A vintage Benson & Hedge's ad evokes a cheekier (but no less deadly) era of cigarette marketing

Sometimes an ad gets just a little too truthful for its own good.  By the time this 1972 full-pager for Benson & Hedges 100’s ran in Life magazine, smoking was widely understood to be associated with a range of serious diseases. So, sure, let’s equate using our product to jumping out of a plane.  Bought by Philip Morris in 1958, Benson & Hedges is a British brand and still a subsidiary of the American conglomerate Philip Morris International. This ad was part of a larger “favorite cigarette break” campaign that leaned into the fact that Benson & Hedges offered longer cigarettes at the same price point, so people kept accidentally snapping the suckers in two. “Nobody had ever mutilated a cigarette before in American advertising—cigarettes, like automobiles, had always been treated with reverent respect by their manufacturers,” Mad Woman Mary Wells Lawrence wrote in her 2002 memoir “A Big Life (In Advertising).”  “Anything anti-establishment seemed smart in the mid-’60s, so our advertising made Benson & Hedges wildly hip and cool and the cigarette to be seen with.” (Lawrence, the first female CEO listed on the New York Stock Exchange, is still alive at 91. Must not have been a smoker.) But the times? They are a-changin’. Benson & Hedges parent PMI was in the news last week as merger talks between it and Altria Group, another American purveyor of cancer, broke down. Altria itself holds a minority stake in Juul Labs, the embattled e-cigarette maker... Continue reading at 'Advertising Age'

[ Advertising Age | 2019-09-30 09:00:00 UTC ]

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Carmen Maria Machado Has Invented a New Genre: the Gothic Memoir

In the middle of Carmen Maria Machado’s new memoir In the Dream House, CARMEN, stylized in all caps like a play script, sits across from the woman with whom she’s been in an abusive relationship (THE WOMAN IN THE DREAM HOUSE). The scene is set (“the curtain rises”) and we’re shown, “the house... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-05 12:00:26 UTC ]
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Cancer’s Crisis Ordinary

“WHAT IS DIFFICULT is not impossible.” Anne Boyer both writes and proves this maxim in The Undying, her crystalline memoir of illness and the hard knowledge that illness provides. The Undying engages with art from Aelius Aristides to John Donne to Audre Lorde, within an account of the author’s... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books

[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-11-04 20:00:59 UTC ]
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Book Deals: Week of November 4, 2019

Val Kilmer’s memoir lands at a Big Five house, 'Dead Man Walking' goes graphic, the screenwriter of The Jerk sells a thriller, and more. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-11-01 04:00:00 UTC ]
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“In the Dream House,” Reviewed: Carmen Maria Machado’s Many Haunted Stories of a Toxic Relationship

Katy Waldman reviews Carmen Maria Machado’s ”In the Dream House,“ a formally inventive memoir that recounts the author’s experience with an abusive relationship. Continue reading at New Yorker

[ New Yorker | 2019-10-31 17:04:01 UTC ]
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‘The Beautiful Ones’ isn’t the memoir Prince envisioned, but it’s a moving look at the singer’s life

The book doesn’t offer a clear-eyed view of who the singer really was — he would have hated that. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2019-10-30 14:42:51 UTC ]
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What We're Reading – October 2019

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine EvaristoSince studying Lara as a student, I have been a fan of Bernardine Evaristo’s work, and am delighted to see her win the Booker Prize this year. Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives of twelve black characters with different backgrounds and experiences, most... Continue reading at British Council global

[ British Council global | 2019-10-30 09:49:28 UTC ]
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‘In the Dream House’ Recounts an Abusive Relationship Using Dozens of Genres

Carmen Maria Machado follows up her acclaimed collection of stories, “Her Body and Other Parties,” with a memoir about her frightening relationship with another woman while in graduate school. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2019-10-29 19:27:21 UTC ]
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“Either Hyper-Visible or Invisible”: An Interview with Jaquira Díaz

