One True Sentence
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Fred Brown - Mar 1, 2022
- 5 min read
Hitherto in the long back time when the Pundit fashioned himself the new Hemingway, ahem, he learned of a new pipe offering, known as the “Author.”
Oh, almighty thundering yes, the Pundit must have it! It was as if Homer, Plato, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and Hem all said in a heavenly roar:
“Go forth and write young Pundit with your new pipe, the Author!”
To say the gates of stary lights opened and cherubim played angelic instruments isn’t too far removed from reality.
The Pundit was as stunned as if he had been kicked by Faulkner’s mule (for the uninitiated you will just have to look that up).
Overnight, the Pundit ordered two or three of the Authorial pipes, mainly from Savinelli, where I first learned of the pipe style.
The Author is just a perfect pipe for the writer. It has been referred to as the big brother of the prince or a subspecies of the apple shape.
Its origins are not factually known, but it has been made quite popular by Savinelli’s 320 shapes over time.
Other manufacturers make the Author as well. But the Savinelli to the Pundit’s eye is the leader of this pack. That’s probably because his first Author was the Savinelli 320KS.
The Author is a superb smoking pipe with its plump bowl and sporting a cylindrical shank that is often as long as the bowl is tall. The usually thickish stem fancies a quarter bend mostly, tapering off and rounding at the lip of the mouthpiece.
And what is very nice is that the bowls are thick and deep, allowing for wads of your favorite blend for a long, pleasant smoke.
Just right for writers, such as Hemingway, who famously is alleged to have said: “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
Ah, yes. It ain’t as easy as Hem makes it sound. It’s not as hard as, say, a gandy dancer section gang putting in railroad tracks, of course. But writing one true sentence is the internal battle that makes it difficult.
Joan Didion, one of my favorite authors (who didn’t smoke pipes, but allegedly smoked cigarettes) said this about her toils at the typewriter:
“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle.”
This was from her highly popular collection of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
And now that the 15th annual International Pipe Smoking Day (IPSD) has come and gone, it is an excellent moment to reminisce with a cozy Author, pen and pipe in hand.
Also, if you will, please pardon the Pundit for a bit of pipe personification and a teeny bit of sentimentalism.
We pipe smokers know a thing or two about friendships and love. How many times have you turned to your favorite pipe in a fit of worry?
You pack it with a delicious Virginia combo blend and retire to your favorite chair.
You and your friend chase off the concerns and relax. That’s what friends are for, right?
I can’t count the times I’ve gotten out a beaten, battered old-timer, scraped, nicked, and a bit cranky. I fill the old boy with a tasty blend and fire him up again and again.
He never fails to perform. Ever.
That’s one of the reasons I panicked not long ago when I could not find a dear meerschaum given to me by my brother-in-law years back. It had to be in with the herd but wasn’t.
After a high and low search, my sorrow became quite real. The meer was not here! Not in a box of pipes I keep for emergencies. It wasn’t in a closet with the remainder of the herd.
It was gone! But how could that be? I do not trade, sell, or get rid of a pipe. That’s why this was so unusual. Just when I needed the meer to cheer me up a tad, it was lost.
After a few days of fruitless searching, I decided this required a deeper dive into the herd.
You may not be the meer nerd I am, but I love coloring the white goddess over years of puffing. I sort of keep track of time and the years by how the meer is growing patina.
This ancient meer was dark, and as beautiful as a setting sun. It has been with me through the good and tough times. I actually named this meer the Ice Goddess for some reason known to me years ago.
Ah, but she is gone. She is still among the missing. My search continues. I keep one space open in a pipe rack.
I call it the “missing pipe formation!”
Now for a few notable March births and deaths of pipe-smoking authors:
Edgar Rice Burroughs, a sci-fi author, was born Sept. 1, 1875, and died March 19, 1950; He is probably best remembered for his 1912 pulp fiction, “Tarzan of the Apes.”
Raymond Chandler, son of an American father and Irish mother, was born July 23, 1888, and died March 26, 1959. He was best known for his detective novels, one of his earliest, “The Big Sleep,” introduced the detective, Philip Marlowe, who appeared in later detective novels by Chandler.
And now for the crème de la crème, Johann Sebastian Bach, born in Eisenach, Germany, March 31, 1685, and died July 28, 1750. Best-known and perhaps best-loved for his orchestral music such as the Brandenburg Concertos and keyboard masterpieces.
