- Buckley, Christopher.
Thank You for Smoking.
New York: Random House, 1994.
ISBN 0-8129-7652-5.
-
Nick Naylor lies for a living. As chief public “smokesman”
for the Big Tobacco lobby in Washington, it's his job to fuzz the
facts, deflect the arguments, and subvert the sanctimonious
neo-prohibitionists, all with a smile. As in Buckley's other
political farces, it seems to be an axiom that no matter how far
down you are on the moral ladder in Washington D.C., there are always
an infinite number of rungs below you, all occupied, mostly by
lawyers. Nick's idea of how to sidestep government advertising bans
and make cigarettes cool again raises his profile to such an extent
that some of those on the rungs below him start grasping for him
with their claws, tentacles, and end-effectors, with humourous and
delightfully ironic (at least if you aren't Nick) consequences,
and then when things have gotten just about as bad as they can get,
the FBI jumps in to demonstrate that things are never as
bad as they can get.
About a third of the way through reading this book, I happened to
see the 2005 movie made from it on the
illuminatus. I've never done this before—watch a movie based
on a book I was currently reading. The movie was enjoyable and
very funny, and seeing it didn't diminish my enjoyment of the book
one whit; this is a wickedly hilarious book which contains dozens
of laugh out loud episodes and subplots that didn't make it into the movie.
October 2007 