Signature Colors

A different color of ink identified each year: 1956 was green and 1957 a ribbon of red, replaced the following year by bright lavender, and now, in 1959, she had decided upon a dignified blue.  But as in every manifestation, she continued to tinker with her handwriting, slanting it to the right or to the left, shaping it roundly or steeply, loosely or stingily--as though she were asking, "Is this Nancy? Or that? Or that?  Which is me?"

---Truman Capote, In Cold Blood (1966)

Truman Capote's "non-fiction novel" In Cold Blood was inspired by the murder of the Herbert Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas in 1959.  In this quote, Capote recreates the character of Nancy Clutter, the family's sixteen year old daughter.   While Capote's characterizations can become tedious at times, he offers a valid interpretation of what is an almost universal teenage activity---filling notebooks with variations of one's signature.

Facing It Part II: Putting on a New Face

Today's quote comes from a New York Times article on the first U.S. face transplant that took place in December 2008 at the Cleveland Clinic. The exact date of the 23 hour surgery, the identity of the recipient and the donor, and the cause of the woman's facial injuries are not identified in this article.  However, it does offer surgeon Maria Sieminonow's matter-of-fact insight on the value of a face,  generally speaking:

"'You need a face to face the world.'"

Sieminonow's commentary seems almost too direct and too reductive when compared to the nuanced and elegant treatment of facial trauma as expressed in Lucy Grealy's account, which I wrote about in my last entry.  Nevertheless, her commentary proves interesting in that it suggests a gap between the identity of an individual and his/her face. So significant are the injuries of face transplant patients that a passable face--even one that bears little resemblance to the original face of the patient--is a prerequisite for "facing" others.    You need a face. The cadaveric face--a permanent mask of sorts-- is a prop for negotiating the world.

--Lawrence K. Altman, "First U.S. Face Transplant Described," New York Times, December 17, 2008

Facing It Part I: Mirror Image

In the first quote from this multi-part series on faces, writer Lucy Grealy describes the "habits of self-consciousness" to which she succumbs in the years following her lengthy bout with Ewing's sarcoma of the jaw.  Diagnosed at the age of nine, Grealy endures 2 1/2 years of chemotherapy, the removal of a third of her jaw,  and dozens of reconstructive surgeries--none of which prove successful.  In this scene, Grealy describes her surprise at seeing her own reflection in a mirror following one of her reconstructive surgeries--an image that immediately dismantles her false sense of confidence by confronting her with a reality that does not coincide with her own perceptions.  What is perhaps most remarkable about this quote is the way in which Grealy uses the mirror image to suggest exposure as opposed to reflection--the gap between how she imagines herself  and how she is seen.  The mirror offers only a temporary answer to the question: "What do other people see when they look at me?":

"Spending as much time as I did looking in the mirror, I thought I knew what I looked like.  So it came as a shock one afternoon toward the end of that summer when I went shopping with my mother for a new shirt and saw my face in the harsh fluorescent light of the fitting room.  Pulling the new shirt on over my head, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a mirror that was itself being reflected in a mirror opposite, reversing my face as I usually saw it.  I stood there motionless, the shirt only halfway on, my skin extra pale from the lighting, and saw how asymmetrical my face was.  How had that happened?  Walking up to the mirror, reaching up to touch the right side, where the graft had been put in only a year before, I saw clearly that nost of it had disappeared, melted away into nothing.  I felt distraught at the sight and even more distraught that it had taken so long to notice.  My eyes had been secretly working against me, making up for the asymmetry as it gradually reappeared.  This reversed image of myself was the true image, the way other people saw me...That unexpected revelation in the store's fitting room mirror marked a turning point in my life.  I began having overwhelming attacks of shame at unpredictable intervals" (185).

--Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face (1994)

Grealy granted Charlie Rose an interview in which she discusses her book.