Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This curious volume is a potpourri of information and lore about cigars, their smokers from Rodrigo de Xeres of Columbus's crew to Winston Churchill and Castro, their manufacture, their sale and their appearance in song and story. All this is presented in a style brim full of literary referencesto Congreve, Conan Doyle, Ogden Nash, Italo Calvino and other writersthrough every paragraph. The cigar-smoking on-screen images of W. C. Fields, Groucho Marx, Orson Welles and Gary Cooper are evoked; the author also considers cigarettes and their contrasting Hollywood image. The word play is sometimes clever, sometimes weak, but Infante keeps adding puns until the practice becomes wearing. His erudition is impressive, though, and his topic entertaining, so readers interested in the subject should find the book enjoyable. Infante's earlier books include Three Trapped Tigers and Infante's Inferno. February 13 (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Now that Fidel Castro is eschewing cigars, his erstwhile countryman's pun-in-cheek history of the tobacco leaf and its many uses may prove definitive. Cabrera Infante has mined every imaginable vein for novelistic, cinematic, operatic, and poetic references to cigars and their users, and he has buried mounds of information concerning them in mountains of word play. That both Karl and Groucho Marx appear hereeach as cigar smoker and social analystmay impart something of the flavor of the work. A paronomastic tour de force, Holy Smoke does suffer from clouds of digression that may leave some readers smoked out. L.M. Lewis, Social Science Dept., Eastern Kentucky Univ., Richmond (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A cigar can be just a cigar, but herein it is an icon, a muse, a banner, a motif, and man's best friend. This cultural history of--and encomium to--the cigar, by a Cuban expatriate film critic, novelist, and iconoclast, is immoderate, witty, opinionated and footloose. Beginning with the details of tobacco's discovery in the New World, the book ranges from the famous fields of Hoyo de Monterrey to the cedar cabinets of the famed Dunhill's of London. Along with practical opinions on how to smoke, what to smoke, find whether to smoke before breakfast, the author collects anecdotes and trivia, as well as literary and cinematic references to cigars. Here is every cigar from the poet Amy Lowell's 10,000 Manilas to the Toscanis that Clint Eastwood chewed in his spaghetti westerns. Other forms of tobacco also have a place: Beau Brummel's muff, Bogart's cigarettes. Generally buoyant and smart, the book suffers from some excess, though. The descriptions of scores of movie scenes in which a cigar plays a role, major or minor, often seem only observant, not perceptive. Also, the final chunk of this chapterless book--made up largely of literary extracts--seems unfocused. There is much information sprawled through the volume, but it is unsystematic, almost incidental, and plays second fiddle to the author's brash puns, playful alliteration, and general linguistic tomfoolery. A' speed reader who came across his prose unawares could get whiplash. The best writing, he postures, is ""excessive, rhetorical, baroque,"" and he means it. His writing grabs you, spins you in circles until you're dizzy, then slows and leads you to a comfortable seat. . .on a roller coaster. S.J. Perelman would have loved this. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
