Bookwatch: Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950's

Friday, cigarette #2
Mail call!

A Guide to the Hangover by M. J. Meaker
If you are an average hangover victim, you will most likely find the hangover in your bed.
If you are above average, you will find it in a strange bed...

This morning's mail call delivered the fruits of an Amazon Christmas gift card, Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950's by Marijane Meaker, cohabitant and lover of Patricia Highsmith for a few years in New York and a pulp novelist in her own right, which I read in one sitting (the book, not her).

Apart from a few choice Fire Island anecdotes ("He blurted out, 'Oh, migod, I'm sor-ry! I am sor-ry. I did not dream that you were a female!' He had a Jamaican accent, this huge black man, and he kept apologizing. 'It's okay,' I said..."), the best thing about the book is the detail that Highsmith kept a mental catalogue of "cooking drinks," "argument drinks," "dressing drinks," "sleepless night drink," "gardening drinks," etc.

These categories are more fun with cigarettes, which are all essentially identical, because the difference between an "argument cigarette" and a "dressing cigarette" is entirely a matter of the smoker's command of style and form. Imagine: you're sitting on the front porch at two in the morning and your roommate comes out. Could you convey in the space of a drag whether you were interested in talking to her? (Oh, Huckabee, please don't ban my non-verbal language...)