Johnny's First Cigarette - La première cigarette de Johnny (English and French Edition) - Softcover

Nick Tosches

Softcover

ISBN 10: 2919067133 ISBN 13: 9782919067138

Publisher: Vagabonde, 2014

Synopsis

Once upon a time, Nick Tosches was a young boy.

An Interview with Nick Tosches by Benoît Laudier of Éditions Vagabonde

BL : Who is Johnny?
NT: Johnny is me, long ago, and seen through the veil of fiction. As with all memories, it is more imagination than reality. All memories are pearls made from just a sand-grain of truth. But we confuse the pearl with the truth. And Johnny is every young person drifting from the purity of childhood to the lies of adulthood.

BL : What is the central theme of the book?
NT: As Rimbaud said: Tout ce qu'on nous enseigne est farce. Everything we are taught is a lie.

BL : If this book were music, what kind of music would it be?
NT: If this little book were a piece of music, it would be a cello suite performed in turns con brio and con molto sentimento, and with octobrisme throughout.

BL : What would you (as a priority) share with the readers?
NT: That a politically correct world is a world destroyed. That a politically correct world is the most dangerous hazard to health. That the butterflies in the breeze love the freedom that we deny ourselves. That this little story is, above all else, simply the story of a boy and his first cigarette.

About this title

About the Author:

Born in Newark, Nick Tosches lives in New York City. He is an American poet, novelist, biographer, and journalist. He has described his literary influences as "Hesiod, Sappho, Christopher Marlowe, Ezra Pound, William Faulkner, Charles Olson, and God knows who else."

Writing in a lineage that includes William S. Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, and Hubert Selby, Jr., Nick Tosches may be America's last real literary outlaw. In more than 30 years of nonfiction writing, he has opened up the dark heart of America's greatest music (Country, Hellfire, Unsung Heroes of Rock 'n' Roll, Dino), unveiled secrets of the world's most successful criminals (Power on Earth), delved into the mystery of a boxer's tragic greatness (The Devil and Sonny Liston), and taken us on a midnight drive through Phnom Penh (The Last Opium Den). In his fiction, Tosches has traveled even farther. His novels are fearless: shining a light on the darkest parts of ourselves with fierce prose free of pretension. His most recent novel, Me and the Devil, is what all good novels should be: brilliant, blistering, and dangerous.

Review:

"This is the best, from one of the best writers around. Nick Tosches knows the devil as well as any man has." -Keith Richards

"Words and wisdom that I shall carry with me into the f***ing dirt." -Johnny Depp

"An extraordinary writer...It is the vastness of Nick Tosches' heart that makes it possible to reveal the darkness." -Hubert Selby, Jr.

"An American classic" -Greil Marcus

"I'm an admirer of anything and everything Nick Tosches writes." -Tom Robbins

"One of the greatest living American writers." -Dallas Observer

"Tosches can't write a dull book. He sets his foot firmly on your throat from the start; he won't let up, and you won't want him to." --Washington Post

"Nick Tosches is a beautiful thug [who] has always beaten back a demon while inhabiting the very soul of the beast." -Philadelphia City Paper

"Nick Tosches stands out as the kind of writer other writers only dream of becoming--amazing at fiction, unparalleled in journalism and biography, and possessed of a stature and genius." -Jerry Stahl

"A writer of rare humanity." -GQ

"[Tosches writes] without illusion and yet with real sympathy, call it a form of love. That is a real achievement of writing and feeling." --David Remnick

"Nick Tosches is a beautiful thug [who] has always beaten back a demon while inhabiting the very soul of the beast." -Philadelphia City Paper

"Nick Tosches stands out as the kind of writer other writers only dream of becoming--amazing at fiction, unparalleled in journalism and biography, and possessed of a stature and genius." -Jerry Stahl

"A writer of rare humanity." -GQ

"[Tosches writes] without illusion and yet with real sympathy, call it a form of love. That is a real achievement of writing and feeling." --David Remnick

About this edition

• Publisher: Vagabonde
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 2919067133
• ISBN 13: 9782919067138
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• Number of pages: 64