Thank You for Smoking

Rating:
Summary: Great satire, so-so thriller
Review: Nick Naylor, the protagonist of Christopher Buckley's "Thank You for Smoking," gives new definition to the term "antihero." Despite his position, he's not really a bad guy. Sure, he makes six figures a year lying through his teeth as the chief lobbyist at the Academy of Tobacco Studies in Washington, but he's not really making anybody smoke cigarettes. As he explains it, he's just moderating between two competing groups, namely the cigarette companies and the anti-smoking zealots. Besides, someone's got to pay the mortgage and his son's prep-school tuition. Even he realizes that his rationalization sounds like something a Nuremberg defendant might say ("I vas only paying ze mortgage"), but it takes a certain courage to go on TV and say there's no demonstrable link between smoking and disease. Perhaps Buckley's greatest achievement here is that he can take a guy who lies to sell cigarettes and make him into a sympathetic figure.

Nick Naylor's life provides the basis for Buckley's often hilarious look at the "neo-puritanism" of mid-nineties America and the attempts of tobacco companies to fight it. And although I hate cigarettes, I think a book like this needed to be written. Anybody who's ever been repulsed by those ridiculous "Truth" ads where a bunch of obnoxious young people harass those who make and sell cigarettes should get a good laugh at Buckley's portrayal of the sanctimonious forces of political correctness. As Nick tells Oprah Winfrey in one uproarious scene, cigarette opponents aren't above manipulating children and trying to tell everyone else how to think. And anything that takes the wind out of the sails of political correctness is fine by me.

Much of the book's humor comes from Nick's lunch meetings with his friends in the Mod (an acronym for "Merchants of Death") Squad. Composed of Nick, alcohol lobbyist Polly Bailey, and one-armed gun advocate Bobby Jay Bliss, the Mod Squad is sort of a combination support group and mutual admiration society. In the presence of their own, the three death merchants can work on their PR strategies, discuss their latest misfortunes at the hands of the neo-puritans, and compare just how much death they've caused and how hated they are. In one particularly humorous scene, Polly and Bobby Jay are saying how much hate mail they get, and Nick just scoffs and says, "HATE mail? ALL of my mail is hate mail."

Of course, even satires need plots, so Buckley throws in some intrigue regarding a plot to have Nick killed. When a team of killers kidnaps Nick and covers him in nicotine patches, Nick finds himself suspected by the FBI of having done the deed himself as a PR stunt. In an effort to clear his name, Nick eventually traces the attempt on his life to a conspiracy in the upper levels of the tobacco lobby. Although this plot had possibilities, it felt somewhat underdeveloped to me. At a mere 272 pages, "Thank You for Smoking" isn't quite long enough to function effectively as both a satire and a thriller. The plot's pretty interesting, I just would've like to see a little more space devoted to it.

Still, this book is worth a read. It's fast-paced, well written, and remarkably perceptive. More than once I found myself laughing out loud at the absurdity of it all. If an avid non-smoker like myself can find himself rooting for a tobacco lobbyist, than anyone can.

Rating:
Summary: overview
Review: There is a reason why it's a bestseller. Hollywood, guns, Oprah, death threats; in short, Thank You for Smoking, covers everything America idealizes in this raucous account of Nick Naylor's profession as chief spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies. Compared to Hitler, satan, Stalin, and other proteges of evil, Nick struggles (with a cigarette constantly at his lips) to beat back the wave of neo-Puritanism sweeping the nation. His hilarious escapades, often underscored with scathing insights by the narrator, lead to a climactic finish. Christopher Buckley, also author of, Little Green Men, has thoroughly researched the hot topic of tobacco and has added all the unexpected twists and jokes of a true craftsman. an enjoyable, intriguing, quick read that might just make you reach for a pack of your favorite cigarettes, even if you don't smoke.

Rating:
Summary: Light pleasant satire
Review: Buckley has a light, pleasant, humorous easy-to-read style, and he fully understands the double-think, newspeak and weasel words that are inherent in the political games, pro and con, surrounding tobacco. No one comes off looking good here. Everyone is a liar with ulterior motives concerning power, perks and attention. Unfortunately, his characters are really more caricatures than anything else. Still, this is a funny work, and I'd recommend it to get the Big Picture on Big Tobacco, and far worse, Big Government.

