The Smoking Diaries - Softcover

Simon Gray

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847080588 ISBN 13: 9781847080585

Publisher: Granta Books, 2008

Synopsis

When he turned sixty-five, the playwright Simon Gray began to keep a diary: not a careful honing of the day's events with a view to posterity but an account of his thoughts as he had them, honestly, turbulently, digressively expressed. The three volumes of The Smoking Diaries are the result, in which one of Britain's most amusing and original writers reflects on a life filled with cigarettes (continuing), alcohol (stopped), several triumphs and many more disasters, shame, adultery, friendship and love. Few diarists have been as frank about themselves, and even fewer as entertaining. This beautiful boxed set contains paperbacks of The Smoking Diaries, The Smoking Diaries: The Year of the Jouncer and The Smoking Diaries: The Last Cigarette. With their combination of comedy and serious reflection, of sharp observation and painful self-disclosure, Simon Gray's diaries have reinvented the memoir form and are destined to become classics of autobiography. The beauty of them lies in Gray's struggle to put a finger on some kind of personal truth: The Smoking Diaries offer a brilliant and moving account of life's unsteady progress - with unfailing wit and humour, they take us to the very heart of a man.

About this title

About the Author

SIMON GRAY was born in England in 1936 and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was the author of over 30 plays, including Butley, The Common Pursuit and Cell Mates, and published several volumes of diaries and books about the theatre, including Enter a Fox and Fat Chance, both published by Granta. He was awarded a CBE in 2005. He died in 2008.

From Publishers Weekly

About to celebrate his 66th birthday, Gray, the British author of more than 30 plays, including the forthcoming Broadway revival of Butley (which will star Nathan Lane), started writing this witty journal of passing time, missed opportunities and his personality quirks, with the underlying topic of his smoking three packs of cigarettes daily and the wheezing and dizziness that accompany his habit. He traces his romance with tobacco to the incessant smoking of his overaffectionate Mummy and emotionally distant Daddy, and to his savvy 1940s and '50s childhood spent as part of a girl-run kiddie gang in Montreal. Gray's funny vignettes introduce characters such as Mr. and Mrs. Alzheimer (he suffers from the disease; she, therefore, is an "Alzheimer widow"), and "schoolmaster floggers" Mr. Brown and Mr. Burn. While somberly noting the demise of his parents and several friends from smoking-relating cancer and emphysema, Gray keeps up a constant comedy routine about the British literary world, his claustrophobia in cars and trains, the TV series Law and Order and other random subjects. His memoir is a dark comedy, full of intimacy, limericks, wisdom and fun. Photos.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Granta Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1847080588
• ISBN 13: 9781847080585
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240