Can't you see the resemblance?

Went tonight to see Clara Bow in It (1927)¹ at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, with a live score written and performed by students from the Berklee College of Music. It was delightful. It's very much a silent screwball comedy, but pre-Code, so you have unwed mothers whom the film does not condemn and frank talk of kept women and Clara Bow so clingingly wet from going over the side of a yacht, she's less decent than naked by the time she climbs up onto the anchor and grins fondly down at the man she loves, splashing back and forth without seeing her until she drops a high-heeled shoe on him. I had never seen her before, the famous "It girl." I was reminded of Louise Brooks, although I think the combination of Pandora's Box (1929) and Lulu in Hollywood (1982) has imprinted me on Brooks in ways that haven't happened so far with Clara Bow. But there is something of the same quality of not caring, whether you look at her, whether you like her, what you think of her life. I hope they liked one another's work anyway.

Earlier in the afternoon, I met nineweaving for BerryLine and the purchase of more used books than either of us had planned. The clerk at the Harvard Book Store looked at the name on my debit card and asked if I'd ever had work published in Goblin Fruit, which she had been reading for a project I wish I'd had more time to ask her about. She was enthusiastic. I can't remember that ever happening to me before. (Being recognized by your con badge does not count.) More, please.

I do not know what I have to say about the news of Bin Laden, except that it was strange when I heard it from fleurdelis28 last night and the celebrations trouble me; I have heard the argument that a lot of the feverish dancing in the streets was college-age kids celebrating what feels to them like the end of a war that has defined all their adult lives, but I very much doubt that it is. And ten years does not make a Troy.

I like knowing, though, that they still stop the presses these days.

1. Not to be confused, apparently, with It! (1966), starring Roddy McDowall, Jill Haworth, and a golem. It looks terrible. I'm probably going to have to see it.