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Fast-Talking Dames →
I started a new Tumblr.
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I had no idea who they were, but I knew I had stumbled onto a unique company of women. Because of them I came to experience the pleasure to be had in words—in the mere saying of them—and the gratification in giving a good as well as fair account of yourself. If I had not had their example, I might have passed my adolescence muttering that there was little for me to hope for in a world that paid so much attention to the likes of Marilyn Monroe. Surely I wasn’t the only girl, then or now, puzzled and somewhat depressed to learn that Monroe epitomized for so many what was most desirable in my sex. It wasn’t that her physical features, breathy voice, and languid movements were inimitable, although I remember several of my friends trying to mimic her speech and walk anyway. It was that she lacked any semblance of ready wit. Even when she said funny lines, which she often did, she never said them as if she knew that a joke was on the way. Even as a teenager I knew that I never wanted to appear that bereft of words and self-confidence, even if it meant that I could never hope to attract, much less entrance, some man….
The fast-talking dames were as much the daughters in revolt against genteel tradition as were the writers who fled to Paris. Many simply could not afford expatriation, so they stayed home, earning a living. Yet they were equally dismissive of the domestic and sexual pieties of the genteel tradition, especially the doctrine that a woman should marry only for love. They entered the working world rather than the marriage market, fortified by a healthy and sometimes acerbic skepticism that left them determined not to repeat the patterns of their mothers’ lives, particularly in the matter of marriage. They believed that love and romance were short-lived, money and security enduring, a conviction nurtured by hard times rather than hard hearts. Since they lived in a comic universe they would come to reconsider their principles, but not without an often tense struggle in which love only barely managed to conquer all. Still, they fell in love with men who seemed quite capable of giving them what they could love and what they could respect. What they gave these men in return was a blithe mastery of words. This was their dowry.
- Fast-Talking Dames, by Maria DiBattista -
Franklin Gothic.
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Dorothy Parker, Collected Works Poster by Michael Farrell at Art.com
Once I get settled in a new place, this has to go above my desk.
Spooky … I was just recently looking at getting this for my desk!
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- It doesn’t matter, right, if you are in San Francisco or Birmingham or the Congo, all human beings are dreamers. Those dreams are bigger when we are kids. You ask a classroom of five-year-olds: ‘Who can dance and who can sing?’ and everyone will put their hand up; ask a group of 21-year-olds the same question and maybe two people will put up their hand. Acting on a dream by going on an adventure is keeping that childhood faith in possibility alive, and the only real product of any adventure is story- telling. When those stories are told well they will inspire more dreams. Which closes the equation and starts the cycle again.
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If I look at the film and it’s no good, I don’t like to give it an aggressive title, I give it … the kind of title that is low-key and promises nothing, so people are less disappointed by it …. [You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger] was a very aggressive title, so you can hope that it’s a good movie … If I didn’t think it was a good film, I would give it a quiet one-word title to deflect attention from it — so now you know the secret.
- Woody Allen.
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Ferret dance.
- She [Jackie O’Nassis Kennedy] had a kind of grace and inner strength that few people have. More than anything, it was her sense of grace, which I didn’t think I would have as I was coming nearer to my wedding day. A part of me really wanted to do it; another part of me could see myself in flashback to my whole life having said I would never do it, because I would never go in front of church and state and do such a thing. In the end, it didn’t become about that; it became about, ‘this is somebody that I love’ … A part of me could see myself in this wedding dress sitting at 7-Eleven on the curb, having a Slurpee and missing the whole thing. Not because I wanted to, but just because I’m still frozen in a piece of film somewhere when I was 18 and that was my outlook on life. So ‘Jackie’s Strength’ was written about the girl that went to the 7-Eleven; I went and got married…
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Speaking of that Mad Men episode … how appropriate is this song in that context? Might as well rename it the Ballad of Betty Draper. Always been one of my favorite songs.
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The latest Mad Men episode, “The Grown Ups,” particularly struck me. Whether because of the subject matter or the fact that it’s the penultimate episode of season three and serious things are starting to happen - or both - I don’t know. But it did. I think the entire series had been leading up to it, and it’s hard to imagine how the characters will continue beyond it.
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Lil Cthulhu.
A thrilling publication.
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