Cocaine

Cocaine is the story of a young man who runs off to Paris to seek fame, fortune, and fun. Pitigrilli's classic novel charts the comedy and pathos of a young man's tragic trajectory. Tito Arnaudi is a dandified hero with several mistresses he juggles. A failed medical student, Tito is hired as a journalist in Paris, where he investigates cocaine dens and invents lurid scandals and gruesome deaths that he sells to newspapers as his own life becomes more outrageous than his phony press reports. Telling of orgies and strawberries soaked in champagne and ether, Tito lives with intensity as he pursues his Italian girlfriend Maud (nee Maddalena) and wealthy Armenian Kalantan, who insists on making love in a black coffin. Provocatively illustrated, filled with lush, intoxicating prose, Cocaine is a wicked novel about the Lost Generation in 1920s Paris. Dizzy and decadent, Pitigrilli leaves nothing unexplored as he presents astonishing descriptions of upper class debauching -- strawberries and chloroform, naked dancing, cocaine aplenty, and guests openly injecting morphine. Despite its wit, Cocaine is a sobering account of the dangers of drugs and sexual obsession. Tito happily trades in his twilight years for moments of wicked ecstasy.

Cocaine is the story of a young man who runs off to Paris to seek fame, fortune, and fun. Pitigrilli's classic novel charts the comedy and pathos of a young man's tragic trajectory. Tito Arnaudi is a dandified hero with several mistresses he juggles. A failed medical student, Tito is hired as a journalist in Paris, where he investigates cocaine dens and invents lurid scandals and gruesome deaths that he sells to newspapers as his own life becomes more outrageous than his phony press reports. Telling of orgies and strawberries soaked in champagne and ether, Tito lives with intensity as he pursues his Italian girlfriend Maud (nee Maddalena) and wealthy Armenian Kalantan, who insists on making love in a black coffin. Provocatively illustrated, filled with lush, intoxicating prose, Cocaine is a wicked novel about the Lost Generation in 1920s Paris. Dizzy and decadent, Pitigrilli leaves nothing unexplored as he presents astonishing descriptions of upper class debauching -- strawberries and chloroform, naked dancing, cocaine aplenty, and guests openly injecting morphine. Despite its wit, Cocaine is a sobering account of the dangers of drugs and sexual obsession. Tito happily trades in his twilight years for moments of wicked ecstasy.

The contributors to Cocaine analyze the contemporary production, transit, and consumption of cocaine throughout the Americas and the illicit economy's entanglement with local communities. Based on in-depth interviews and archival research, these essays examine how government agents, acting both within and outside the law, and criminal actors seek to manage the flow of illicit drugs to both maintain order and earn profits. Whether discussing the moral economy of coca cultivation in Bolivia, criminal organizations and drug traffickers in Mexico, or the routes cocaine takes as it travels into and through Guatemala, the contributors demonstrate how entire ways of life are built around cocaine commodification. They consider how the authority of state actors is coupled with the self-regulating practices of drug producers, traffickers, and dealers, complicating notions of governance and of the relationships between economic and moral economies. The collection also outlines a more progressive drug policy that acknowledges the important role drugs play in the lives of those at the urban and rural margins. Contributors. Enrique Desmond Arias, Lilian Bobea, Philippe Bourgois, Anthony W. Fontes, Robert Gay, Paul Gootenberg, Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, Thomas Grisaffi, Laurie Kain Hart, Annette Idler, George Karandinos, Fernando Montero, Dennis Rodgers, Taniele Rui, Cyrus Veeser, Autumn Zellers-LeÓn