Guillermo Cabrera Infante (1929–2005)

What’s wrong with this picture? Certainly, nothing I can see, except perhaps she has not read Holy Smoke by Guillermo Cabrera Infante, a 300-page punning wordplay, a sidesplitting, outrageous history and celebration of the cigar. And here’s a puff from the first pages where, on the island that would become known as Cuba, a scout sent out by Columbus to scout out gold reports to the admirable Admiral on what he did discover:

“De Xeres came back not with nuggets of gold but with some show more astonishing piece of news: he had found the land of the chimney-men. The what? Men who think they are chimneys: men who smoke. Columbus was disappointed in de Xeres. The man had not only been unable to find any gold, as Marco Polo did, but he came back with this weird narrative. A likely story! What should he tell King Ferdinand? ‘Sire, my scout became a boy scout.’ Too much sun too soon. Or did he mean not chimney-men but chimeras? Too much Amontillado, that’s what it was! But de Xeres explained soberly that these savages he saw really smoked like chimneys. Everywhere they went they carried about a brown tube burning on one end. They stuck the other end in their mouths for a while and seemed to drink from the tube. After they did so they smoked from mouth and nostrils. And they seemed to enjoy the experience!”

From the dearth of book reviews posted here, it appears many other readers, similar to the above cigar-smoking lass, have also overlooked this smokin’ Cabrara Infante literary romp which, unlike his other classics such as Infante’s Inferno and Three Trapped Tigers, is not translated from Spanish into English but actually written in English.

As part of the cigar’s illustrious history, we read, “Some twenty years ago the idea (come from England, no doubt) that cigars, like Loos’s blondes, were for gentlemen only, was dispelled by the scraggly mien of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara’s handsome head, both clad in US Army surplus fatigues, both enveloped in smoking beards and both sporting foul, fat cigars.”


I’ll let Cabrera Infante end with his playing with language as he tells of Cocteau Holy Smoke: “Jean Cocteau is so opinionated in ‘Opium’ that his book should better be called ‘Opinions.’. He writes, badly, of old saws and he makes them sound like seesaws. A smoker who smoked twelve pipes a day all his life would be protected not only from the flu, colds and anginas but also in less danger than a man who drank a glass of cognac and four Havanas.’ Cocteau even has some dope not on dope but on cigars: ‘Tobacco is almost harmless. After combustion nicotine disappears. Usually one takes for nicotine (a white salt) that sort of yellow paste produced by modifying by fire all combustible matters. You’ll need four or five fat Havanas a day to provoke in you angina pectoris. Most of what is said on the harm produced by tobacco are spasms with no real danger.’ A white Cococteau projected on a smoke screen.”


You don't have to be a cigar smoker (I'm not) to enjoy this smokin' classic. show less

What’s wrong with this picture? Certainly, nothing I can see, except perhaps she has not read Holy Smoke by Guillermo Cabrera Infante, a 300-page punning wordplay, a sidesplitting, outrageous history and celebration of the cigar. And here’s a puff from the first pages where, on the island that would become known as Cuba, a scout sent out by Columbus to scout out gold reports to the admirable Admiral on what he did discover:

“De Xeres came back not with nuggets of gold but with some show more astonishing piece of news: he had found the land of the chimney-men. The what? Men who think they are chimneys: men who smoke. Columbus was disappointed in de Xeres. The man had not only been unable to find any gold, as Marco Polo did, but he came back with this weird narrative. A likely story! What should he tell King Ferdinand? ‘Sire, my scout became a boy scout.’ Too much sun too soon. Or did he mean not chimney-men but chimeras? Too much Amontillado, that’s what it was! But de Xeres explained soberly that these savages he saw really smoked like chimneys. Everywhere they went they carried about a brown tube burning on one end. They stuck the other end in their mouths for a while and seemed to drink from the tube. After they did so they smoked from mouth and nostrils. And they seemed to enjoy the experience!”

From the dearth of book reviews posted here, it appears many other readers, similar to the above cigar-smoking lass, have also overlooked this smokin’ Cabrara Infante literary romp which, unlike his other classics such as Infante’s Inferno and Three Trapped Tigers, is not translated from Spanish into English but actually written in English.

As part of the cigar’s illustrious history, we read, “Some twenty years ago the idea (come from England, no doubt) that cigars, like Loos’s blondes, were for gentlemen only, was dispelled by the scraggly mien of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara’s handsome head, both clad in US Army surplus fatigues, both enveloped in smoking beards and both sporting foul, fat cigars.”


I’ll let Cabrera Infante end with his playing with language as he tells of Cocteau Holy Smoke: “Jean Cocteau is so opinionated in ‘Opium’ that his book should better be called ‘Opinions.’. He writes, badly, of old saws and he makes them sound like seesaws. A smoker who smoked twelve pipes a day all his life would be protected not only from the flu, colds and anginas but also in less danger than a man who drank a glass of cognac and four Havanas.’ Cocteau even has some dope not on dope but on cigars: ‘Tobacco is almost harmless. After combustion nicotine disappears. Usually one takes for nicotine (a white salt) that sort of yellow paste produced by modifying by fire all combustible matters. You’ll need four or five fat Havanas a day to provoke in you angina pectoris. Most of what is said on the harm produced by tobacco are spasms with no real danger.’ A white Cococteau projected on a smoke screen.”


