake.... The world might be simple and clean, but it wouldn't be deliciously, fascinatingly, pathetically human, would it? Nor would it be much fun." And, damn, is this book fun. --Tod Nelson

From Library Journal

This collection of 24 poems, essays, short stories, and excerpts from novels written between 1917 and 1986 has been put together to show readers that there was a time when Americans enjoyed drinking, smoking, and screwing rather than worrying, as do many writers in the 1990s, about how these activities threaten their health. However, though many selections are amusing, most stress the problems and frustrations that result from these activities rather than the joy. Authors include Dorothy Parker, Erica Jong, Mary McCarthy, Vladimir Nabokov, J.P. Donleavy, and Henry Miller, and most of what is collected here is well known. Nothing in the organization of the material or in the introduction provides insight into either familiar or unfamiliar writings. Not recommended.
Judy Mimken, Boise, Id.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Grade Level : 8 and up
Item Weight : 9.5 ounces
Paperback : 224 pages
ISBN-10 : 0811807843
ISBN-13 : 978-0811807845
Product Dimensions : 5.6 x 0.6 x 8.5 inches
Publisher : Chronicle Books; Underlining Edition (August 1, 1994)
Reading level : 13 and up
Language: : English

Best-sellers rank #285,930 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#831 in American Literature Criticism
#918 in Humor Essays (Books)
#4,044 in Short Stories Anthologies

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A debauched life is one worth living

Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2006

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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.

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MikeyM77

Don't loan this book out!

Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2018

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This is the fourth time I bought this book. I'm not loaning it out anymore! Must- have for the bookshelf!

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miles allison

Cheating and Stealing" this is just full of great writing, essays

Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2016

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Along with "Lying, Cheating and Stealing" this is just full of great writing, essays, snippets of novels and short stories. This is how writing is done. If you enjoy reading good literature, GET THIS BOOK!

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Amazon Customer

A must have for any scholar's library shelf!

Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2017

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The title says it all. Read this book!

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Joe A. Lankford

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2015

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A vrey interesting book. I couldn't put it down until finished.

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thomas quinn

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2014

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Great book

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Catherine S. Vodrey

A fun range of essays on our favorite vices

Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2005

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.

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Zon Mundhenk

Bedtime Reading For Marvellously Twisted Adults

Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2000

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.

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Drinking, Smoking and Screwing: Great Writers on Good Times Paperback – August 1, 1994

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