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The Smoking Diaries

The Smoking Diaries

by Simon Gray

$29.95
$29.95
Available as E-Book Biography & Memoir British & Irish Literature
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When he turned sixty-five, the acclaimed playwright Simon Gray began to keep this 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 Smoking Diaries is 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.

Bringing together the four parts of The Smoking Diaries, this volume is filled with comedy and serious reflection, sharp observation and painful self-disclosure. A brilliant and moving account of life’s unsteady progress, it takes the reader to the heart of one man’s struggle towards some kind of personal truth.

Additional Book Information

Series: NYRB Classics
ISBN: 9798896231295
Pages: 880
Publication Date:

Praise

One of the funniest books I have ever read in my life.
—Philip Hensher, The Spectator

Written in a beautifully exact stream-of-consciousness—the prose equivalent of a clown speed-riding a unicycle across a high wire—the diaries whizz back and forth between whimsy and terror, hilarity and gloom, with no pause for breath in between.
—The Mail on Sunday

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