JAQUIRA DÍAZ’S FIRST BOOK — the memoir Ordinary Girls, published by Algonquin Books on October 29 — lyrically chronicles a childhood and early adulthood marked by pain and chaos but also by joy and celebration. Díaz grew up, first, in one of Puerto Rico’s roughest neighborhoods and then amid... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books

[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-10-29 12:30:43 UTC ]
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But This Really Happened: What to Include and Leave Out of a Memoir

Author Timothy J. Hillegonds shares three ideas on how to determine what to include and what to leave out of a memoir so that it supports the main themes of the book. The post But This Really Happened: What to Include and Leave Out of a Memoir by Timothy Hillegonds appeared first on Writer's... Continue reading at Writer's Digest

[ Writer's Digest | 2019-10-28 15:03:11 UTC ]
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A Simplistic View of a Mixed-ish America

ABC’s Black-ish spinoff joins a new memoir by Thomas Chatterton Williams in presenting a seemingly enlightened but ahistorical view of race. Continue reading at The Atlantic

[ The Atlantic | 2019-10-26 13:00:00 UTC ]
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Lit Hub Weekly: October 21 – 25, 2019

Duras’s body of work is a reminder that it’s okay to press send, to publish your drafts.” On Marguerite Duras, proto-internet essayist. | Lit Hub Memoir “Space flight is not being powered by people doing reasonable things.” Peter Ward explores the fraught history (and inevitable future) of space... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-26 10:30:56 UTC ]
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Val Kilmer is releasing a memoir (!!!)

Stop whatever it is you’re doing and pay attention to me because I have, just this morning, stumbled upon some joyous, and potentially game-changing, literary news: Val Kilmer is releasing a memoir. Yes, friends, according to Publishers Weekly, Simon & Schuster will publish I’m Your... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-25 16:13:04 UTC ]
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Jenny Slate Wrote a Book-Shaped Thing. What Is It?

“Little Weirds,” a new collection by the actress and comedian, isn’t the funny memoir you might have expected. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2019-10-25 09:00:27 UTC ]
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Chatto & Windus wins Matt Rowland Hill memoir in eight-way auction

Chatto & Windus has triumphed in a hotly-contested eight-way auction to publish an "extraordinarily brave" memoir about faith, loss and addiction. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-23 09:08:05 UTC ]
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Head of Zeus picks up Carson's Belfast memoir

Head of Zeus has picked up a memoir of Belfast by poet and writer Ciaran Carson, who passed away earlier this month. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-22 01:49:57 UTC ]
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Colleagues pay tribute to journalist and 'lioness' Deborah Orr

Columnist, editor and author hailed as ‘fearless’, after her death at the age of 57Friends and colleagues have responded to the death of the journalist and author Deborah Orr with a flood of tributes, describing the longtime Guardian columnist as fearless, hilarious, and “a lioness in a world... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2019-10-21 15:54:16 UTC ]
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'Animals feared him': fake David Cameron memoir cover spotted in bookshop

Complete with endorsements from Donald Trump and Judy Murray, the parody jacket turned up in a branch of FoylesThere are large acts of protest, such as the People’s Vote march that took place in London on Saturday. And then there are smaller ones, such as the work of the as yet unidentified... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2019-10-21 12:46:59 UTC ]
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Orr's Motherwell unpicks the complexities of familial relationships

Motherwell, the incisive memoir by Deborah Orr, unpicks the complexities of familial relationships. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-21 06:10:58 UTC ]
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The Life of Cameron Douglas, From Privilege to Prison and Back

In his memoir “Long Way Home,” Michael Douglas’s oldest son examines the “demented death wish” that drove him to drugs and crime, shining a light on his famous family along the way. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2019-10-19 09:00:12 UTC ]
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Charles Schwab takes sharper aim at Robinhood as it pursues younger clients

Chuck Schwab said his company will soon introduce fractional-stock trading and other services designed to appeal to younger clients. The founder and chairman of Charles Schwab (NYSE: SCHW) told The Wall Street Journal on Thursday that introducing the new services is the next step after dropping... Continue reading at Silicon Valley Business Journal

[ Silicon Valley Business Journal | 2019-10-18 18:05:16 UTC ]
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