On Jan. 1, 1968, I made a New Year’s resolution to quit cigarettes. I lasted barely a month, during which I often awoke in the middle of the night, heart racing, following a nightmare in which Marianne would break up with me after catching me smoking. I repeated the resolution in 1969 and then each January for the next seven years. It wasn’t until 1975 that I snuffed out my last Marlboro in the ashtray. Even so, I was not completely faithful to the promise I made because I substituted cigars for cigarettes, which are just as bad and in some ways worse — throat, mouth and esophageal cancer — th…
