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travisclau's review against another edition
4.0
I'm taken by Hens' explicit refusal of the self-help genre and the triumph narrative of overcoming that so often underwrites typical addiction narratives. It is a memoir that seeks to understand the structures of feeling and thinking that underpin an addiction, and Hens does this with poignant simplicity. At times, the narrative feels disjointed and seemingly without the nuggets of insight you expect him to deliver but Hens never promises a theoretical memoir like Maggie Nelson's Argonauts. But, as his postscript suggests, he hopes to have shed light on the process of self-management even if his account is alien to people who do not smoke or share his addiction. It is Hens' clarity about his relationship to impulse, compulsion, and repetition that make aspects of this memoir truly universal as he hopes it might be.
cvtie's review against another edition
5.0
Day 22 no nicotine.
I was a smoker for 15 years and never once lit a cigarette the way he describes on the last page... wait.
Oh my god.
He's totally fucking with us... right?
Upon finishing the book, I hurriedly grabbed three lighters from the balcony that have been rained on at various times the past few weeks (still wet from last night's rain it seems; I look past the ashtray that's half filled with a murky black soup of rainwater and ash, though no butts, emptied almost three weeks ago yet remains outside(in case?))—all different sizes, colours and kinds: a small yellow bic (my go-to), a large/normal green bic (they never felt good in the hand), and a translucent green gas lighter from mitre 10, originally purchased with the intention to ignite the unreachable depressed wick in a watermelon-scented candle jar—and a black Clipper adorned with cannabis insignia and the words THINK GREEN across its side, found on the coffee table inside—the balcony lighters' wheels did not roll smoothly enough for my observations...
Now I'm crouched on the floor, the laptop is on the couch next to the lighter. I hold the lighter in my right hand and flick the wheel as I have done thousands of times prior, thoughtlessly, meditatively, restlessly, with and without a cigarette between my lips. Then, imagining the moments preceding the act of smoking itself, I flick the wheel the way he describes: it doesn't feel natural, bringing the flame up to the air-durry like this...! I fumble, I'm fuming now. Is it only unnatural-feeling because I do not feel the sharp intake of smoke against the back of my throat? He must be fucking with us, surely! How cheeky! OR—god forbid, I've never known (noticed?) this alternative way of lighting up! He's right, perhaps I've never truly paid attention...
(Or, perhaps just as likely, I'm feeling intense pangs of nicotine withdrawal and I've worked myself into confusion/obsession!)
Luckily the desire to delay my relapse cigarette is insurmountable. But if it ever happens, that glorious day, I now know how I'll be lighting up.
I was a smoker for 15 years and never once lit a cigarette the way he describes on the last page... wait.
Oh my god.
He's totally fucking with us... right?
Upon finishing the book, I hurriedly grabbed three lighters from the balcony that have been rained on at various times the past few weeks (still wet from last night's rain it seems; I look past the ashtray that's half filled with a murky black soup of rainwater and ash, though no butts, emptied almost three weeks ago yet remains outside(in case?))—all different sizes, colours and kinds: a small yellow bic (my go-to), a large/normal green bic (they never felt good in the hand), and a translucent green gas lighter from mitre 10, originally purchased with the intention to ignite the unreachable depressed wick in a watermelon-scented candle jar—and a black Clipper adorned with cannabis insignia and the words THINK GREEN across its side, found on the coffee table inside—the balcony lighters' wheels did not roll smoothly enough for my observations...
Now I'm crouched on the floor, the laptop is on the couch next to the lighter. I hold the lighter in my right hand and flick the wheel as I have done thousands of times prior, thoughtlessly, meditatively, restlessly, with and without a cigarette between my lips. Then, imagining the moments preceding the act of smoking itself, I flick the wheel the way he describes: it doesn't feel natural, bringing the flame up to the air-durry like this...! I fumble, I'm fuming now. Is it only unnatural-feeling because I do not feel the sharp intake of smoke against the back of my throat? He must be fucking with us, surely! How cheeky! OR—god forbid, I've never known (noticed?) this alternative way of lighting up! He's right, perhaps I've never truly paid attention...
