Favorite Things: Drinking, Smoking & Screwing

Don't be put off by the title of this book of selections by famous writers.  It's actually quite a literary piece of work, and I found it in the "essays" section of Borders.    It was back in the days when I was slaving away as a defense lawyer.  I added it to my bookshelf at work, just above the hornbooks and treatises, where it was supposed to remind me that I was more than just a finely-tuned billing machine.

How can you go wrong with a book that contains thoughts on some favorite vices from the likes of H.L. Mencken, Vladimir Nabokov, Henry Miller, Mark Twain, Spalding Gray, and Dorothy Parker?  It sat on the part of my bookshelf that I would consult during lunch, since I generally preferred staying in to going out.  Going out was too expensive.  When my day was halfway over, the book allowed me to get my mind off of the unreasonable demands of the partners by spending a little time with the likes of Charles Bukowski, James Thurber and Erica Jong, who were much more fun to be around.

Was I risking censure by placing such a risque publication in a place where it might be seen by clients?  Defintely not.  Clients were never invited into an associate's office.  Only the conference rooms or, very occasionally, the partners' offices would do.  And no one ever looked at the books on my bookshelf anyway, as I mentioned once in a post about my gambling days.  I could have kept a loaded gun on those shelves, or a stack of Playboy magazines.  It didn't matter.

I take it back.  The Playboys would not have gone unnoticed.  But Drinking, Smoking & Screwing did, and that's the way I wanted it, just as long as I could keep my eye on it from my desk.

Comments

[David Giacalone]

You're a shrewd one, Evan, doing whatever you can to pump up your search-engine referer hits. You must have read my TISK! report concerning the consequences of having the innocent headline "Hyundai Horsepower Settlement Hogtied -- Editor Cowed" at ethicalEsq.

Have you no shame?

[Evan]

David: I don't think information-seekers who get here through searches unrelated to the regular topics on this weblog stay very long, if at all--so I don't care about them. I did like your "TISK!" report, however--I think you must be the shrewd one.

[David Giacalone]

Aw, shucks. I'm just a li'l ol'(non)country (ex)lawyer. I wouldn't know a keyword from a keester. But, I have been watching Schaeffer the Link-Mesiter.

[Reeta]

Drinking. Smoking. Screwing. We don't smoke anymore, and none of us are exactly Casanovas or Lotharios, but...don't be shocked here...we do enjoy a tipple every now and again. That's why we love this book. Instead of vilifying folks who like to take a drink, it's all about "a martini before and a cigarette after," if you know what we mean. It includes stories by Bukowski and Buchwald, Mencken and Miller, Thurber and Twain, and a bunch more besides. And there's useful information in there too...from how to survive an office holiday party, to the etymology of the cocktail to the joys and dangers of the Green Death (and no, it's not absinthe).
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reeta
DUI