Of Joan Rivers's Hair, Billy's Face, and Crane's Stationery

My friend R. once held forth to me about "the semiotics of Joan Rivers's hair." (My response at the time: "Um, remind me what semiotics means?") This conversation took place a year or two after the suicide of Joan's husband back in the late '80s. When Joan's mourning period was apparently over, her hair erupted in Shirley Temple curls. (Don't get me started on the semiotics of Joan Rivers's face these days.)

If you were to contemplate the semiotics of my facial hair, you'd probably find yourself using words like confusion, indecision, identity crisis. Yes, once again, I shaved, despite my prediction a mere two months ago that I would stick with the bearish look this time.

I do think that my changing facial hair over the last year or so indicates more than a frequent desire have a new look. Another clue to my state of mind is my current reading: What Should I Do With My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question by Po Bronson. I haven't finished it but am finding it inspiring.

I sometimes wonder if people who interact with me from day to day have any idea how at sea I am about the shape I want my life to take in the coming years, and about how equipped I am to make some leaps of creativity and confidence, and to fit them in with the other components of my life. "Midlife crisis" would be the operable cliche, I suppose. But I so hate cliches. As I tell my students, you can always do better than a cliche.

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On a not-unrelated note, yesterday I finally started my Library of Congress research on my biography project. I spent a couple of hours poring over old newspaper clippings from the mid-'60s about my subject. The best were a number of Hedda Hopper columns touting her, at the dawn of her career, as the next big star -- which didn't happen. (As a spooky side note, I just now discovered in linking to Hopper that the legendary Hollywood gossip columnist died on February 1, 1966. The last column I printed out yesterday was dated January 13, 1966. So the very period I'm currently researching about my subject -- in which Hopper's articles are proving so invaluable -- is turning out to be the last days of Hopper's life.)

I had only a couple of hours at the library, so I can't wait to go back next weekend and continue. Now that I'm into it, it's very exciting to find these real-time accounts of my subject's splash onto the scene, so different from the path her life would ultimately take.

A couple of weeks ago, I drafted a letter to her surviving sister and brother-in-law, telling them about my project and asking to meet them. I ran the letter by two dogged reporters I know and respect, and they said it hit the right notes, which I was happy to hear. But upon reflection I don't think I will send the letter for a while. I'm glad I got the words down, but now I realize how important it is for me to do a good bit more research before I approach the family. I want to come to them bolstered by as much knowledge as possible.

In the meantime, I've ordered some personalized stationery from Crane's for when I finally send the letter. When I told a friend I'd done that, she said, "That's so gay . . ." But it wasn't in a belittling way. The rest of the sentence was " . . . so civilized." I told her I, er, hadn't really thought of it that way, but yeah, I suppose it is (gay, I mean; I'll leave the "civilized" part for my own biographers to decide, heh heh). She said in her next e-mail, "Honestly, can you imagine a straight guy ordering Crane's?" I said, "I can imagine a straight guy doing it 40 years ago, but you're right, probably not today."