Pipe Smoking in Fiction

 

While pipe smoking is not what it used to be, as is smoking tobacco in general, fictional pipe smokers (and their creators) abound.

There’s something about a pipe that conveys an image cigarettes, cigars, and not smoking simply doesn’t.

The Pipe Smoker

The pipe smoker is seen as a thinking man. A man of intelligence (Einstein was a pipe smoker). The pipe smoking man is not a rush about. His approach to problem solving is more measured and thought out.

Compared to the cigar and cigarette smoker, and also the non-smoker, the pipe smoker exudes the best qualities of a man. 

The greatest generation were in large part pipe smokers. Back when I was a kid, there were an estimated 30 million pipe smokers. Today that number has dwindled to 3 million. And men are in a crisis, being assaulted left and right by extreme feminism. Maybe men should man up and go back to pipe smoking. It is a thought.

Fictional Pipe Smokers

But on to fictional pipe smokers and their creators, which is the subject of today’s post.

Sherlock Holmes

Probably the most iconic of fictional pipe smokers is Sherlock Holmes. He was an inveterate pipe smoker. The Persian slipper filled with his shag cut tobacco. The dottle he collected to be smoked first thing in the morning (I have to say here, yuck!). And of course, the famous three–pipe problem (nicotine stimulates thinking).

Philip Marlowe

Philip Marlowe smoked a pipe, as did his creator Raymond Chandler. And Marlowe is one of the most iconic of hardboiled detectives. He was also a rather introspective man. Something that is part and parcel of being a pipe smoker.

Hobbits

Hobbits are known for their love of pipeweed, as well as their creator J.R.R. Tolkien. And did you ever notice that Tolkien’s world is largely a man’s world? Pipe smoking and the war against evil. Must be a man thing.

Huck Finn

Mark Twain loved smoking. For him, the pipe and the cigar were symbols of rebellion against the constraints of an oppressive and unfair society. Huck Finn is an iconoclast; and through him, Twain attacks the social conventions and repression of his day. And Huck Finn smoked a pipe.

My Fictional Pipe Smokers

In my own writing, most of my main characters smoke a pipe. Why? Because a man who smokes a pipe is a thinking man. A man who approaches life calmly and rationally. 

A pipe smoker is a meditative man. A man who contemplates and ponders the deep things of life.

Bill Arthur

Bill Arthur is such a man. He is the main character in my post-apocalyptic series The Rocheport Saga. 

Bill’s main goal is to use the knowledge we already have to prevent humanity from slipping back into the dark ages. He is an armchair philosopher, who reluctantly becomes a leader. 

Early on, Bill smokes Briggs Pipe Mixture: “When a feller needs a friend.” Because being the leader is often a lonely job. A pipe can however bring solace to a troubled soul. A pipe is sometimes a man’s best friend.

Harry Wright

Justinia Wright may smoke cigars at a rate to rival Sir Winston Churchill’s daily consumption, but her brother Harry is an occasional pipe smoker. He may not be the brains behind the detective agency, but he is the one who keeps it running.

Harry Thurgood

Harry Thurgood, the coffee shop owner in Magnolia Bluff, Texas, smokes a pipe. And I believe he’s the only smoker amongst the main characters in the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles series.

He is a man with a secret life that he wants to keep a secret. But he’s also a man who enjoys the finer things in life. And the pipe can make a man look very distinguished.

Dr. Rafe Bardon

Pierce Mostyn doesn’t smoke. But his boss, Dr. Rafe Bardon is a pipe smoker. Bardon is the general behind the lines directing the troops who will save the world from Cthulhu and his ilk.

For Myself

For myself, the creator of fictional heroes and heroines, I enjoy my pipe. Sitting out in the garage, with a mug of tea and my pipe, I contemplate life and spin yarns in my head. Sometimes, though, I just do nothing. After all, when one has the two best leaves on the planet, tea and tobacco, what more does one want? That is pure contentment.

The Brotherhood of the Pipe

The Brotherhood of the Pipe, both in fiction and the real world, is still alive and well. 

In my writing, as in Twain’s, pipe smoking is part of my rebellion against those elements of our government and our society that would squash our liberty because they think they know what’s best for us. 

Huck Finn thumbed his nose at all the do-gooders who would cheat us and take away our freedom. 

Huck smoked corn cob pipe. And I do, too.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

CW Hawes is a playwright; award-winning poet; and a fictioneer, with a bestselling novel. He’s also an armchair philosopher, political theorist, social commentator, and traveler. He loves a good cup of tea and agrees that everything’s better with pizza.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider buying me a cup of tea. Thanks! PayPal.me/CWHawes 

Justinia Wright Private Investigator Mysteries on Amazon!

Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles on Amazon!

Beyond the Sea

This past Friday was the official launch of Beyond the Sea: Stories from the Underground.

The concept was simple: a picture of a boat beached on a spit of sand jutting out into a lake, or a bay, or maybe the sea. Then add the imaginations of a dozen authors. And what do you get? A superbly satisfying collection of short stories.

I’m proud to be one of the 12 Underground Authors contributing to this incredible collection of tales. My story “The Boat”, is my first return trip to the post-apocalyptic world of The Rocheport Saga in 4 years. I took the opportunity to coax out of Bill Arthur a story that took place before The Morning Star, which is Book 1 of the series.

Amazon reviewer J.S. wrote of “The Boat”:

C.W. Hawes wrote a compelling short story that I didn't want to come to an end. His words came alive and I joined in with the characters in a hair-raising survival journey in a post-apocalyptic world. Great world-building and great writing!

I’m pleased and humbled by that comment. And very glad I wasn’t a drag on the group effort! :)

As a reader, I was impressed with the overall quality of the stories. As can’t be helped, some were more appealing to me than others. That’s just how it is in an anthology. Not everything will please everybody. Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder.

Nevertheless, the overall quality is high, and that should please any reader. I’m confident everyone will find a story they’ll fall in love with.

My personal favorites, the ones that especially caught my eye, were “Hemingway’s Boat” by Caleb Pirtle III, “The Encounter” by Ronald E Yates, and “Roses for Grant” by Richard Schwindt.

Pirtle’s story is a superb example of his ability  to capture a time and place, people it with true to life characters, throw in a bit of mystery and romance, and come up with a story that grabs you and doesn’t let go. In the short time that I’ve known him, he’s become one of my favorite authors.

I enjoy a good science fiction yarn, and Ron Yates has uncorked a real goodie in “The Encounter”. And when it’s coupled with a touch of slowburn terror, it’s a keeper. His knowledge of Southeast Asia and history adds a strong sense of place and color to the tale.

Richard Schwindt, as readers of this blog know, is one of my favorite contemporary writers. I think I’d buy his grocery lists. His story, “Roses for Grant”, is a beautiful slice-of-life tale about an older middle-aged couple. Their memories and the mission they are on. In some ways, it reminded me of Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” in that the dialogue essentially carries the story. No narrator gets in the way of the couple on whom we are listening in.

Having written the above, I want to emphasize that there is something for everyone in Beyond the Sea — and what are my favorites may not be yours. Pick up a copy and see for yourself.

We the authors are donating the proceeds to Team Rubicon. A worthy organization. Check them out on their website.

You can pick up a copy of Beyond the Sea at Amazon. And when you do, you benefit yourself and the disaster relief efforts of Team Rubicon. 

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

The Boat

 

It’s been a number of years since I’ve visited the world of Bill Arthur and The Rocheport Saga.

Recently, though, I paid Bill a visit and the result was “The Boat”, a prequel story to The Rocheport Saga.

In “The Boat” we learn a bit about Bill in the days after the apocalypse and before the story in The Morning Star. 

So if you’re a fan of The Rocheport Saga, you can find “The Boat” in Beyond the Sea: Stories from the Underground, which officially debuts this Friday, May 7th.

And to celebrate the book launch, the Underground Authors are throwing a launch party!

The party starts at 5:30 pm CDT on Friday, May 7th. There will be prizes and you’ll get to meet the authors.

Here’s the link to get in on the fun:

PARTY TIME!

Hope to see you there!

Rational Anarchism

Lately I’ve been reading post-apocalyptic literature (among other things). Reading how other writers envision the future when humanity has a chance to start over is always interesting, for it reveals how these writers see themselves and their fellows.

One of my first published books was The Morning Star, the first book in The Rocheport Saga. The Saga is the autobiography, as it were, of Bill Arthur, who is a survivor of an unknown plague that wiped out most of earth’s human population. He begins to gather together other survivors in an attempt to reboot civilization. But not the old one that died, a new one that is better.

Much of Bill’s political philosophy is drawn from libertarian writings. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress being one. So I thought I’d re-post one of my writings from the very early days of this blog. Let’s look once again at Rational Anarchism. Enjoy!

Nearly fifty years ago, a writer by the name of Robert A Heinlein wrote and got published a book entitled, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. One of the principal characters in the novel is Professor Bernardo de la Paz, who describes himself as a “Rational Anarchist”.

