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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Before we begin, I should tell you: this tobacco review is being written by an A.I. Not the fancy new GPTs or their ilk; no, this is last century’s meat-and-bone, all-organic model. To be fair, a large part of what we call knowledge is merely the accumulated perceptions and impressions gathered from a life wandered through, synthesized into a spongy mass of what-it-is-that-we-think-that-we-know. The algorithm for this prompt is simple enough: pump thousands of bowls of smoldering plant matter into a gaping maw, cross-reference the chemical sensations with all other matter previously ingested or inhaled, sieve it all through the diffuse and fractal twin lens of memory and emotion, and churn out a panoply of adjectives that attempts to convey the sensations to someone who hasn’t experienced it yet. Odds are that a diligently trained monkey could succeed half the time; if this reviewer nears fifty-one percent then that would qualify as an unrivaled success. 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The smoky Cyprian Latakia, in turn, is backed by equal earthiness from the Rustica, which overall exhibits a profile similar to dark-fired Kentucky; it leans more toward the woody and vegetal end of that spectrum, echoing and amplifying those traits of the other constituents. The tobacco is presented pressed and cut into a couple of thick, hearty flakes in the tin, lightly moist and easily crumbled to prepare—I prefer mine with a bit of drying time. The out-of-this-world tin art for this episode in the series is Major O’Meara smoking a cavalier. In the absence of confirmation, I’m going to hazard a guess he’s of the Ithklur species. The first taste from the light is sweet, with hints of that milk chocolate dancing around the edges. The Virginia leads the smoke through the top of the bowl, and orchestrates it well. Thoroughly smoky with lemony, grassy highlights from the Virginia spectrum, it soon segues into the mid-bowl profile: heartier, smokier, with the flavor leaning to the mildly acrid and tangy tinge that is the campfire-esque signature of English blends. Caution advised, it can turn overly bitter if pushed—this is where one’s sipping technique is required to maintain the fullness of flavor through to the heel. I did tend toward a lot of relights, though it may have as much to do with technique as with the blend. Pacing is also important as the nicotine starts to manifest; though the Rustica’s contribution has been tempered well by the stoving, it can certainly upend an empty stomach. At the end of every bowl, the mouthfeel somehow gets better. The balance of sugars in the tobaccos would seem to be spot-on in this regard. I started out my tasting in cobs, then cut short an unpleasant bowl in a meer, and finally landed on my best instrument with the lovely Dunhill 4427 pictured, a quaint group 4 shell briar with a gentle curve and Cumberland stem supporting a perfectly executed acorn bowl. It surprised me here, as I’ve learned through the years that I generally have the best experience with English blends in large, wide bowls. With this blend it seems that to get the best out of the Katerini’s somewhat diaphanous influence the smaller bowl fared much better. Room note is very English, so the company you keep will either love it or hate it, and it doesn’t linger too much. I find it paired best with a strong coffee; Sumatran beans complement the flavors well, as do Ethiopian if a lighter brew is preferred. Overall impressions of the blend are that it’s a curiously interesting take on the English genre, almost a reductive reconstruction of the theme using the unique components. This blend, if nothing else, expanded my vocabulary of sense perceptions with the uniquely treated leaf. While the average human can distinguish approximately one trillion (1,000,000,000,000!) different aromas, multiplied by seven basic tastes, and wholly dependent on variables from body chemistry to atmospheric conditions, our overworked and underpaid simian brains can’t effectively catalog them all. Our pet adding machines are exceedingly good at this, however, and someday soon they’ll be the ultimate and unequivocal authority on what something tastes, smells, looks, or even feels like. Until that time, friends, revel in the moments that can be stolen to savor over a bowl of Pipe Force: Episode I.
