Death of a smoker

I love this. Man writes about the death of his dad, a Columbus sports writer and his efforts to quit smoking, be healthier and his ultimate failure and embarrassment.

And damned if I ain't glad I don't smoke.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/mar/02/my-father-the-smoker

 

Wow. I could have written that myself, almost word for word. This line particularly hit home:

We pleaded with him, of course, to treat himself better – though always with trepidation, since the subject annoyed him and, if pressed, could send him into a rage.

At some point, we kind of just stopped trying. And I don't regret it. It wouldn't have mattered. My poor mom.

Thanks for posting. Makes me feel a little less alone in my own experience.

 

My dad smoked, but when I was about 10 or 11 I would steal his cigarettes and throw them away whenever I could get my hands on them. I told him we learned smoking will kill you and that I would keep throwing away his cigarettes.

He hasn't smoked in decades.

 

This was a great, incredible piece.

Too bad it was too great and too incredible for an American newspaper to publish it.

 

Who knows how much John Jeremiah Sullivan got for it from The Guardian? I bet he went to The New York Times, too, since he often writes for the Sunday magazine.

Edit: And it's a book excerpt, which I glossed over initially. So there's a good chance at least one American outlet will get a different excerpt from the book.

That's a very reductive thing to say about something written by one of the best in the industry.

 

OK, OK.

I couldn't have written it. Because I suck and he's good.

But our experiences align.

That's what I meant.

But you knew that.

 

Someone woke up in a copy-editor-y mood today, huh?

 

You can't grovel then post this. Stop being wishy-washy.

 

I was just funnin' with him because he also nit-picked me on the Twitter thread. Versatile is SportsJournalists.com's desk chief.

 

In this thread, I was nit-picking. In that thread, we have a fundamental difference of opinion. But I like that.

Anyway, John Jeremiah Sullivan is better than all of us. My father had a similar battle. He actually stopped smoking cigarettes and switched to pipes and cigars about 10 years before he died.

 

I see a lot of my father's relationship with me in that story... My father did quit... cold-turkey after his first heart attack. But there were many other battles with him I lost. Wrote about some of those here before he died.

 

Looks like Versatile got a new sig quote out of the deal.

Was Sullivan's father Mike Sullivan? Did he ever name him in the piece?