Thank You for Smoking

All right, I admit that the reason why I picked this up a while back was because I really did like the movie. The nice thing here is that it wasn't really like the book much, so it gave a different experience.

The main character, of course, was the same. Nick Naylor, the chief spokesman for the tobacco lobby, spins away to help keep cigarettes moving. The book does a really good job of showing him doing this: lying, telling only part of the truth, changing images, and taking advantage of whatever situations come his way.

And some of the same situations do come; his main trial is, just as in the movie, a kidnapping in which he is covered in nicotine patches, in an attempt to kill him, for example. The meetings with the Mod Squad, the show more romance with the reporter, etc., are all still in there.

Thing is, the thrust of the book, and many of the details, turn out to be different. The book plays much more as Naylor trying to survive in a very cut-throat game of office politics, maneuvering within the Academy of Tobacco Studies to try to keep his job under new management, and in opposition to the person his new boss badly wants to replace him with. He makes good use of outside events to help make himself as indispensible as he can; much of that is what makes the book really interesting.

And it is interesting; funny, cynical, and quite imaginative, with a sharp writing style and a good political sense. Buckley has a lot of good ideas, and a good ear for dialogue, even though he can be silly at points. This made for a very fast read (I finished it days ago, but haven't really had computer access), and it's one I recommend for anyone in the mood for some good political satire. show less

Nick Naylor works as a lobbyist in Washington for The Academy of Tobacco Studies in the late 1990’s where legislation is making his job so much harder. Adding to his woes is his new boss who doesn’t like him and wants to install his girlfriend in Nick’s position. Knowing he’s fighting a losing battle, Nick decides to go down fighting and takes some swipes at the other guests lined up against him on the Oprah show. This earns him some rare good press and also the admiration of the head of the industry that decides to take him under his wing. It also earns him some death threats to go along with the regular hate mail he usually receives. Surely they can’t be serious?

This is a black comedy and satirical look at the lobbyist show more industry of American politics that makes a sympathetic character out of somebody who shouldn’t really be one. Even though he’s basically pedalling death the reader really wants him to succeed and genuinely roots for him during his travails. There are some great bits of humour to be had during this read while having a go at the big industry, the whole political lobbyist movement and the press corps too. I have yet to see the movie that’s based on this book so can’t compare but I’m not averse to finding out at some point in the future. show less

Christopher Buckley, you witty guy, you don’t miss a trick! For starters, the name of your main character, Nick Naylor, tobacco advocate – that’s Naylor as in coffin nails, one of the terms for cigarettes back in the heyday of smoking.

Thank You For Smoking is scathing social and political satire. Thank You For Smoking is belly laugh funny. Thank You For Smoking published in 1994, right around the time medical evidence demonstrated flight attendants working for the airlines were dropping like flies after breathing in all that second hand smoke on airplanes.

Today smokers in the US are relegated to designated smoking areas so they no longer jeopardize the health of non-smokers. But there were those many years when tobacco and show more smokers and smoking ruled the workplace and everywhere else in this county. And if someone dared claim cigarettes cause cancer, that person was labeled an anti-American crank and destroyer of freedom.

The time frame of the novel is perfect. Right at the crossroads of the tobacco industry/smoking lobby having their way and all the legal restrictions enacted, things like no cigarette advertising on TV and radio, warning labels and designated smoking areas in restaurants and other public spaces.

But, in the spirit of asserting personal freedom, the rights of individuals and the American way of life as outlined by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, Nick and his bunch are fighting to turn back the tide.

More than the string of events composing the story, the real humor comes through in Christopher Buckley’s timing and language. However, I’ll resist the temptation to simply lift quotes from the book (you will have to read for yourself). Rather, here are a number of snapshots featuring our super sharp Nick dealing with all he has to deal with in his capacity as chief spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies in Washington, D.C.:

THE MOD SQUAD
Nick has lunch once a week with Polly and Bobby Jay, his counterparts, respectively, for liquor and guns. They call themselves the Mod Squad after the 60s TV show, however, for them, MOD stands for “Merchants of Death.” All three take great pride in the challenges presented by their jobs. Sure, cigarettes and liquor and guns kill many thousands of people every day in the United States, but, hey, we’re living in the capitalist home of the free where the God given right to make a profit must be protected, even honored, no matter how high the death toll.

Christopher Buckley’s sharp, satirical needle digs deep here, recognizing the tragic consequences of the collective stance of these three young professionals. To add an extra helping of sizzle, Polly is a blonde bombshell for booze and Bobby Jay was inspired to join the National Guard after the Kent State shootings so he could shoot some college students for himself, but, alas, the army took him off to shoot some Vietnamese instead, but there was a problem – they shoot back.



THE BOSS
Nick’s boss is a guy going by the initials BR, as man as ruthless, callous, hard-nosed and sadistic as humanly possible. Through the magic of Christopher Buckley’s storytelling, with the inclusion of BR, we can completely empathize with Nick, even, in many respects, take his side.

Some may say that BR is a mere caricature, but such critics are entirely mistaken – BR is a completely developed character down to his thick-skinned toes. Anybody who has spent years working in the American business world knows from first-hand experience many, many bosses are cookie-cutter replicas of BR. And BR's redeeming personality traits are . . . er, ah . . . nonexistent.

