Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Bumming a Fag
When it comes to the body, there is also the question of smoking. One of the several Amer-
ican objections to the habit, one that encapsulates many of the nation's phobias and anxiet-
ies, is that it constitutes a kind of illicit connection between people, shrinking the space to
which they can rightfully lay claim. It is a symbolic mingling of bodies, and as such offens-
ive to American individualism. Another objection is that smoking is a pure act of ingestion,
one which, unlike eating, lacks all biological value or necessity. As such, it symbolises the
transgressive movement, from outer to inner and out again, in its starkest form.
It is true that the American aversion to smoking is at root eminently rational, given the
horrendous consequences of the habit. But the moral fervour with which the subject has
been invested in the States, along with the zeal with which the hapless smoker is some-
times hounded, suggests that there is more to the matter than rationality. It is possible to
act unreasonably in a reasonable cause. Smoking in the States is never just smoking, rather
as one sometimes suspects that the last thing food is is food. Smoking represents a sinister
infiltration of the other into one's hygienically sealed world. America thus has its fair share
of smoking fascists. There have been literal smoking fascists too. Hitler was fanatically op-
posed to the habit, and banned it from his bunker even as Soviet tanks were bearing down
on it. He was also hysterical about germs, a neurosis shared by many middle-class Amer-
icans. There is some evidence that Osama bin Laden also banished smoking from his com-
pound, though it is unlikely that his image will be blazoned on U.S. anti-smoking posters.
In America as in Europe, the anti-smoking campaign is basically a class conspiracy. By
and large, the working class continue to smoke while the middle class have given it up.
Banning cigarettes is clearly an attempt to entrench middle-class power over a working
class whose demise may now be literal as well as sociological. Many middle-class Amer-
icans seem to have abandoned drinking as well. I once came across a couple of American
acquaintances of mine sitting at a table in the bar of a Dublin theatre without even an or-
ange juice in front of them. You can be prosecuted for that in Ireland. In today's China,
by contrast, heavy drinking can get you promoted, while moderate imbibing can ruin your
professional prospects. One can harm one's career by not downing an excessive number of
drinks with one's colleagues. Job advertisements sometimes explicitly ask for applicants
who can hold their drink. “Candidates with good drinking capacity will be given priority,”
read one for an engineering company. It is hard to imagine a similar ad for Goldman Sachs.
If you are a binge drinker, which is true of over half the men and more than a quarter of
the women who drink in China, it may be advisable to mention it on your CV. There is cer-
tainly no other way in which it is likely to smooth your progress through life.
Middle-class America is rather more abstemious. Charles Dickens complains in his
American Notes
about the absence of alcohol in his hotel, where he is forced to drink
tea and coffee instead. “This preposterous forcing of unpleasant drinks down the reluctant
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