LizzieMaine
Bartender
- Messages
- 33,732
- Location
- Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
Post here those passages from Golden Era literature that just make you sit back and sigh with delight.
For starters, here is a passage from Fred Allen's introduction to "Low Man On A Totem Pole," a 1941 collection of essays by the newspaperman H. Allen Smith. Smith is forgotten today, alas, but Allen's description of the man in his foreword is truly unforgettable, and might be especially interesting to those who frequent clothing fora:
"Smith, sartorially, baffles description. He is at once the despair of the moth and the tailor. His overcoat appears to be a tight Inverness with mess-jacket sleeves. His hat is felt at a disadvantage. Even the tiny feather that juts from his hatband seems to be moulting. His suit is a rhapsody in rummage. The coat cascades from his clavicle and sort of peters out north of his sacral plexus. The horizontal wrinkles in the cloth give one the impression that Smith is standing behind a tweed venetian blind. His vest hangs down like a cloth noose. At first glance it appears to be a sarong with no sense of direction. His Elk's tooth has a cavity in it. His trousers bag from the hips on down. From the front they look like herringbone funnels. In profile you find they are butt-sprung and hang in the back like cloth jowls. Smith's haberdashery is the talk of surrealist circles. His necktie is a cross between a hawser that comes with a toy boat and three feet of twine in Technicolor. His shoes can only be described as leather figments of a demented cobbler's imagination. In general appearance, Smith can only be saluted as Saroyan's conception of a white-collar worker."
For starters, here is a passage from Fred Allen's introduction to "Low Man On A Totem Pole," a 1941 collection of essays by the newspaperman H. Allen Smith. Smith is forgotten today, alas, but Allen's description of the man in his foreword is truly unforgettable, and might be especially interesting to those who frequent clothing fora:
"Smith, sartorially, baffles description. He is at once the despair of the moth and the tailor. His overcoat appears to be a tight Inverness with mess-jacket sleeves. His hat is felt at a disadvantage. Even the tiny feather that juts from his hatband seems to be moulting. His suit is a rhapsody in rummage. The coat cascades from his clavicle and sort of peters out north of his sacral plexus. The horizontal wrinkles in the cloth give one the impression that Smith is standing behind a tweed venetian blind. His vest hangs down like a cloth noose. At first glance it appears to be a sarong with no sense of direction. His Elk's tooth has a cavity in it. His trousers bag from the hips on down. From the front they look like herringbone funnels. In profile you find they are butt-sprung and hang in the back like cloth jowls. Smith's haberdashery is the talk of surrealist circles. His necktie is a cross between a hawser that comes with a toy boat and three feet of twine in Technicolor. His shoes can only be described as leather figments of a demented cobbler's imagination. In general appearance, Smith can only be saluted as Saroyan's conception of a white-collar worker."