Check out Chuck Stanion’s outstanding piece on Bach in his August 30, 2019, Pipe Line column on SmokingPipes.com
And a parting quote from the famed classical composing maestro and pipe-smoking Bach: There’s nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself— Johann Sebastian Bach.
Written by Fred Brown
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 641. Our featured interview tonight is with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl and is featured in our recurring series, “Ask the Tobacco Blender”. However, tonight he will be the interviewee as we learn about how he became a pipe smoker and collector, when he got his first pipe and how he progressed from there. At the top of the show, Brian will have a review of the rare German tobacco blend, Tumblin’ Dice.
I remember the first time I heard someone else say it. “How many pipes do I need? Just one more.” It’s glib, sure, a bit of a joke, but it also rings a bell of truth, at least to me. I certainly have “enough” pipes, but pipes are seductive little things. Just when we think we’re all set, we have enough, another will come along that tempts us beyond any sense of reason. I suppose it’s the same way with any sort of collecting. There’s always another white whale we’re in pursuit of. When we finally track that one down, though, another will almost inevitably breach the surface, taking its place as the new object of our desire, enticing us to change course and set sail once again. But, there’s a potential problem with having a lot of pipes. Maybe. The more pipes we may have, the harder it can be to keep them in rotation. It makes sense. We tend to gravitate towards our current faves, the ones that most appeal to us for whatever reason, and sometimes, maybe they stay in rotation longer than they really should. The side-effect of this, of course, is that another favored pipe might end up too-long forgotten. That’s exactly what happened recently. Exhibit A: The Castello pictured is one that has been long overlooked. It’s a Trademark shape #55. It’s a really nice example of the shape. The red pearlized stem is beautifully done. The wood isn’t really anything special to look at, but it’s evenly covered, without any bald spots. When I look at it, I wonder why it wasn’t done in the more typical dark ruby-red finish that adorns most Trademarks. I’ve seen a great deal of variation amongst the grade over the years, including one really nice bent-bulldog that left the factory with a brown sandblasted finish. (For those who don’t know, Trademark has long been the lowest Castello smooth grade, usually finished in a dark red.) Was this a stamping/grading error, or is there just more leeway in the grade than we’ve come to expect? I might never know. This example is from the early 1970s, maybe even the late 1960s, identified by the upper case Ks in the grade designation. (On Sea Rock and Old Antiquari pipes, the Ks reflect the size, while with the smooth finishes, Trademark, Castello and Collection, the Ks represent the relative grade.) It has been living in a different rack than the one housing the majority of my #55s. I don’t recall why I put it there, but as many of us can relate to, rack space is often at a premium. I stumbled upon it while looking for something completely different. “Oh, you? Why are you there? I remember you smoke pretty well.” Yeah, I sometimes talk to my pipes – one of many quirks, I suppose. I won’t begin to worry until they start talking back. I grabbed it from the rack, dusted it off, and decided to give it a fill with a bowl of a slightly aged VA/perique blend, Telegraph Hill, from 2018. What a delightful smoke! At five years, the tobacco is expressing a lot of the complexities of aged Virginias and the perique adds a delightful fruitiness. When young, the composition is a bit brighter, maybe a little spicier, but time has polished any edges, and amplified the sweeter notes. Like the pipe, I’d forgotten about this blend for quite a while, but one evening in March, after chatting with my good friend Nate, who is quite a fan of it, I decided it might be time to revisit it. I got a couple of fresh ones, and excavated a couple older tins from the library. I normally reach for Fillmore when I want a VA/perique thing because of its boldness and depth, but in revisiting this one, I’m finding something soothing and comfortable about it that I’ve really been enjoying, both young and aged. Sticking with the theme of the forgotten, and as a perhaps interesting tidbit to the photographically inclined, I shot the pictures for this month’s column with my old Nikkor-O 35mm/2.0 mounted on my trusty Nikon Df. The last time I used this lens, it was adapted to one of my Fujifilm bodies, and I didn’t care much for the results, so I put it away and pretty much forgot about it. But, I’ve recently been exploring some of my old kit, deciding what to keep, what to pass along, and this one once again came to my attention, kind of like that old Castello. On the Df, there’s something about its vintage rendering that I find truly appealing. Another forgotten treasure, and just like with that old pipe, it seems that, at least today, everything old is new again. If your collection is on the large side, are there pipes or tobaccos that you’ve all but forgotten, only to come back to them one day to find yourself wondering why? Maybe it’s just another fun dimension to this endlessly fascinating journey.