What is a Rational Anarchist? Let’s take a look, because the words rational and anarchy seem to be contradictory. A Rational Anarchist:

• Believes the state, society, and government are concepts which do not exist apart from the physical acts of self-answerable individuals.
• Believes blame, guilt, responsibility, and answerability makes it impossible for a person to shift, share, or distribute blame.
• Being rational, the rational anarchist understands not everyone shares his or her views; yet, he or she strives to live perfectly in an imperfect world; completely aware he or she is not capable of achieving perfection.
• Accepts all rules society deems necessary to secure its freedom and liberty.
• Is free no matter what the rules are in his or her society. If the rules are tolerable, he or she will tolerate them. If not, the rational anarchist will break them.
• Is free because the rational anarchist knows only he or she is morally responsible for everything he or she does.

Why do I bring this up? Because Bill Arthur in The Rocheport Saga tries to create a new world along similar lines. He begins as an anarchistic libertarian, seeking on a societal level to create the ultimate environment for freedom.  Eventually he realizes people are people. Even after a calamity which wipes out 98 out of every 100 people, those who survive haven’t essentially changed. The survivors are no different than they were before they were survivors. People want freedom, but actually crave security and will sacrifice freedom for security every time they feel insecure.

In the end, Bill Arthur becomes a Rational Anarchist. He concludes the Stoics were right over 2,000 years ago: all we can ultimately do is control ourselves.

Tell me what you think about freedom and security. Is Bill Arthur right?

Independence

Tomorrow, we in the US, celebrate our independence from Britain. The casting aside of our colonial status to take the first steps as a union of 13 sovereign states.

Almost no one thinks of the 50 states today as sovereign, nor do we think of the US as a union of sovereign states. That is, though, in theory, what the United States of America really is.

President Lincoln and the War Between the States went a long way towards setting us on the road to nationalism, where we now think of ourselves as Americans, and not Virginians, Ohioans, or Minnesotans.

In effect, the states have been reduced to quasi-province status. One of the reasons, for example, why many people want to do away with the Electoral College. These people do not see us as a union of states, merely one country.

Ironically, Canada is far more a “federal” union than is the US. Although even there the drive towards a strong central government is alive and well.

I stumbled on to writing post-apocalyptic fiction by accident. An intriguing first line (“Today I killed a man and a woman.”) popped into my head one day and 2000+ pages later I had a “novel”.

The Rocheport Saga, currently at seven volumes, is basically one long novel I’ve broken up into convenient reads. 

With the seventh book, Take to the Sky, the series is at a convenient pause point and on hiatus while I work on other things. Oh, to have a novel factory like Alexandre Dumas!

The narrator of The Rocheport Saga, Bill Arthur, is an intellectual prepper, an armchair philosopher, and a reluctant leader. As one reviewer put it (whose review Amazon has taken down for some reason — boy, oh boy, Amazon is not in my good books): Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

In the story, America (and the world) is a lawless ruin in the wake of the apocalyptic event. Bill’s dream is to build a new America — preserving the best of the old, and getting rid of the worst.

So what does that mean? For Bill, who is politically a libertarian, that means the promotion of the values that made America a great country: love of freedom, respect for the individual, determined self-reliance, and pride in being frugal.

What Bill Arthur sees as the great cancer that was rotting out the old America is: a sense of entitlement, the desire for security over freedom, lack of respect for the individual, the quest for money and a lavish and extravagant lifestyle, and a complete disregard for the Golden Rule.

The wonderful thing about fiction is that the author constructs his own world, and then invites the reader to share that world with him.

The world of The Rocheport Saga is a hard world, a difficult world. It is also a world of hope. Hope in those positive values that made the United States a great country. Values that have nothing to do with big government and the growing nanny state, which eviscerates freedom, self-reliance, respect for self and others, and gives in return a stultifying uniformity, constant surveillance for our “protection”, and a sense of hopelessness.

George Orwell in 1984 captured the horror that is all-powerful government. We must remember the Soviet Union regularly conducted elections in their sham democracy. And the 1936 constitution provided equal rights to all regardless of sex, race, or ethnicity. Too bad the interpretation and practice of said rights was lacking. Stalin killed far more citizens of the USSR, than Hitler killed of all countries in his concentration camps.

Big government is no guarantor of rights. Big government is only concerned about the submission of the people to the will of the state, irrespective of any promised rights.

That is what the Patriots were fighting against. The King’s trampling of the people’s rights in favor of submission to the will of the state.

