"dangling a cigarette"

[JCWisc at aol.com]

In a message dated 05/28/2002 9:48:32 AM Central Daylight Time, 
cberlet at igc.org writes:

> Someone must have written a dissertation on all this cigarette style stuff?
>  
>  -Chip

No doubt.  You might try

Cigarettes Are Sublime
by Richard Klein

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0822316412/qid=1022632971/sr=1-2/ref=sr

_1_2/104-1981051-4634330

Editorial Reviews
>From Booklist
Klein's survey of the history of cigarettes and their gestalt of ritual, 
seduction, contemplation, and danger is fruitful and often surprising. For 
Native Americans, tobacco was a minor divinity, and smoke a prayer. For 
writers and artists, smoking has often been part of the creative process. The 
sharing of cigarettes has long been a gesture of courtship and sensuality, an 
expression of rebelliousness and bravado, and a balm for the terrors and 
tragedy of war and other intolerable circumstances. As Klein discusses the 
representation of cigarettes in literature and film, he also tracks various 
attitudes toward smoking. He believes the current zealous condemnation goes 
far beyond matters of health and drifts into issues of personal freedom. But 
he never denies the fact that smoking cigarettes is bad for you. Of course 
they're hazardous, that's why they're sublime: they combine pleasure with an 
"intimation of mortality." Donna Seaman --This text refers to the Hardcover 
edition. 

>From Kirkus Reviews
Many 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 fanciful analysis of--and ``elegy'' 
for--the cigarette. Smokers smoke not just for the nicotine, contends Klein, 
but also--perhaps primarily--because cigarettes offer ``a darkly beautiful, 
inevitably painful pleasure that arises from some intimation of eternity.'' 
By granting access to this sublimity-... 

Jacob Conrad