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 639. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Per Billhäll. Per is the owner of Scandinavian Pipes, which is an online retailer of high grade pipes. He started smoking pipes in the 1960s. His first high grade pipe was made by Hans “Former” Nielsen, who is one of the living legends from Denmark. That led to Per becoming a huge pipe and tobacco collector, and show attendee where he became well known. Along with pipe book author Jan Andersson, they started The Pipe Club of Sweden in 1991. Then in 1999, Per started “Scan Pipes”. He is now one of the pipe retailing legends from Sweden. At the top of the show Brian will talk about holiday blends, and other special pipe tobacco blends.
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Ok, so it’s that time of year, as we all know. Family feasts, houses, yards, and big trees festooned with lights and dangling ornaments, just high enough to keep the cats from reaching a paw into the greenery. It’s also the time of year when your pipe-smoking-significant other makes vast hints about a new pipe. That’s to be expected since he or she was a good boy or girl during the year. Yes, ladies smoke pipes, too. Oh, you want an example? Okay, try Actress Greta Garbo, Millicent Fenwick, Mary Frith, and my late grandmother (who died when she was 93) dipped snuff and smoked a cob occasionally. So now that we have settled that the gentler side of life will puff a pipe too, let’s move on to the upcoming biggest holiday of all. Of course, that huge event is brought to us by the hefty fellow in a red suit, puffing his pipe all the way in a sled filled with presents, being led by a reindeer with a red nose. Or some such. That’s Santa Claus, of course. Becoming a bit more serious, Christmas is such a wonderful time for families and friends. It’s also quite special for pipe puffers. For many of us, this brings up a nostalgic look back to our pipe-smoking or cigar-smoking friends who have died during the current year. A great journalist pal whom I often joined in a local brick-and-mortar pipe and cigar shop. I puffed my pipe, and occasional cigar, as he enjoyed a cigar. He died in October and will be missed. On the happier side of things, Christmas is also a time when mind workers of the world renew their collections with fresh additions. Pundit included. A French passion has overtaken Pundit, from reading more Albert Camus, a heavy cigarette smoker, as were many French intellectuals of a certain time. Instead of cigarettes many of us prefer the more relaxed enjoyment of pipes for that “calm and objective judgment” in the comings and goings of the world. This brings me to French pipes. While visiting France once in the long ago, I happened by a “Tabac” shop in Paris, Tabac Des Vosges. I purchased a beauty of a Chacom bent. I also later bought a Ropp made from ancient briar. To learn more about the dawn of briar pipes and beginnings, take a peek at a well-done piece by Davin Hylton in Pipe Line on April 12, 2023, on Saint-Claude, France, the birthplace of briar. Also in the long back when, on a cold Christmas afternoon, Pundit wandered into an Atlanta bricks and mortar pipe shop to look around. There, resting in an enclosed glass counter was an exquisite Comoy. An older gent, smoking a beautiful bent, asked me if I wanted to look at that pipe. It had a $100 price tag. A college student working for a grocery store chain to help with college tuition at the time, Pundit didn’t have one hundred cents, let alone a C note! I declined and found a $5 basket pipe. A Christmas tradition had just begun. Since that early time, Pundit has made it a holiday ritual to either reward himself, or a special friend, with pipe or tobacco. A Claudio Cavicchi would be nice. Just sayin.’ And now for a couple of December-born Pipe Smokers of the Past: Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born on Dec. 30, 1865, and died on Jan. 18, 1936. I always prefer to believe the best of everybody; it saves so much trouble—Rudyard Kipling. Martin Van Buren, born Dec. 5, 1782, and died July 24, 1862, U.S. President, 1837-1841 As to the presidency, the two happiest days of my life were those of my entrance upon the office and my surrender of it—Martin Van Buren. And one more note to recall a deceased World War II veteran who loved William Somerset Maugham, the author. Maugham, a pipe smoker, was born in Paris, France, on Jan. 25, 1874, and died on Dec. 16, 1965. One cool afternoon as the veteran and I talked while sitting in his backyard patio, he looked off into the distance as if studying something. Nothing in particular. Just looking. He turned to me and said if I wanted to learn about life, “read Somerset Maugham.” I did. It wasn’t until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, ‘I don’t know’ –W. Somerset Maugham And now a Parting Shot: Any day with an old friend with pipes and tobacco is a good day.
