Ralph William Larsen would have you think of his latest effort, DOCTOR OF PIPES, as you would a cracking good piece of hard candy, a Tootsie Pop of a book, its chewy center being the dog doody dull subject of briar pipe smoking. But as he asserts in his introduction to the very same book, yes, there are pipes here, lots of pipes. But for those who could care less about the stinky old habit of briar pipe smoking, yes again, there is lots more as well. As the author himself boldly asserts, when he's "writing well" - and we all must hope he is writing well here - the discussion of pipes is for him "but a safe harbor from which to sail forth toward some greater understandings."

Within the teeming pages of DOCTOR OF PIPES you will encounter Dud, the stoner brother-in-law who good-naturedly drills holes in other peoples' pipes, Edgar Gower, the compassionate undertaker who goes the extra mile and places smoking pipes in the cold dead hands of corpses, Karl, the Buddha-like German POW who sits out WWII sporting soccer shorts and munching breakfast crumpets in four-star English hotels. For exotic flavoring there are even some up-to-no-good Russian Indian chiefs and the violent death-by-briar of the obnoxious Safari Man. And as the cherry on the sundae, you'll be treated to a whole host of worthless tidbits about how to smoke a pipe from a man who professes to know nothing about the subject.

And hold onto your hats, because as if all that were not enough, there's even a series of priceless illustrations by Mr. Lizard (Michael Jodry), who has finally consented to play Ralph Steadman to the Ironist's Hunter S. Thompson. It almost sounds too good to be true. It's another verbal pinata, a grand mishmosh of high holy Ironist mirth.

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