(Or, perhaps just as likely, I'm feeling intense pangs of nicotine withdrawal and I've worked myself into confusion/obsession!)
Luckily the desire to delay my relapse cigarette is insurmountable. But if it ever happens, that glorious day, I now know how I'll be lighting up.
kweekwegg's review
4.0
While I must say it required of me a strange state of mind in order to relate to the subject of addiction, it certainly did put me through a great process of thought and comprehension, which I greatly appreciated. How he openly links the subject of addiction to universal, everyday experiences particular basic human actions, was extremely clear, very well elaborated. I won't hesitate to reread and meditate on this essay in the future.
wrengaia's review against another edition
3.0
I thought that this book was beautifully and insightfully written, but lacked the clear structure to make for compelling reading.
Hens' autobiographical analysis is beautifully rendered, firstly. His writing is simultaneously dense and heady, and clear and introspective. I even found the interspersal of photographs (which I think can sometimes be an unnecessary addition to text) to improve the texture of the work as a whole. Moreover, I think that through the course of this essay/autobiographical work Hens makes some observations about the nature of addiction that are very acute and insightful. Having never smoked myself, I found the careful and meticulous analysis of the psyche of a smoker that more or less comprises this work to be completely fascinating. This work is both an individual analysis, into Hens' own addiction, how it started and how he has overcome it, and a sociological insight into the state of addiction throughout the twentieth century and into the modern day, as smoking has gone from being an unremarkable, even encouraged, habit, to being something that is socially vilified. This text takes a form that I tend to enjoy in these kinds of autobiographical essay, as it alternates between the remembrance of a significant moment and a more general rumination upon the topic at hand.
And yet, for all that I enjoyed it, this text frustrated me immensely. All that I have just praised it for made itself apparent in the first couple of pages, and then I found that it failed to offer much else. For an essay of this considerable length, I would have expected a more significant development to Hens' overall argument, or even a sense that there was more of a thread holding the text together, but it felt disorganised and loosely comprised to the end. I spent most of the book in anticipation of some revelatory moment - though I'm not sure what I was expecting - that never actually came. In the Afterword, Hens comments very briefly on how he actually stopped smoking and goes on to comment on the value of learning and freeing oneself from seemingly ingrained behaviours, which perhaps would have left the book feeling as though it had more direction had it been explored more wholly in the body of the work itself.
Overall, I thought this book had an immense amount of potential and I did enjoy reading it, but I think that it lacked direction and coherence.
Hens' autobiographical analysis is beautifully rendered, firstly. His writing is simultaneously dense and heady, and clear and introspective. I even found the interspersal of photographs (which I think can sometimes be an unnecessary addition to text) to improve the texture of the work as a whole. Moreover, I think that through the course of this essay/autobiographical work Hens makes some observations about the nature of addiction that are very acute and insightful. Having never smoked myself, I found the careful and meticulous analysis of the psyche of a smoker that more or less comprises this work to be completely fascinating. This work is both an individual analysis, into Hens' own addiction, how it started and how he has overcome it, and a sociological insight into the state of addiction throughout the twentieth century and into the modern day, as smoking has gone from being an unremarkable, even encouraged, habit, to being something that is socially vilified. This text takes a form that I tend to enjoy in these kinds of autobiographical essay, as it alternates between the remembrance of a significant moment and a more general rumination upon the topic at hand.
And yet, for all that I enjoyed it, this text frustrated me immensely. All that I have just praised it for made itself apparent in the first couple of pages, and then I found that it failed to offer much else. For an essay of this considerable length, I would have expected a more significant development to Hens' overall argument, or even a sense that there was more of a thread holding the text together, but it felt disorganised and loosely comprised to the end. I spent most of the book in anticipation of some revelatory moment - though I'm not sure what I was expecting - that never actually came. In the Afterword, Hens comments very briefly on how he actually stopped smoking and goes on to comment on the value of learning and freeing oneself from seemingly ingrained behaviours, which perhaps would have left the book feeling as though it had more direction had it been explored more wholly in the body of the work itself.
Overall, I thought this book had an immense amount of potential and I did enjoy reading it, but I think that it lacked direction and coherence.