Sara Nickl�s (Editor), "Drinking, Smoking & Screwing: Great Writers on Good Times"
I was reading this at the bar when my buddy Pete grabbed it from me. �Drinking, Smoking and Screwing? What, is this a Bukowski novel?� he said.
�No, but he�s in it,� I answered.
�And how did I know that?�
This was a pretty cool anthology of authors celebrating what�s most important in life. The funny thing was, all the authors who enticed me to buy this � Bukowski, Tom Robbins, Spalding Gray and Henry Miller � all featured passages I�ve already read. (Tom Robbins, who can get incredibly lewd, interestingly enough featured a piece on smoking from �Still Life With Woodpecker.�)
Most of the passages were pretty damn good, with the exception of some lame poetry from Anne Sexton and Richard Brautigan. (Oh God, my Chicken and her ex-chicken are gonna kill me...)
The best part was that there was some good stuff from women authors that I may check out. Which is a good find, considering all the grief I gave myself. Some of these included Dorothy Parker, whom I would have never thought to pick up, Erica Jong, and Fran Lebowitz, who did a hysterical essay on smoking.
�A hospital is the singularly most illogical place in the world to ban smoking [...]� she says. �The most frequent objection of the nonsmoker (that your smoke endangers his health) is rendered entirely meaningless by the fact that everyone there is already sick. Except the visitor � who is not allowed to smoke.�
Of course, like any other sucker, I bought this strictly for the title. I would say more, but as I sit here typing � a cigarette clutched in my mouth and a glass of whiskey at my side � I need to finish some homework, or I�m gonna be fucked in class tomorrow.