THE TV TALK SHOWS
Nick does his slick, smooth-talking in debates with the opposition on Oprah and Larry King. Listening to Nick making his points by way of logical fallacies (topping the list are: Ad Hominem, Non-Testable Hypothesis, Begging the Question, Straw Man) is something to behold. Meanwhile, since the anti-smoking people on the air with Nick are unacquainted with logic, they are reduced to flying into fits of rage. One of the more hilarious parts of the story.

THE BABES
Heather the lovely journalist and Jeannette the luscious, success driven femme fatale within the Academy of Tobacco Studies try to get their way with Nick. And their chief weapon? Of course – sex and more sex. Lucky guy! But wait, is he falling into a deadly trap?

THE KIDNAPPING AND ITS AFTERMATH
What really infuses serious drama into Christopher Buckley's tale is Nick being kidnapped and tortured (dozens of nicotine patches slapped on his body all at once). The way Nick and the Mod Squad ultimately swing into action to deal with this terrible injustice is a stroke of genius. I urge you to read all about it.



This is my first Christopher Buckley novel and it will not be my last. I was initially attracted to Mr. Buckley's writing through his insightful, humorous book reviews. As something of a bonus, here are a number of quotes from two of my all time favorite Christopher Buckley book reviews:

From his review of The End of the Age, a novel written by Pat Robertson, champion of conservative Christian ideology:

“It's hard to define The End of the Age exactly. It's sort of a cross between Seven Days in May and The Omen, as written by someone with the prose style of a Hallmark Cards copywriter.

“The bad guys tend to sound like the villains in a Charlie Chan movie. In fact, they sound as if they were being simultaneously translated from some sinister Indo-Iranian tongue.

"The End of the Age is to Dante what Sterno is to The Inferno. When you have a hard time keeping a straight face while reading a novel about the death of a billion human beings, something is probably amiss."

From his review of Tom Clancy’s novel, Debt of Honor:

“This book is as subtle as a World War II anti-Japanese poster showing a mustachioed Tojo bayoneting Caucasian babies. . . . His Japanese aren't one-dimensional, they're half-dimensional. They spend most of their time grunting in bathhouses.

“And there is this hilarious description of Ryan's saintly wife saving someone's sight with laser surgery: "She lined up the crosshairs as carefully as a man taking down a Rocky Mountain sheep from half a mile, and thumbed the control." You've got to admire a man who can find the sheep-hunting metaphor in retinal surgery.

"Tom Clancy is the James Fenimore Cooper of his day, which is to say, the most successful bad writer of his generation. This is no mean feat, for there are many, many more rich bad writers today than there were in Cooper's time.”


American author Christopher Buckley, born 1952

"Fiction, for me, is sort of a protracted way of saying all the things I wished I said the night before." - Christopher Buckley show less

This is a great book for the age of Alternate Facts. Watching the protagonist defend the tobacco industry illustrates the techniques by Kellyann Conway and other Trump defenders

Funnk Bk @ Tobacco Lobbyist — + his MOD — Merchants of Death Friends.
Tob, Alcohol, guns — every line funny!

Nick Naylor likes his job. In the neo-puritanical nineties, it's a challenge to defend the rights of smokers and a privilege to promote their liberty. Sure, it hurts a littIe when you're compared to Nazi war criminals, but Nick says he's just doing what it takes to pay the mortgage and put his son through Washington's elite private school St. Euthanasius. He can handle the pressure from the antismoking zealots, but he is less certain about his new boss, BR, who questions whether Nick is worth $150,000 a year to fight a losing war. Under pressure to produce results, Nick goes on a PR offensive. But his heightened notoriety show more makes him a target for someone who wants to prove just how hazardous smoking can be. If Nick isn't careful, he's going to be stubbed out. show less

Nick Naylor is the spokesman for the powerful tobacco lobby and he loves his job. Lots of people want him dead, but he's sort of gotten used to that by now - until he's kidnapped, covered with nicotine patches, and left to die. The plot is somewhat intricate here and there, but the true beauty is how you find yourself rooting for his guy, the self-professed death dealer. There are parts that are quite funny, and some that are almost painful they're so true. I admit I suspect the Big Twist pretty early on, but that didn't spoil my enjoyment of seeing it all play out. All in all a good piece of satire.

After seeing the movie, which was a gem unto itself, I took my highly piqued curiosity down to the nearest Barnes & Noble and picked up a copy of the book by Christopher Buckley, whom I had previously never read. I didn't intend to read this one right away, but after getting it back home, settling in my chair, and hitting the first chapter, I was sort of hooked.

Granted, this isn't your uber-intellectual literary fare. Buckley's no Jose Saramago, and he doesn't need to save space on his shelf for a Nobel. What he's got is a flair for the comic, something I find myself appreciating after a few hundred pages of Ayn Rand. It paces well with the movie, though the plot is naturally more complicated in the book and some of the surrounding show more characters are fleshed out quite a bit more. Not that any of them have depth, mind you, but they play much greater roles. (Except the entire sub-plot in the movie regarding Nick's son; that was apparently added to the screenplay as the kid is barely mentioned in these pages.)

What can I say? It was a quick, fun read. Any fan of the movie will be pleased with the book, I think. Don't expect Faulkner. This is Dave Barry country, and Buckley fits right in. show less