So, having done a blog post about Damon Runyon and walking, I thought I
should read a biography of the man himself, and I went for Jimmy Breslin’s version,
designated Damon Runyon on the title
page, Damon Runyon A Life on the
jacket. Hey, I used to be a cataloguer –
we cared about these things. That's Breslin above.
The book was published in 1991, when the term “creative nonfiction”
wasn’t used much, if at all, and there are certainly times when I wished
Breslin’s writing was just a little less “creative.” And there is one oddity in the early pages,
Breslin describes Runyon as “a thin man who walked on tiny feet, which took a 5½B shoe.” I think Breslin is
trying to tell us something and I think we all know what it is. I’m not saying he’s wrong, and he did meet
the man, but in the photographs I’ve seen of Runyon, his feet don’t look
especially small, as here:
On a somehow related note there was a review in the Independent newspaper
by my pal and former editor Karen Wright, of an exhibition of paintings by the
late Zaha Hadid, best known of course as an architect.
Karen Wright doesn’t think much of the paintings though she’s basically
pro-Hadid. Still, she writes, “I close this review recalling my reaction after visiting
Maxxi, her sadly not fully completed building in Rome. When I visited
it pre-opening, I noticed the floors designed to let light in with an open
grid and realised that Italian women who love their stilettos would be stuck in
the holes with their high heels. When I saw her at Soho House I questioned her
on this. She drew herself up and looked at me as if I was mad. ‘I do not wear
high heels.’ At the opening many women were hopping around clutching their
escorts, their heels trapped. Since then the floors have been capped and the
idea of allowing light through, which was brilliant in some ways, is gone.”
The Maxxi (above) still looks like a fun place to go walking however, that's it above.
Zaha Hadid did design shoes
(3D printing was involved in many of them), and it’s true that they don’t have
high heels in the usual sense of the word, though it’s hard to imagine anybody actually walking very far
in them.
I have not been able to find
many pictures of Zaha Hadid walking, though there is this one – she’s
apparently on her way to the Sistine chapel:
I also managed to find a
picture of her in what, to me, look very much like heels, and I can’t imagine
her walking very far in these either.
Does she contradict herself? Sure, and why not? No doubt she contained multitudes.
