June 24, 2007

Although the jpeg format is terrible for type, I'm saving my digital scrapbook as jpegs and storing the spreads here just in case something happens to my computer or, more likely, just in case I spill something all over the physical book.

From the journals of Kenneth Tynan

Entries from unpublished journals of Kenneth Tynan, published in the August 7, 2000 issue of The New Yorker:

Oct 1
. . . C. S. Lewis . . . reminiscences of this great man, whose mind was Johnsonian without the bullying and Chestertonian without the facetiousness. If I were every to stray into the Christina camp, it would be because Lewis's arguments as expressed in books like "Miracles." . . . He was a deeply kind and charitable man, too. Once in the summer of 1948, I came to him in despair . . . I had spent most of the term in and out of bed with bronchial diseases that I was sure would soon culminate in TB. I brought my troubles to Lewis, asking him whether I could postpone my final examinations until Christmas. To this he at once agreed: after which he got on with the Christian business of consolation. He reminded me how I had once told him about the parachuted landmine which, dropping from a German bomber during an air-raid in 1040, so narrowly missed our house in Birmingham that next morning we recovered some of the parachute silk from our chimney. (The mind destroyed six house across the road and blew out all our windows). But for that hairsbreadth—a matter of inches only—I would already (Lewis gently pointed out) have been dead for eight years. Every moment of life since then had been a bonis, a tremendous free gift, a presnt that only the blackest ingratitude could refuse. As I listned to him, my problems began to dwindle to their proper proportions; I had entered his room suicidal, and I left it exhilarated.

Book to read

Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life.

Designer Trash Bag

Makes me smile, as ridiculous as it is. It may have been part of a display on Greene Street, I was harriedly in a hurry and didn't spot—I mean stop—to check it out.

Sad couture tales from artice by Francine Du Plessix Gray

From my catching up with old copies of The New Yorker, here are portions of an article by Francine Du Plessix Gray about Christian Dior and Yves St Laurent (November 4, 1996). It's sad about both gents, but particularly sad about Dior. I certainly didn't know . . . .

. . . Outsiders, though, noticed little change in Dior beyond his expanding waistline. Only Perrotino [Dior's chauffeur who was a long-discarded lover of Dior's youth]knew Dior's darkest secreat: Diro had had two mild heart attacks since 1946. ANd there was another secret: over the previous decade Dior's love life had been disastrous. Numerous desireable young men had refused to offer him anything more than devoted friendship. Finally, in 1956, a handsome youth of North African descent, Jacques Benita, returned Dior's affection. The consummately formal Dior became so besottedly enamored that he was seen holding his lover's hand in public. It was in order to be more desireable to his sweetheart that in the late summer of 1957 Dior planned a trip to Montecatini, Italy, to take a thinning cure.

In mid-September, Mme Delahaye [Dior's clairvoyant]saw bad auguries in his cards and was vehement that he cancel his travel plans. Dior was equally resolute about taking his thinning cure, and, for perhaps the first time in his life, he acted against his clairvoyant's advice. He was accompanied to the spa at Montecatini by his chauffeur, Mme. Raymonde [his directrice], and a young goddaughter. On the tenth day of his stay, in the after-dinner hous of October 23, 1957, Dior collapsed and died, shortly after a canasta game. This genial, prolific, much-revered man was fifty-two years old. His career had lasted barely a decade.

Buck up

A bit of brightness before a bit of not-totally-surprising bad news.

Not good enough for a major segment of the approval process = non-reappointment=failure = essentially being fired for, literally, not making the grade.

Loss

Arch was unfairly beaten by cancer, too soon.