Monday
11Jan2010
Dragons We Slay
"Faulker said, 'The past isn't dead, it isn't even the past,' and nowhere is this more true than for the self-made. In our modern collective hysteria over celebrity - and the superpower we believe it confers - we completely forget that every single day every one of us still has to get up in the morning, get dressed, brush our teeth, and slay our particular dragons." - Karen Karbo, The Gospel According to Coco Chanel
Today, I've kept my nose in this book. Surfacing only for mate chai and podcasting duties.
The full review comes tomorrow. For tonight, a quote from the book to think on (above), and if you haven't already done so, a suggestion to read this post. And if you have a few hours free, you could watch Coco Before Chanel by tomorrow night. But no pressure. (You can still read tomorrow's post even if you haven't done your homework.)
Do you have a burning question about Coco Chanel I can answer for you? Throw it in the comments and I'll do my best to answer you in tomorrow's post.
Hasta mañana.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Reader Comments (6)
I love your "assignments". Even if i don't always do them.
thank you, and now i will have to watch coco before chanel.
1. What makes Coco Chanel an enduring icon? Is it happenstance--that you could substitute any individual for Coco and see the story unfold the way it did... or is it something more inherent in her? Certain qualities that she brought to her business and clothing and perfume and story, that make her and her product lineage both iconic and timeless?
2. If Coco Chanel was being interviewed today, but was not the icon she is, what is it that she would say or advise that would make a present-day entrepreneur stop and realize, "Whoa, this woman is onto something"?
3. Is Coco a relic of a lost time? That is, in a world where the Game Changers keep appearing and disappearing every few years and our collective memories and attention spans seem to be ever shortening, are there now or will there be Coco Chanels of the digital entrepreneurial age--timeless, fascinating beyond the years, long-remembered legacies?
Loved your prior post about the movie--looking forward to your post about the book!
Marissa Your questions are excellent. Thank you for asking them - I'd given thought to a few, but not all, of them. Will ponder further while walking around the monkey forest today.
I love that Faulkner quote.... as much as the past totally does NOT exist (because all we have is the present)... the past fully and totally exists, but only to us in the present... so it is not truly the past at all. The past is always now. A story we tell ourselves.
Can't wait for the Coco post, but I truly don't have any questions at the moment.
Did you know Chanel was a Nazi collaborator? She was able to keep her apartment in Paris by sleeping with a member of the Gestapo. I was wondering why they left this fact out of the movie...
Lauren I did know that. And yes, agreed, they conveniently left that huge detail out of the film. That was later in her life than they covered - honestly they skipped over a massive chunk. My assumption is it doesn't fit neatly into any Chanel biopic. How could it?