rm | valentino

Lovely piece in the NYTimes on a new book about Valentino -- http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/books/review/11GEWENT.html who of course interests me as anyone who can be said to have been self-invented tends to, although it occurs that perhaps that is what we say about anyone who succeeds in a way that forces others to bend their expectations -- whether that was the intent or not.

Valentino was someone my parents told me about as a child, in response to my fascination with the song Puttin' on the Ritz (I took tap when I was little, okay? And then there was that hideous 80s hit by Taco). I remember they told me that women loved him, that he was Italian, that his eyes were dangerous and that he had those strange dogs.