Rating:
Summary: smoke if you got em
Review: Rich Baiocco

Review of Thank You For Smoking

Christopher Buckley's ear for political and social satire is in perfect pitch in his latest book Thank You for Smoking. The book follows protagonist Nick Naylor, a lobbyist for the dreaded Tobacco Industry, through run-ins with kidnappers, confrontations with Oprah, and a barrage of extremely humorous sexual exploits. Naylor is on a quest to prove to his boss, B.R, that he is worth the money they are paying him to lie and finesse the public into thinking cigarettes are not dangerous. Nick defends his moral character in the role of the mouth of the merchant of death by claiming he is doing all of this to pay the mortgage and send his son through one of Washington's most elite private schools (St. Euthanasius). The brilliance of Buckley's writing comes in the fact that the reader is not necessarily on the side of his main character at the beginning for he the defender of such an evil corporate empire. As the plot twists and turns, we find room in our sympathetic hearts for Nick, and he quickly turns from antagonist to protagonist. We see a man, who like most Americans, is doing his job and trying to make a living. In fact his only real obstacle is the moral strain his position is imparting on him lately. Believe me, as the plot elevates and Naylor faces more and more heated public ignominy we actually feel sorry for him. Though the story tends to get a bit repetitive at times Buckley's sharp wit and tight comic prose keeps the reader very much engaged. Nick associates himself with a spokesperson for the NRA and a spokesperson for the Alcohol industry. They are known amongst each other as the M.O.D squad (Merchants of Death). Together they comfort and console each others wavering morals, battered and tired from tidal waves of public scorn. Like I stated earlier, the author has a knack for being able to grasp the evil world of publicity and propaganda behind corporate America. This book partially serves as a comic vehicle to follow the life of one of the country's most hated professionals, and partially as a flashlight to shine clearly upon the public's corruption by the Tobacco Industry. There is a real message to be learned here about what goes on behind the scenes in giant corporations, and Buckley delivers that message quite honestly, though sometimes heavy-handedly, through his satire. Thank You for Smoking is a fine accomplishment and marks the writer as one of the premiere social satirists in the game. I look forward to reading his next one.

Rating:
Summary: damn good book
Review: I was relieved when I saw the book Thank You For Smoking on my class syllabus instead of some boring textbook. No one knew anything about it, but a comedy about such serious topics sounded interesting. I just hoped the politics wouldn't overwhelm the humor. But after reading the first line I was hooked, or perhaps more appropriately "addicted," to Buckley's writing style. This is a great book. Thank You For Smoking plunges readers headfirst into the dark, two-faced world of the tobacco industry. The protagonist (or antagonist?) is Nick Naylor, whose job as chief spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco studies is not unlike that of a mass undertaker. His line of work requires him to be an absolute weasel, but Naylor is a natural. He's willing to sink to despicable lows to promote tobacco, and he eventually pays the price for his outright shamelessness. The book begins at the "Clean Lungs" conference, where Naylor isn't exactly Mr. Popular, with one of the speakers blatantly comparing him to Satan. He is despised by the crowd, and as the reader quickly learns, the majority of the American public. But Naylor remains composed throughout the conference and throughout the book, for that matter, and before you know it you're on this scumbag's side. Buckley has done an excellent job in making the bad guys good, and the good guys bad. He even has you rooting for the devious heads of the alcohol and firearm industries. Nick Naylor is fighting a losing battle and he knows it. He must remain strong to keep from losing his job, but it's hard to fight the facts everyone knows all too well: smoking isn't good for you. In light of the evidence stacked against smoking, even his opposition has to agree he's got a tough job. But Naylor is a warrior, and his excuses and public antics are laugh-out-loud ridiculous. Buckley has created a character whose ability to shift the blame and react quickly to criticism is almost superhuman. I enjoyed this book immensely. As I was leafing through it now to refresh my memory for this review I kept catching myself reading whole paragraphs and pages. As cliché as it sounds, it's hard to put it down.

Rating:
Summary: Dull and cold - pretty much what you'd expect
Review: There's something very smug about these parodies of Washington insiders. Even The West Wing gets tedious with its dozen storylines about whether the president should say a few words against a lobbying group. At first this book has the potential to overcome that curse. It's wry. It has a morally ambiguous main character. It has some great parodies.

Then it dies. It reminds me of Primary Colors in that it's way too enamored with the political process to really get things rolling. There's too much material about taking meetings and not enough about people. The characters are all broadly drawn, the females are vixens, the jokes aren't funny. When it gets to Hollywood the writer trots out the same old cliche about Hollywood producers wanting to throw any crap on the screen in order to sell products. Is this supposed to be funny? I suppose in the Player it was cool, but the joke has died from misuse.

Overall this is a fluff book that should have been better. The main problem is the cool cynicism. Yeah, everyone is out to get something. Yeah that's funny sometimes, but not here. When all is said and done we're left with a bunch of unlikeable characters in a stupid book.

Rating:
Summary: opinion
Review: Good job. Great fun!!!
The ending is kind of weak,but before you there you got a lot of fun.

Rating:
Summary: Worth inhaling
Review: I would have never guessed that I would even consider reading a book about a PR man for the tobacco industry ... and I certainly could have never imagined that if I did, I'd enjoy it so much!

I picked up Thank You For Smoking at the suggestion of a friend, and was pulled into the narrative immediately. The story is so tightly and entertainingly written that I practically inhaled it (pun intended), taking less than a day to finish the book's nearly 300 pages even though for the most part I had to read it a few pages at a time while working at a conference.

Author Christopher Buckley pulled off the seemingly impossible here: making a despicable protagonist like Nick Naylor seem sympathetic. I won't go into the way Mr. Buckley does it, but it is definitely worth finding out for yourself.

My only complaint is that the ending to the story wraps up a little too neatly, a little too much like Hollywood. It's a weakness, but not a serious enough of a weakness to cloud the value of this original and clever book.

Rating:
Summary: The Test
Review: I always know I'll like someone if they liked this book.

Rating:
Summary: Simply the funniest book I've ever read
Review: Only Christopher Buckley could findd the humor in being a corporate PR representative for the tobacco companies. He deftly manages to make the main character both amusing, and even the object of our sympathies as he lands in one outlandish predicament after another. Pick up this book for a good laugh.