Books, Arts & Manners: The Cigar, Revisited

IN THE special section on “Pleasure & Its Perils” in the May 1 issue of NATIONAL REVIEW, Our young literary editor, David Klinghoffer, took a swing at “pretended pleasures.” He cites two well-known examples: one (the “white lie,” as in “Doesn’t the bride look lovely?”) that he approves, and one (which might be called the “white laugh,” since it involves laughing at a joke that isn’t funny) about which he is somewhat more reserved.

Then he goes on to scorn—quite properly, in my opinion—those who pretend to virtue by admiring what is not admirable but only fashionable (bad foreign films, for example), or by “abstaining from anything that might prematurely deprive [them] of life in this world: fatty foods, booze, and, above all, cigarettes.” That sets him up for his final fusillade against water bars, coffee bars, and similar establishments that replace “the old-fashioned, sinful kind of bar where alcohol and tobacco are ingested.”

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William A. Rusher

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IN THE special section on “Pleasure & Its Perils” in the May 1 issue of NATIONAL REVIEW, Our young literary editor, David Klinghoffer, took a swing at “pretended pleasures.” He cites two well-known examples: one (the “white lie,” as in “Doesn’t the bride look lovely?”) that he approves, and one (which might be called the “white laugh,” since it involves laughing at a joke that isn’t funny) about which he is somewhat more reserved.

Then he goes on to scorn—quite properly, in my opinion—those who pretend to virtue by admiring what is not admirable but only fashionable (bad foreign films, for example), or by “abstaining from anything that might prematurely deprive [them] of life in this world: fatty foods, booze, and, above all, cigarettes.” That sets him up for his final fusillade against water bars, coffee bars, and similar establishments that replace “the old-fashioned, sinful kind of bar where alcohol and tobacco are ingested.”