Drinking, Smoking and Screwing: Great Writers on Good Times |  | Author: Bob Shacochis
Creator: Sara Nickles
Publisher: Chronicle Books
List Price: $13.95
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Seller: massbookstore
Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 105582
Media: Paperback
Edition: Trade
Pages: 224
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.6
ISBN: 0811807843
Dewey Decimal Number: 810.80355
EAN: 9780811807845
ASIN: 0811807843
Publication Date: August 1, 1994
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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
Product Description
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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Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
 Tomar, fumar y joder!!!!!!!!!!! June 22, 2006
Natalia de la Torre
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Drinking, Smoking and Screwing es la entrada a los excesos. Los excesos visto desde la perspectiva de varios escitores que tocan el tema del lado sórdido de la vida. Si usted está deprimido, prepárese, posiblemente se deprimirá más y querrá tomar una sobredósis de 1)sexo, 2)alcohol 3)drogas o cigarrillo. Si decide la segunda opción, asegure tener un termo lleno de café a su lado para el guayabo o "resaca". Claro que se va a divertir con este libro y vale la pena recordar (a veces con pena, otras con gozo) a través de las historias situaciones que a uno le han sucedido. Recomiendo especialmente la historia "Women" de Charles Bukowski.
A debauched life is one worth living May 14, 2006
Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
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.
A fun range of essays on our favorite vices April 12, 2005
Catherine S. Vodrey (East Liverpool, Ohio United States)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
Excellent failure November 19, 2004
D. P. Birkett (Suffern, NY USA)
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
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.
Great writers, good writing August 31, 2004
J. Bosiljevac (san fran, ca)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
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.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
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