Read, rattle and roll

Malcolm Deas

  • Holy Smoke by G. Cabrera Infante
    Faber, 329 pp, £9.95, October 1985, ISBN 0 571 13518 8
  • Tobacco on the Periphery. A Case Study in Cuban Labour History: 1860-1958 by Jean Stubbs
    Cambridge, 203 pp, £25.00, April 1985, ISBN 0 521 25423 X

I like to regard people both making it and smoking it not only as a sort of friendship, but as a vast domain of democracy wherein we find gathered people of every class and race and creed, having in pipe or plug or cigar or cigarette, a bond of sympathetic understanding and a contact of common interest and good fellowship. I like to contemplate the business of producing and the pleasure of consuming this exalted plant as really a realm peopled by congenial spirits and ruled only by those kindlier human emotions which the smoke of these fragrant leaves kindles in the heart of man ...

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