IT COMES IN a cigarette carton, perhaps the largest single carton ever devised. The cigarettes inside must be enormous; immense, shocking, lethal. The only thing that could possibly justify the size of the packet would be if the contents were made of chocolate. However, wonderful as the manifold pleasures of chocolate may be, the contents of this box offer sustenance that goes far beyond the most sublime sugar rush. Now, when it appears that the human imagination has been affected by recessionary cuts and that ideas are dead and that books are increasingly losing out to the internet and downloading, along comes a giant packet of cigarettes that has no government health warning.
Ten Stories about Smokingis an original debut, several of the stories are outstanding, some are profound, none harangue, and collectively they will impress and perhaps even assist hardened smokers to give up, while discouraging non-smokers to even consider beginning.
Stuart Evers is a 34-year-old English writer with Welsh blood. He is also an erstwhile bookseller and a smoker, who stopped smoking for three years, only to resume his relationship with nicotine; but is now poised to shun it forever. Inside the giant carton (see picture) are 10 stories about smokers and smoking; fine stories that explain the tragedy behind each cigarette, the loneliness, the delusion; the smells and the stains.
Evers is philosophical and admits to having modelled himself on Orwell's bookseller, the miserable Gordon Comstock in Keep the Aspidistra Flying(1936), a novel he loved so much he is nervous about re-reading it. Evers does not like polemic; he is still smoking, if only just, but feels obliged to continue while publicising his collection. Two sentences into a conversation with him it is obvious he is honest and kindly and is as astutely aware of the perverted romanticism of smoking as he is of the sobering medical implications.
Publishers are wary of collections of short stories, particularly debut books. Why short stories, one of man's finest art forms, should be difficult to sell is almost as big a mystery as why anyone in their right mind would willingly suck smoke into their bodies. Book covers are designed to catch the eye, the witty, innovative packaging of Ten Stories about Smokinghas done exactly that. The stories are equally impressive, touching, true and shocking in their humanity. Evers is likeable and has a lingering trace of Liverpool in his accent, having studied English there. He doesn't mind that the jacket of his book may initially upstage the contents. Nor does he make any defence for smoking. Nor is he an anti-smoking campaigner in the making. He is neutral; conceding that most of his literary heroes were smokers who died of lung cancer – writers such as John Cheever, Raymond Carver, and Richard Yates. He is attracted to the obsessive intelligence of the great French writer Georges Perec – also felled by lung cancer.
The cigarette is a prop, beloved by many actors, who don’t actually smoke. One of the characters in Ten Stories about Smoking recalls that his father looked good when he smoked. This is serious, but then delusion can be fatal. Evers – whose name rhymes with “nevers”, sees the link between smoking and self-delusion in the context of image. People begin smoking to appear cool, then they become addicted and the sheer physical act of holding a small tube of smouldering shavings offers sanctuary. In another of the stories a devastatingly selfish artist instructs her bewildered lover to stub out a butt on her arm. The boyfriend obliges and later recalls the smell of burnt flesh. In another a damaged woman in her mid-30s arrives at the plush home of her far more successful younger brother. She imagines living there, employed as a nanny to her little niece. She loves the child and has knitted her sweater with ponies on it. But when she takes it out of her suitcase, she realises that the white wool has been yellowed by smoke. You can kill yourself – and possibly others – by driving too fast. Or you can kill yourself slowly; pollute your immediate environment and put your friends and colleagues off their food by smoking. No one can understand the smoker, except possibly the smoker. Evers appreciates that, like the leper of old, the smoker stands alone in the wilderness, an outcast. Well, not exactly alone, the smoker invariably finds a fellow puffer; together they cough and stand defiant, looking at the rest of us as we watch, half-fascinated, half-revolted. Some dirty smoke drifts skywards, leaving the denser volumes to coat the helpless lungs trapped inside the smoker’s body. As a recovering romantic I should be more tolerant about dangerous addictions. Consuming mountains of chocolate, frequently in public, incessantly in private, I eat on, defending my addiction, although it is clogging the arteries with fatty cholesterol.
One of the stories features a young man, another recovering romantic, who begins a tentative friendship with a young Polish woman he meets while she is selling cigarettes on the street. He takes it slowly, purchases vast amounts of cheap cigarettes and finally buys her a Coldplay CD. But when he goes to present it to her, she has been replaced by another vendor.
Living is difficult. Most of us are frightened. Smokers may appear more daring because they risk their lives. But here is a book that comes in a cigarette pack that not only makes more sense of life, it will delight the mind, and certainly wins the argument that readingabout cigarettes is far safer than actually smoking.
Ten Stories about Smokingby Stuart Evers is published by Picador