All of my books, to one degree or another, promote love of freedom, respect for the individual, a determined self-reliance, and a pride in not being wasteful.

I don’t sell many books, readership is tiny (to the extent I can determine that), I don’t get many reviews, and virtually no one writes to me who has read my books.

For many writers that would be discouraging, and an indication that perhaps they should quit, and sometimes I feel that way myself. When I do, I remind myself that today I have the freedom to self-publish my work and not be thought a loser for doing so. That wasn’t the case in the publishing world for most of my life. Today I can live my dream, and no editor can say otherwise.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to make my living writing fiction. I’m not there. Yet. And I might never get there. But I do have the freedom to give it a shot. And as long as I am breathing I will.

Grandma Moses achieved fame in her twilight years for her art. Helen Hooven Santmyer was 88 when “…And Ladies of the Club” hit it big.

I don’t want to wait that long, but, as the saying goes, “Good things come to those who wait”.

The United States of America is a fabulous land. Fifty fabulous lands in actuality. I’m glad I live here and I’m glad I’m able to self-publish my books and set off on the quest to find my readers. They may not be legion, but I know they’re out there.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

The Rocheport Saga-Part 2

Last week I talked a bit about my post-apocalyptic series The Rocheport Saga. I said it was part philosophy, part family saga, part satire, part libertarian thought, part action/adventure novel, and all post-apocalyptic speculation. I also noted that the series is written in epistolary form; that is, as diary entries. I’m very fond of the epistolary format because of the intimate picture it can give us of the main character’s thoughts. Provided of course he or she is a reliable narrator. If not, then we enter a mystery world of trying to figure what is real and what is not. Either way, the epistolary novel is an ideal vehicle.

The Saga is written in story arcs, not unlike television writing, and the first seven novels form the first arc. The arc itself is divided into three parts.

Part I comprises the first two books: The Morning Star and The Shining City. And might be called “Beginnings”. This is where the story begins. Where we learn about Bill Arthur’s dream and how he intends to go about it. His dream of creating a libertarian utopia and of returning to the 21st Century’s technology.

Love Is Little, The Troubled City, and By Leaps and Bounds form Part II. The little community of Rocheport faces enemies from without and within. Our hero, Bill Arthur, is struggling to hold it all together and to do so faces the ugly reality that he will have to betray a few of his most cherished beliefs.

Nevertheless, in By Leaps and Bounds we begin to see that it does indeed look as though the community has turned a corner and will in fact survive.

Part III comprises Freedom’s Freehold and the soon to be published Take to the Sky. Whereas Part II might be titled “Conflict”, Part III could be called “Hope”. The corner has been turned and Bill Arthur feels confident the people of Rocheport will usher in a new era of peace, freedom, and technological advancement.

While The Rocheport Saga is many things, it is all post-apocalyptic speculation. The series is a realistic attempt, I think, at speculating how civilization might come back from a massive catastrophic event — and come back better than it was before the disaster. Therefore there are no zombies or other monsters in the story. Nor are there aliens from space. This is a human story of human dreams and aspirations.

The Marquis de Sade wrote philosophy in the form of pornography. And pornography was a suitable format for him to present his philosophy.

The post-apocalyptic cozy catastrophe, I found, was the most suitable format for me to express my philosophy and social views. Because, at base, the cozy catastrophe is about building a better world.

Which makes it a vehicle by which the author can criticize the current world in which he or she lives and present a model of how the problems can be solved. 

S. Fowler Wright used Deluge and Dawn to portray the legal injustices against the labor class and to challenge certain social assumptions. John Wyndham used The Day of the Triffids to hint at the dangers associated with bio-engineering and to point out the dangers of military weapons orbiting the planet. In Earth Abides, George R Stewart points out how a poor black rural working family would be much more capable of surviving, than a white urban couple in New York City. Pointing out how fragile our urban worlds are. Stewart also pointed out that when push comes to shove, we are all equal by having his white protagonist marry a woman who wasn’t white. All that in a book written in the late ‘40s.

The cozy catastrophe is the perfect vehicle for world building. For creating our utopias. I’m surprised that few writers see this and utilize this form. For in the end, all writers are philosophers. Our books are either our ideal worlds or a graphic picture of what we think is wrong with the current world.

And so, in The Rocheport Saga, I present my version of what utopia would be like. No government. Sovereign and self-responsible individuals. Family centered. Social and intellectual freedom. A place where people follow the Golden Rule, respect each other, and help each other. I think it’s a vision that is very appealing and attainable.

As always, comments are welcome! Let me know your thoughts. And until next time, happy reading!