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Thank You For Smoking (2006)

Thank You for Smoking (2006)

Book Info

Genre
Rating
3.91 of 5 Votes: 3
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ISBN
0812976525 (ISBN13: 9780812976526)
Language
English
Publisher
random house trade

About book Thank You For Smoking (2006)

Check out my other reviews at talesfromideath.blogspot.com This is a book I’ve wanted to read for some time now. I’m a massive fan of Jason Reitman’s film adaptation, starring Aaron Eckhart and knew that if the film’s style was lifted faithfully from the novel that I’d be in for a hell of a read. I wasn’t disappointed. Thank You for Smoking is the story of Nick Naylor, America’s most hated man. Nick works as a lobbyist for a huge tobacco research corporation, where he spends his days defending cigarette companies on TV while trying to come up with ways of getting smokes into more customer’s hands. Nick is a fantastic character. He never presented as either a two dimensional villain or a shining white knight in the middle of an evil company. Buckley manages to write him as sympathetic but deeply flawed. Through promoting and selling cigarettes he knows he’s responsible for the deaths of thousands of people, but he has a family to provide for, a mortgage to pay. He doesn’t approach his job without regrets but is never so cut up about his involvement with tobacco that he gives it up. Buckley makes the character work by making Naylor himself aware of this duplicity. Through his narration we see that even he doesn’t know where he sits on this issue. Part of him knows he’s a scumbag but part of him really thinks he’s doing the right thing. The standout scenes for me are the diner scenes featuring the MOD squad, a group made up of Nick and his two friends, both lobbyists for Alcohol and Firearms respectively, the groups name, an acronym for Merchants of Death. These scenes show of Buckley’s skills with dialogue as the group help each other prep for upcoming conventions and TV appearances. The way they speak to each other, joking about the latest fatality figures for their respective industries and coming up with deliberately offensive ad campaigns is absolutely hilarious and makes for some of the most memorable conversations in the novel. The satire in the novel is spot on. Buckley presents the tobacco industry as ruthless and soulless but refrains from ever telling you outright that their simply evil. Some of the books contents, including Nick being made the head of an anti-smoking ad campaign that his boss stresses “Shouldn’t be too convincing”, to the higher ups rejoicing at the news that smoking is on the rise in China meaning a huge spike in customers, could make for some uncomfortable reading if they weren’t backed up by ridiculous (but almost certainly realistic) ideas like negotiating a tie-in cigarette brand to go with a big upcoming sci-fi movie and workshopping ideas on how to make the skull and crossbones, that the government have said must be put on all packets, appealing to housewives. The result is a vision of the Tobacco industry as heartless but idiotic which is probably pretty close to the truth. This is a book that could have so easily gone wrong, in the hands of a lesser writer it almost certainly would have, but Buckley manages to balance the satire in a way that never feels too preachy but also never paints the cigarette industry as heroes. There are a few plot threads that don’t run quite as well as others, but overall it’s an intelligent and very funny novel. I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to finally get around to reading it and I can’t wait to read Buckley’s other books.

Buckley has a very dry sense of humor. A good example is the name of the main character, Nick Naylor, a lobbyist for the tabacco industry. "Nick" for nicotine and "Naylor" for coffin nails. a euphemism for cigarettes. The other lobbyists featured in the book are for alcohol and guns (firearms). The three main lobbyists in the book are anti-ATF.To me, Nick is a modern-day Scrooge. Not many people remember that at the end of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is said to keep Christmas better than anyone. By the end of the book, he has an Epiphany and completely changes his life. Reading Nick's response to all the anti-tobacco claims was entertaining because someone would make an unrefutable claim and Nick would have a response for it. Having grown up in a family of chain smokers, I am not as bothered by smoking as some people seem to be. I've always thought that was an attention-getter. I smoked briefly in college, but quit because I thought it was not healthy. My parents weren't so tuned in and died from smoking-related illness. However, they were adults, smoking is a legal addiction, and it was their choice. I get tired of people who try to tell everyone else how they should live.This book is not laugh-outloud funny as the cover claims, but it was an interesting read. Buckley was trying to make a point without preaching. If you like dry humor, read "Boomsday" by this author. I thought it was much funnier. Buckley is the Jonathan Swift of our day. Remember "A Modest Proposal"?

Do You like book Thank You For Smoking (2006)?

