woobiquity

clix. The impossibility of knowing Truman

I saw Infamous this weekend. The Variety review was right. It’s lighter and funnier than Capote, less perfect, with a much more homoerotic take on the Truman-Perry relationship.

Infamous didn’t grab me viscerally and throw me from the train like Capote did. One reason for that, I think, is that Douglas McGrath (screenwriter, director) didn’t show rather than merely have his characters talk about the long, pathetic deflation Capote suffered after In Cold Blood came out.

The stage is set. We’ve met all the ‘interesting’ socialites who lapped up the author’s buoyant dog and pony show. Until finally they realized that they were the dogs and the ponies in the long-awaited follow-up, and that the unfinished book about them wasn’t even any good. Which is worse? Death by hanging or death by despair?

I wonder whether both directors shied away from such a coda — Fat Truman — because it would have meant not only turning the knife in their subject’s back but also splattering his blood all over the socialites, some of whom must, presumably, still be with us?

Or maybe they just had the same idea: that what really mattered in Capote’s life is contained within the making of his seminal book, because the book told us so much about ourselves. About the voyeuristic sadism at our core, about our complicated relationship with the truth. How we gasp when the words ‘based on a true story’ appear at the end of a gripping film! How we sniff when the truth isn’t entertaining enough!

If you can stand to watch this entertaining but (in light of its predecessor) not terribly gripping film, you’ll be rewarded with a game of spot-the-difference. Here are two movies based on a true story (about the making of a true story), and yet their versions of the same story hold hundreds of devilishly different details. The fabulist is not more real to us at the end but more fabulous. Just as he would have wanted it.

Besides, if you’re going to have breakfast at Tiffany’s, the truth isn’t the necklaces or even the diamonds set within them. The truth is the way the light plays off the gems’ facets.

Image: Truman behind glass (on the wall near my desk).

clviii. Of un-publishable poems about cats

The stages of being Guru:

Make funny face.

Yawn.

Sleep.

Repeat.

The stages of being Sissie (seen here motionless in an uncomfortable looking pose) are imperceptible to the naked eye and all the more complicated for that. Impenetrable. Maddeningly poetic. Endless.

Maybe that’s why at least one magazine has singled out poems about cats on a very short list of things it simply won’t publish. Shame. Just when I was getting geared up to write a few.

I went downstairs to get a snack just now, and Sissie took the opportunity to hop on the laptop and knock out a poetic offering of her own:

Lllloomkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.

Point taken, Sissie. It’s poems BY cats that should be banned.

clvii. Of missed photo opportunities

Just spent the weekend in Cologne, Germany, where the cousin and his family have relocated. For Carnival, the city throws off its staid composure and goes a little wild, German-style. It's all fancy-dress costumes all the time, even during the running of mundane errands.

Even the old ladies and old men join in, the women taking evident delight in the chance to don plastic tiaras and feather boas, the men, many of them, deadpan expressionless in their yarn clown wigs. Dozens of missed photo opportunities. Pictures that you would have found hilarious I tell you.

But since most people in costumes don't photograph well, especially when they're drunk, here's a selection of pictures showing the scene from a slightly off-center perspective.

clvi. Of artists connecting the dots

Here's Atsuko Yasuda making art in a street-level window on Charing Cross Road.

It's an obscure project that involves variously-colored dots punched from recent magazines, a pair of tweezers, a lab coat and some mathematical formulae. But it's still art, in public, and it had drawn a crowd of puzzled onlookers (mainly tourists it seemed) on Wednesday. I'm glad.

clv. Of unpublished books in the works

I’ve been working on another exciting project with 26. Forty or so writers paired with designer-illustrators from the London College of Communication to create a range of children’s books. Faber is overseeing the proceedings, and may even publish some of the books.

What fun it’s been. I’m working with Mihoko, a brilliant designer from Japan. That’s her work above. The book is called Tomo’s Flight, and the words on this spread go:

A long time later, Tomo is about to go flop in front of the television when one of the cows nearly chokes on a mouthful of turf… giving Tomo a fantastic idea.

There’s an ‘F’ theme throughout the story. Fffailed. Ffflight. It’s all rather heavy on the alliteration, actually. Though I prefer to think of it as affliteration. There may be an exhibition later in the year. I'll keep you posted.

cliv. Of childhood Crayola and crapola

So the UK is the worst place in the Western world for children to grow up. I blame the weather. Mind you the USA is the list’s second worst. But the theory holds if Detroit and Boston are bringing the average down (brrr).

All day today, Valentine’s Day, I kept thinking about something from my own (American) childhood. The little Valentine’s cards we used to exchange with the whole elementary school class, when love was purely a cutesie concept and even little boys had no worry about exchanging signed notes emblazoned with hearts. Thinking of those cards now I’m washed over with an emotion that isn't easy to describe. I get something similar when I look at these (although if you’re seriously thinking of paying money for one, please let me know – I can throw some old buttons and other old goodies in a real nice glass jar for you for half the price).

The kiddie Valentine’s cards looked a bit like these, and came in boxes of 15 or 20. They were generally quite small, printed on satisfyingly cheap matte paper and often involved commercially successful cartoon characters (as ever, there’s a profit involved). The night before Valentine’s Day you’d spread out your cards and choose a different one for everyone in the class, including the teacher. By the next afternoon you’d have 30 or so different cards of your own to take home. Love was cutesie.

I’m sure young kids in the States still do this. But I realized today that I have no idea whether British kids do anything similar, since I have never been and never will be a child in my adopted country. Looking back at the child welfare list, I’m inclined to think they probably don’t, although many may already be having sex, which would make the whole card thing seem a bit twee.

cliii. Of subversive album art

Sometimes it's dangling in your back garden (or anyway, the neighbor's) on a yawny Saturday morning.

Note that I said the neighbor's garden. Those are not my magnolia tracksuit bottoms. (You can't have everything.)

clii. Of kool, kool kittens

Everybody should have a pair, especially if they're brown-spotted Bengals. Meet Guru and Sissie.