This now forgotten job, consisting in collecting the discarded butt-ends in order to sell the remaining tobacco at a cheaper price, used to be a fairly common sight on nineteenth-century Paris streets. Yet at the time when the narrative is set, in the mid-fifties, this activity is on the brink of extinction. To this day the critical account of this short story has amounted to a few words penned by Nicholas Royle, in charge of the edition of the Time Out volume.
However, this initial storyline undergoes a profound change as the protagonist is not initiated into the dissolute life of pleasure, as one might expect, but in an enjoyable, yet frustrating missed encounter with the past.
The very title of the short story, while stressing the enjoyment derived from such a peculiar object and encounter, also encapsulates the unsurpassable tension at work in the relationship to the object of desire. What is understood by objects of desire heavily depends on how desire is conceived of as regards the subject-object relationship.
The belief in mediation is materialised by the fetish to which is ascribed the dialectical function of bringing together the past with the present with a view to achieving unity. Yet, this mediation fails to reach unity, as it is hampered by temporal gap. The nostalgic desire to compensate for this lack is what drives the protagonist to reconnect to the past through the fetish, even if its use does not end in epiphanic reunion.
His smothering education in Ivy League values contrasts with his desire for existential change and pleasure seeking in the consecrated capital of love, Paris. This subtle piece of self-mockery deconstructs the myth of youthful burning desire and the victorious emancipation that it generally entails in stressing by contrast the inhibition of this anti-hero. Inhibition, far from restraining desire, fosters it, so that the character seems overtaken with desire, as he is on the lookout for signs and symbols of corruption.
