-from ch.2, Past Master
Saturday, May 17, 2014
The most wonderful thing in the world since the Evangels
"They went to Sky-Port and entered their craft for Astrobe, Thomas with an armful of mystery novels, revels, bonanzas, and science fiction books, all new things to him. Thomas had also discovered tobacco and he swore that the stogie was the most wonderful thing in the world since the Evangels. He announced that he would smoke and read for the whole trip to Astrobe. So they enskied."
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I am reminded of this wonderful little transitional blurb between chapters in the book Okla Hannali:
ReplyDeleteThey smoke. Another voice takes up the linked stories of the Man and the Family and the Nation. Be you not restive! It is a hundred-year-long story they spin out, and it cannot be told in a moment. Take the pipe when it is passed to you, or light up a stogie. The pipe was sacred to all the Indians, but even the cigar was to the Choctaws. Both the tale and the smoke are from the lips of treat men, and some of them were Mingos.
Excellent! I'm a pipe man myself but I do love a good stogie. I'm hoping that Andrew's upcoming biography will include some good facts about Lafferty's smoking habits.
ReplyDeleteI'm a non-smoker myself. I do get the idea that Lafferty revered the stogie. There are numerous mentions in the Institute stories of Epikt smoking enormous stogies, in Arrive at Easterwine Epikt pays Gregory Smirnov little enough to force him to search for half-smoked cigars--just to keep him humble, and in Tales of Chicago Duffey offers up a half-smoked cigar to a customer in his bar, as it is the only one he has to offer, and not to offer one would diminish his hospitality.
ReplyDeleteI bet if we did a search through all of Lafferty's work for the words "stogie" and "cigar" we would find hundreds of mentions.