Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy

I interacted with Whimsy a little bit on the singer Momus's old livejournal, and he was always a delight--courtly, clever, posting pictures of himself in Edwardian drag canoeing through the Everglades in search of the rare Ourobouros moth. actively working to defuse trolls in a way that put him up for occasional abuse of a sort that must have been kind of puncturing for someone of his (exquisite) temperament (and I note that the overlap between the Dandy and the Fool is under-remarked-upon in this volume). There are flashes of that light wit here, but this remain that most quixotic endeavour a manifesto for genteelness, also a fashion manual from a champion of individual style, and it's hard to hold down the contradictions for book-length, even a short book. Cracks emerge: windbaggery, pedanticism, occasional class-shaming. While I'm sure Whimsy's spontaneous bon mots would fill many afternoons with joy, had he only found his Boswell to record them, in this book he evidently feels the pressure to submit a cogent justification of his chosen existence and gabs fruitlessly in places as a result. (Also, as with butterfiles and boutonnieres and all things that shimmer in time and then die, this book came out ten years ago and time makes monkeys of us all--what I'm saying is Whimsy is a bit too concerned to engage with Mark Simpson's distressing old figure the "metrosexual" for my tastes).

But where it snaps into focus he's often very clever, and when he doesn't come across too programmatic his taxonomy of dandies and fops and bohemians and drag queens and so on is insightful and useful (I guess I've got a funny concept of "useful"--you take the toolbox, and I'll take the taxonomy of dandies). And I learned about a lot of new cool eccentrics and precious human flowers from this book (e.g.! Stilyagi, Les Apaches; Quentin Crisp, Pierre Louÿs, Kiki of Montparnasse). And wearing a seashell in your lapel is an idea that pleases me to no end. And utimately I think this fellow is about green days and inndolence--it is the Affected Provincial's Companion, after all, not the Dandy's Dandbook--and that is something I will support with my strange soft heart till Doomsday.… (más)