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A review by brittkieff
Deep Sniff: A History of Poppers and Queer Futures by Adam Zmith
4.0
I like what this book was trying to do, and I really appreciate the history it explores and Zmith’s ruminations on identity and pleasure. And I appreciate how accessible Zmith makes all of this information. But there are a few moments scattered throughout where his phrasing of certain sentences makes his writing needlessly difficult to parse. Not that his writing is overly erudite or anything. Like this passage for example: “The [British] government had printed twenty-three million copies of a leaflet, one for every household in the country, ready for mailing. The leaflet would explain candidly how HIV was transmitted, how condoms would protect sex partners from it, and where people could find more information.” The tense he uses here is so fucking confusing. Like he says that the leaflets were “ready for mailing” and “would explain” how HIV is spread, but does this mean that they were actually mailed? Did they explain how HIV is spread? Was there something that prevented these leaflets from being mailed, explaining why he says they were “ready for mailing” and why he doesn’t say that they “were mailed”? Why the fuck is he using future tense here? This seems nit picky, but there are little moments like this at least once in every chapter that made me question what the hell he was saying. Four pages after this passage, he does elucidate that these pamphlets were indeed mailed by writing that “the phone lines at the Switchboard were overloading due to the surge in calls from people who had seen the number on the government HIV/AIDS leaflet.” But why couldn’t he have just used a different tense when he first brought up the leaflets?
3.5 stars because (despite these aforementioned moments) this book was really insightful and made me think critically about pleasure and identity all while also giving fun facts about poppers I’ll likely endlessly bring up anytime anyone says the word “poppers”. Like did you know that the name “poppers” refers to the original device used to inhale it because users had to pop a ball of glass and quickly inhale the amyl nitrite within? Or that Jane Fonda’s distant cousin patented a poppers device that prevented that shattered glass from hurting the user? OR that JFK (during his presidency!) made his mistress Mimi Alford sniff poppers at a party hosted by Bing Crosby? +0.5 stars because like ten pages of the final chapter are dedicated to talking about the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine shapeshifter character Odo and using his plot arc to explain queer future theory.
3.5 stars because (despite these aforementioned moments) this book was really insightful and made me think critically about pleasure and identity all while also giving fun facts about poppers I’ll likely endlessly bring up anytime anyone says the word “poppers”. Like did you know that the name “poppers” refers to the original device used to inhale it because users had to pop a ball of glass and quickly inhale the amyl nitrite within? Or that Jane Fonda’s distant cousin patented a poppers device that prevented that shattered glass from hurting the user? OR that JFK (during his presidency!) made his mistress Mimi Alford sniff poppers at a party hosted by Bing Crosby? +0.5 stars because like ten pages of the final chapter are dedicated to talking about the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine shapeshifter character Odo and using his plot arc to explain queer future theory.