Cigarettes are SublimeCigarettes are bad for you; that is why they are so good. With its origins in the author's urgent desire to stop smoking, Cigarettes Are Sublime offers a provocative look at the literary, philosophical, and cultural history of smoking. Richard Klein focuses on the dark beauty, negative pleasures, and exacting benefits attached to tobacco use and to cigarettes in particular. His appreciation of paradox and playful use of hyperbole lead the way on this aptly ambivalent romp through the cigarette in war, movies (the "Humphrey Bogart cigarette"), literature, poetry, and the reflections of Sartre to show that cigarettes are a mixed blessing, precisely sublime. |
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CIGARETTES ARE SUBLIME
User Review - KirkusMany people, deciding to quit smoking, go cold turkey; others use nicotine gum or a patch. Klein (French/Cornell), however, has taken a unique approach: the writing of this learned, elegant, and ... Read full review
Review: Cigarettes Are Sublime
User Review - Matt - GoodreadsSublime as in "a moment of relief from life's shitty monotony." Read full review
Contents
| 23 | |
| 51 | |
| 77 | |
The Devil in Carmen | 105 |
The Soldiers Friend | 135 |
A Polemical Conclusion | 181 |
Notes | 195 |
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Common terms and phrases
activity aesthetic allows American anxiety appears appropriate Banville beauty become beginning Bogart called Carmen Casablanca century chapter character ciga cigar cigarette smoking condition considered continuing cultural cure death desire determined difference discover doctors dream effects example experience eyes face fact father fear feel fiction fire freedom French gesture give habit hand imagine important kind last cigarette less light living look means moment moral narrator nature never novel object offer opening paradox passing perhaps photograph Photos pipe play pleasure poem political possibility present produces reading represent resolution rettes Rival role Sartre says seems seen serve smoking cigarettes soldier stop story sublime taken taste tell thing tion tobacco turn universal whole woman women writing Zeno
Bibliographic information
| Title | Cigarettes are Sublime |
| Author | Richard Klein |
| Edition | illustrated, reprint |
| Publisher | Duke University Press, 1993 |
| ISBN | 0822316412, 9780822316411 |
| Length | 210 pages |
| Subjects | › Literary Collections / Essays Literary Criticism / General |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |