Pipe Smoking in What You are Reading

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Centurian 803

Centurian 803

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I found this in the first volume of Shelby Foote's The Civil War A Narrative.
Speaking of U. S. Grant during a staff conference: "He sat and smoked his long-stem meerschaum, appearing to get considerable satisfaction from it, and that was all."
Youse guys got any examples to share? I suppose I should say Tolkein and Doyle are off limits but I love them too much to do that. :study:
 
I remember reading in one of my civil war books about how 2 Union soldiers
went over to a campfire to get a lite for their pipes and it was a Rebel campfire,
they got their lite and made tracks.
After Grant became a bit famous he received boxes of free cigars from Union admirers,there's not too much more written about him piping after the early victories in Tennessee.He had more good cigars than he could smoke.

Winslow :sunny:
 
"Inspector Maigret, coat collar turned up, stood pressed into the corner of the entrance to the boys' school; he was waiting, watch in hand and smoking his pipe." Crime in the Rue Sainte-Catherine by Georges Simenon.
Lots of pipe smoking in his books.
 
I came across short narrative of uncle and nephew with a cob pipe in Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' a post-apocalyptic journey through burned America. A stunning read BTW!

I finished this novel WAAAY too quickly, once started you just can't put it down, best novel I've read in a long time.
 
I know this post is from last year but I figured I would share anyway. Two nights ago I was out in my front yard by a small fire puffing on my pipe. The next day I was poking around and found a really old book called "Dark Memory" by Jonathan Latimer. It was published in 1940 I think. I tried to look it up online but could not find much. There was no summary or forward of any kind so I started it to see what it was about. Anyway I ended up reading the book next to the fire I made last night it is about an expedition to a jungle to hunt gorillas and as it turns out one of the characters is a pipe smoker. He is a hunter type man and after each day he will lite his pipe up by the campfire. It was kind of cool to be reading about one of the characters from my book doing the same thing next to a fire that I was doing the night before. Going a bit off topic I was watching a movie a few min ago that was made in 2000 called Deeply. Kind of an interesting film and in the film Kurstin Dunts is a pipe smoker and lights up a time or two. I don't see many pipe smokers on tv or in the books I read so it kind of surprised me that I ran into one in both in the last two days.
 
I can't think of any examples off the top of my head but Shelby Foote is fantastic. I've read his 3 volume Civil War set. A lot of info in those books, to be sure.
 
Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe often smokes his pipe in the stories.

 
Robert Jordan was a pipe smoker, and several of his characters smoked in the Wheel Of Time series, but in the later books they seem to have run out of time for it what with the whole saving the world issue, I guess.
 
J.K. Rowling mentions witches and wizards smoking pipes but it is more in reference to the cloud of smoke they are producing.

 
Raymond Feist's series has some pipe smoking humans and dwarves.

Begin at the beginning: the first book is Magician which may be available in one book or two.
 
I recently asked a similar question on another forum and someone mentioned that three of Edgar Allen Poe's stories feature a pipe smoking character, C. Auguste Dupin. Here's a summary:

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" and "The Purloined Letter," all featuring the meershaum pipe-smoking Parisian detective, the Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin, are the recognized origin of the mystery genre. Arthur Conan Doyle and Georges Simenon head a long list of Poe's literary debtors.
 
sorringowl":qhinx8c2 said:
I recently asked a similar question on another forum and someone mentioned that three of Edgar Allen Poe's stories feature a pipe smoking character, C. Auguste Dupin. Here's a summary:

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" and "The Purloined Letter," all featuring the meershaum pipe-smoking Parisian detective, the Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin, are the recognized origin of the mystery genre. Arthur Conan Doyle and Georges Simenon head a long list of Poe's literary debtors.
Click to expand...
If you're a fan of Poe, I recommend The Poe Shadow, by Matthew Pearl, because who else could solve the mystery of Poe's death than C. Auguste Dupin?
 
Apart from Tolkien, Moby Dick is the only novel I know of in which pipes are not only smoked but play an integral part in the narrative. One of the chapters is titled "The Pipe." (It's Ahab's. He throws it overboard.) Oh, yes, they're clay pipes.)

The intro of Ishmael and Quequeg (sp?) is punctuated by the sharing of Quequeg's pipe, which is a tomahawk/pipe combo.

Then there are Stubb's pipes . . .
 
I'd have to recomend ANY of the Inspector Maigret detective novels of Georges Simenon. References to Maigret's pipe and his smoking are an integral part of ALL the plots in the novels. He makes Holmes look like a non-smoker :p Simenon is known to have had more than 300 pipes in his rotation, most of them Dunhills and he is reputed to have smoked btwn 12 to 15 bowls of Royal Yacht a day !! Besides his smoking, the novels are good :p
 
I am currently reading two different books. Stephen King's 11/12/63. About a guy that goes back in time and tries to stop the Kennedy assassination.

And a non fiction book by Peter L. Bergen called, The Longest War. About the ongoing war between America and Al-Qaeda. This guy sat face to face with the late Bin Laden. Pretty hardcore read...
 
kilted1":s7ue8vnt said:
I came across short narrative of uncle and nephew with a cob pipe in Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' a post-apocalyptic journey through burned America. A stunning read BTW!

I finished this novel WAAAY too quickly, once started you just can't put it down, best novel I've read in a long time.
Click to expand...
I forgot about that part from the book. If you liked it, try "No Country For Old Men", far better than the excellent movie.
 
You'll find lots of smoking references in DL Sayers' Peter Wimsey mysteries (although probably more cigarette and cigar references than pipe, but Wimsey does smoke a pipe at times, as do several characters). The Ian Carmichel adaptations from the 70s also show a fair amount of smoking, with 'The Nine Taylors' perhaps showing the most pipe smoking. (Wimsey himself, the Reverend, and Jim, a sailor, is shown shaving a plug and loading his pipe)
 
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