When it comes to naming our best contemporary satirists, the default response usually (and accurately) settles on Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The Onion, too, and certainly anything Armando Iannucci (The Thick of It; In the Loop; Veep) creates. But I never hear Christopher Buckley's name mentioned, which is a shame. He's made a career out of skewering various American power structures – the stock market, the justice system, the State Department, etc. – and I'm glad that I finally got around to reading Thank You for Smoking,, which has to be his best work to date.Here, Buckley sets himself the herculean task of turning Nick Naylor, the tobacco industry's chief spokesman, into a sympathetic character. No easy feat when Naylor regularly appears on Oprah and Larry King Live to tout the health benefits of smoking and then follows it up by meeting his counterparts in the alcohol and firearms lobbies for dinner – an unofficial social club which they've named "The Mod Squad" (short for Merchants of Death).But somehow Buckley manages to make Naylor a character worth rooting for. He accomplishes part of this by making Naylor smart and funny and sort of "aw, shucks" about his own duplicity – a genial fellow who can't help but make up statistics about how nicotine slows the onset of Parkinson's. But the bigger part is that he makes Naylor a victim – first of his boss (who's an even bigger asshole than Nick), then of a kidnapper, then of the FBI who suspect Nick in his own abduction. Because Nick seems like such a decent guy, who can't help but feel sorry for all the stuff he's going through, even while he's paying off a celebrity lung cancer victim to stop speaking out against the tobacco industry (a thinly-veiled Marlboro Man, who actually did die of lung cancer in 1992).The whole thing is pitch-black and very, very funny. Take this advice, which Nick gives his 12-year-old son:'"The important thing is...is to feel tired at the end of the day.' Aristotle might not have constructed an entire philosophy on it, but it would do. True, Hitler and Stalin had probably felt tired at the end of their days. But theirs would not have been a good tired."If acidic commentary is your thing and you don't know Buckley's work, start here and don't look back.
—Rob

Smokin'! One of the funniest books I've read in a long time.I saw this on a library shelf and remembered how much I'd enjoyed the film a few years ago. The book is definitely worth reading too.Very dark humour, it's the sort of funny that might make you spit out your tea. Who would have thought that lung cancer, gun death and fetal alcohol syndrome could be so hilarious...Nick Naylor is Big Tobacco's spokesman - the man whose job it is to make them look good, to suck up criticism and spin it into a positive. He's very good at his job. After work, he relaxes with his two associates - spokespersons for the Alcohol industries and Gun Lobbies respectively. Called the Mod Squad (Merchants of Death), they support each other as much as comparing the number of deaths their employers are responsible for on an annual basis.If you are easily offended, this may not be for you. This is completely crazy - we are rooting for a man trying to get teenagers to start smoking! The whole book manages to mock a whole host of industries and employers. One of my favourite moments involved the answerphone message of the Washington Post:"If you feel you have been inaccurately quoted, press one...If you are a confidential White House source and are calling to alert your reporter that the President is furious over leaks and has ordered a review of all outgoing calls...press five."Watching Nick at work, on TV and in the media is at once outrageous and brilliant. His verbal dexterity is admirable, even if few people reading this will agree with his arguments. The story takes a few twists and turns, involving an unidentified person gunning for Nick, a threat on his life, some suspicious FBI agents and an attempt to get cigarette smoking into a major Hollywood film. If you enjoy slightly tasteless but incredibly witty reads involving morally suspect men - look no further. Just brilliant.
—Katy Noyes

Membaca buku ini membuat saya tiba-tiba menjadi aktivis anti-rokok garis keras. Buku ini menceritakan tentang Juru Bicara sebuah perusahaan rokok, bernama Nick Naylor. Alurnya yang cukup jelas mengantarkan kita tentang lika-liku seorang Amerika Sejati yang bebas, pekerja keras, dan cerdas. Jika anda seorang pecinta novel detektif anda akan menyukai cara-cara perseteruan baik verbal dan fisik yang disajikan. Sebagai media-darling, Nick Naylor sukses menggembosi lawan-lawannya dalam sejumlah talkshow terkemuka di Amerika.Tetapi di balik itu semua, Nick harus merelakan kehidupan pribadinya porak poranda, bahkan tubuhnya menjadi tumbal bagi karirnya. Dengan akhir yang sangat Hollywood, Nick akhirnya berhasil membalaskan dendamnya pada musuhnya. Dibumbui percintaan yang cukup tertebak alurnya, novel ini mengingatkan kita pada cerita-cerita James Bond.
—Yolanda Vera

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