"I don't like your fashion business mister
And I don't like these drugs that keep you thin
I don't like what happened to my sister
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For trying to change the system from within
I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin"
--Leonard Cohen
My old friend Cary Loren has written to me from Detroit sagely counselling against the tyranny of beauty and class. So, I have spent the money I was going to use to buy a new bottle of perfume on the book "Dreamworlds: Mass Consumption In Late Nineteenth Century France."
This book outlines how hopes and desires came to be invested in goods, and describes the contemporary wonder and bewilderment of the new nineteenth century consumer class when faced with the palatial new "magasins," the jewel-like corridors of glass arcades, and the luxurious wares for sale therein. I know, all that shopping sounds really good to me too--but this is a serious work of social science, mind you.
"Remembrance of Things Past" is one of my favorite novels. Throughout this novel there runs a preoccupation with objects and a growing fetish over taste and fashion. I have illustrated today's entry with Proust's portrait.
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