Aug

24

Thank You For Not Smoking.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

August 24, 2007 |

I have a confession to make: I used to be a smoker. I gave up several years of smoking first cheap cigars, then even cheaper cigarettes, then back to cheap cigars, then quit, then, one night, picked up a cheap cigar, lit up, sputtered and said, “Oh yeah, now I remember why I quit.” And, to be completely honest, I have an addendum: not long ago a good friend offered me a Cuban cigar. Every time I’ve heard someone rave about Cuban cigars I’ve thought, “Sure. How good could they possibly be?” Very good, in fact. So good that I’m glad they’re not readily available or I’d be tempted to make a habit of them–but not in public.

A.N. Nilson is prompted by Britain’s ban on smoking in public places to ask, in The Telegraph, “Is this the end of English literature?” He concedes that there were “books before there was tobacco in Britain”, but adds, “is it mere chance that the lifetime of Sir Walter Raleigh (1552?-1618), who introduced tobacco-smoking to England, was also the time when the great story of English literature really began?”

Really? The great story of English literature began with the life of Sir Walter Raleigh? Perhaps I missed something, but when I was a student the great story of English literature began with Beowulf. And one of my favorite works, Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, as well as Mallory’s Morte d’Arthur, the centerpiece of Arthurian literature, predates the arrival of tobacco–and tomatoes, for that matter.

Would Virginia Woolf, W.H. Auden, Lord Alfred Tennyson, Ben Jonson, Jonathan Swift, Lord Byron, or even Charles Dickens have been great writers if they hadn’t been smokers? That’s like asking whether Dylan Thomas or Algernon Swinburne would have been better poets if the hadn’t been such heavy drinkers, whether Oscar Wilde would have been so funny if he hadn’t been homosexual, or whether Milton would have written Paradise Lost if he hadn’t been blind. While we’re arguing in favor of smoking to save the soul of English literature, let’s bring back the brutal orphanages that inspired Dickens to write Bleak House.

Okay, that last remark was a bit over the top, and, while I can’t defend smoking, Nilson does hit a nerve for me when he says, “My wife and I have found formerly much-loved pubs all but empty or, worse, filled with middle-class eight-year-olds.” During my own time in Britain I found pubs to be the ideal place to strike up friendly conversations with complete strangers. They weren’t for smoking, or even necessarily drinking. The pub was, as its name says, a public house. There used to be a pub run by an English couple just two blocks away from where I now work. It was called Sherlock’s, and it looked like an authentic English pub, even down to the bar towels emblazoned with Guinness and Bass logos. That was only superficial, though: sit in Sherlock’s for an hour on any given afternoon and you’d realize the place was a community of regulars, people who knew each other, and people who were willing to welcome a stranger who’d popped in for a quick pint. I’m not quite sure why, after several successful years, Sherlock’s closed. It’s been replaced twice now, first by a sandwich shop and now a Middle Eastern restaurant and hookah bar. Well, those places have filled the space, but, like dentures filling in gaps where teeth once were, they haven’t replaced it. I’m getting off track again, but Sherlock’s wasn’t done in by a smoking ban, and I don’t think English literature will die because of it either. Other pubs have failed because there simply weren’t enough paying customers. If English literature dies it will be because of a lack of readers, not because they can’t smoke anymore. As Walt Whitman (who I know isn’t English, but bear with me) said, “To have great poets there must be great audiences.”

Times and tastes have changed. Tobacco has changed too, for that matter. It’s not merely a matter of health and environmental consciousness. The nefariousness of tobacco companies is well-documented,  and while smoking was never exactly healthy (Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray smokes an opium-laced cigarette on the first page of The Picture of Dorian Gray) it’s become significantly more unhealthy thanks to additives meant to intensify smokers’ addiction. Given the rise in cigarette-smoke allergies, asthma, and other health-related issues, how many audiences would attend a reading where the author spends most of the time smoking? On the other hand, holding a reading in a pub instead of a stuffy lecture hall might be a change that attracts great audiences, especially now that they’ve cleared out those filthy smokers.


Comments

4 Comments so far

  1. Little Miss Know it All on August 24, 2007 9:38 am

    Heck, there’s lots of room for great writing in English pubs. Visit one today, and write the next great tobacco patch ad! Seriously, the pubs are littered with tobacco patches, gums, samples and coupons. It was nice to be in a smoke free pub, but a little odd, since most of the patrons sat outside smoking in the cold, dark beer garden with the barmaid passing drinks through the window.

    I’d say texting, which is ten times more prevalent there than here, is doing more to harm British writing than a smoking ban is…

  2. Christopher Waldrop on August 24, 2007 10:23 am

    Funny that you mention passing drinks through the window because I thought that was a time-honored tradition in Britain too (see, for instance Forster’s A Room With A View). But texting is a pathetic substitute for genuine conversation with the person standing next to you at the bar–or smoking in the beer garden outside.

  3. James on August 27, 2007 2:31 pm

    You have touched on topic dear to my heart. The pub is alive and well. People still get together, drink, (smoke outside), and talk etc. It is a place where a world famous soccer player and a popular tv actor can slip in and be treated just like the local trash man and accountant. It is the place where all men are equal and where conversations lead to great stories, or moments of revolution, or just a moment of pure laughter.

  4. Don’t Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em. :: Just Write on May 6, 2008 12:04 pm

    [...] Related: Thank You For Not Smoking. [...]

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