Thursday, July 3

The woman who was me

I'm reading Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, which is a change of pace from all the novels I've been knocking back lately. Except, isn't it really, in a sense, a form of fiction? I find myself scoffing at some of the author's conclusions from minimal data. Of course, it's still early in the book, and I'm going to give it time.

What I do like is all that I'm learning about Hepburn that I didn't know. It's funny how much we think we "know" about celebrities because they're famous -- which thinking, of course, led me to thinking about the nature of the internet and blogs and Facebook and Twitter and everything else that gives us windows into other people's lives. I mean, how hard would it be to write a biography of me right now? (Not that anyone would want to.) Of course (and now I've said "of course" 3,700 times), all of that is just a window -- much like all of Mann's sources are -- just windows that let you think you're seeing something, but so much is still a mystery and perhaps always will be, and should be.

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