You don't have to be a cigar smoker (I'm not) to enjoy this smokin' classic. show less

Cuban author and master wordsmith G. Cabrera Infante’s novel set in pre-Castro Havana presents a plot plodding along in four hundred pages with a sexual sameness as he recounts his many horny hormonally charged adolescent adventures in and out of luscious, lovely, lively lasses and in and out of many memorable move theaters. The only reason a reader would want to continue reading past, say, page fifty, is the stunningly sublime wordplay: pungun punning, multiple malapropisms, outlandish show more onomatopoeia, lipograms, pangrams, tautograms, autograms and anagrams, neologisms, mangled morphemes, retronyms, oxymorons, acronyms, not to mention, among numerous others, regional slang and juicy janusisms. Apologies for all these odd obscure terms. I had to look most of these up myself to understand the author's wordplay more completely as I've been reading this novel novel on and off for the past several months.

Here’s our narrator no pun intending as he moves among the movers and shakers: “I woke Etelvina dutifully many times, knocking on her door not like a cuckoo but like a woodpecker – no pun intended.” And at another time, reflecting on an all-too-communal Communist: “But I feared that he was in Havana not for party reasons but for partying reasons – that is, he was after my mother, who was then a Communist beauty.” And, at still another time, one young gal is described as “a fiddlestick on the roof.”

Wordplay without end, as for example: “An April shower had begun, a typically tropical raucous rainfall, as abrupt in beginning as in ending.” Again: “It became obvious that the little pocket was very tight even for my adolescent and hesitant hand, and so I paused paw poised.” Yet again: “I locked myself up in one of the bathrooms to cry in anger and jealousy, forgetting the fermenting fumes of my pain of unquenched love, stronger than the stench. Then I got a fever which lasted a few days, and I have no doubt that its origin was viral not venereal.” Such a prodigious plethora of play on words can wear a reader out, thus my recommendation is to read Cabrera Infante slowly, a page or two or three at a time, over a long stretch of time.

Guy makes James Joyce read like Raymond Carver. Well, more hyper hyperbole than accurate accusation but you get the point. Sorry, I could be taken to task for saying such, but when it comes to Cabrera Infante, I’m a bit of a polyglutton for punishment.


G. Cabrera Infante (1929-2005) - Born in Cuba and went into exile in London in 1965. show less

Cuban author and master wordsmith G. Cabrera Infante’s novel set in pre-Castro Havana presents a plot plodding along in four hundred pages with a sexual sameness as he recounts his many horny hormonally charged adolescent adventures in and out of luscious, lovely, lively lasses and in and out of many memorable move theaters. The only reason a reader would want to continue reading past, say, page fifty, is the stunningly sublime wordplay: pungun punning, multiple malapropisms, outlandish show more onomatopoeia, lipograms, pangrams, tautograms, autograms and anagrams, neologisms, mangled morphemes, retronyms, oxymorons, acronyms, not to mention, among numerous others, regional slang and juicy janusisms. Apologies for all these odd obscure terms. I had to look most of these up myself to understand the author's wordplay more completely as I've been reading this novel novel on and off for the past several months.

Here’s our narrator no pun intending as he moves among the movers and shakers: “I woke Etelvina dutifully many times, knocking on her door not like a cuckoo but like a woodpecker – no pun intended.” And at another time, reflecting on an all-too-communal Communist: “But I feared that he was in Havana not for party reasons but for partying reasons – that is, he was after my mother, who was then a Communist beauty.” And, at still another time, one young gal is described as “a fiddlestick on the roof.”

Wordplay without end, as for example: “An April shower had begun, a typically tropical raucous rainfall, as abrupt in beginning as in ending.” Again: “It became obvious that the little pocket was very tight even for my adolescent and hesitant hand, and so I paused paw poised.” Yet again: “I locked myself up in one of the bathrooms to cry in anger and jealousy, forgetting the fermenting fumes of my pain of unquenched love, stronger than the stench. Then I got a fever which lasted a few days, and I have no doubt that its origin was viral not venereal.” Such a prodigious plethora of play on words can wear a reader out, thus my recommendation is to read Cabrera Infante slowly, a page or two or three at a time, over a long stretch of time.

Guy makes James Joyce read like Raymond Carver. Well, more hyper hyperbole than accurate accusation but you get the point. Sorry, I could be taken to task for saying such, but when it comes to Cabrera Infante, I’m a bit of a polyglutton for punishment.


G. Cabrera Infante (1929-2005) - Born in Cuba and went into exile in London in 1965. show less