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BOOKS — Make Windsor knots, not war! |
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Written by asap
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Friday, 18 August 2006 |
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On a blazing hot day, somewhere in one of New Jersey’s most bucolic corners, a man who calls himself Lord Whimsy is watering his carnivorous plants. He cuts a striking figure as he dabs the dew on his brow with a monogrammed handkerchief: a thirtysomething gent with a handlebar mustache so spectacular it belongs in a museum of Victorian-era grooming.
This sucker is no sandpapery hipster scruff; it curls to pin-sharp, waxed points. It makes Whimsy look like a young version of Dr. Watson as played by Nigel Bruce in those old Sherlock Holmes movies.
His Lordship’s physical surroundings are as distinctive as his sub-nasal plumage. The small house he shares with his wife, Lady Pinkwater, is piled with books -- many of which double as cocktail coasters -- and photographs of rare orchids. An old-fashioned high-wheel bicycle, the kind they used to call a “bone-rattler,” leans against a wall, ready for a ride into the village should Whimsy desire any locally produced berry wine.
Who is this unusual fellow? Ask Whimsy, and he may call himself a “crack-pot” or a “shut-in.” But if you want the full answer, hightail it to a bookstore and secure a copy of one of the most entertaining -- and certainly weirdest -- non-fiction titles of the summer: Lord Whimsy’s authorial debut, The Affected Provincial’s Companion, Volume One, just released by Bloomsbury.
The book shouldn’t be hard to spot. Its cover is a refreshing herbal green, embossed with gold foil, the endpapers a sexy hot pink. Its dozens of short, essay-ish chapters -- on subjects ranging from men’s clothing to butterfly collecting to the glories of swamp biology -- come illustrated with crisp retro diagrams and charts.
Whimsy designed every bit of it himself.
“I wanted this book to be something that when you pick it up, you know it mattered to someone,” says Whimsy, who’s worked as a graphic designer and freelance writer. “It’s not just a product. I wanted the colors to suggest a Venus fly-trap. A lot of the native plants in my part of New Jersey sort of have that color scheme, too. I wanted the book to be an artifact of the life I live.”
That life -- which “Lord Whimsy” began under the equally awesome real name Victor Allen Crawford III -- is, essentially, one big art project. Whimsy proclaimed his views on style, civilization and everything in columns published in a now-defunct Philadelphia alternative newspaper. On a well-trafficked LiveJournal blog, Whimsy muses at length about music, science and art -- plus hatches wild schemes like, say, starting his own country.
(The United Shires of America, Whimsy says, would be a sort of “metaphysical state.” Whatever that means, he’s designed a truly lovely flag.)
Companion evolved from a self-published collection of his columns. After reworking every word and image for the big-time publishing version, Whimsy hopes he’s launched a series.
The point being? The Companion is a lifestyle battlecry, both quaint and radical, lighthearted and dead serious. Whimsy believes we’ve gone astray -- and who can doubt that he’s right? His unique salvation plan calls for reviving the style of Oscar Wilde and the Renaissance-man intellect of Thomas Jefferson.
Abandon both downtown hipsterdom and sprawl-burbia, Whimsy urges, in favor of the country-gentleman (or woman) life. Make Windsor knots, not war! Trade your Scion for a bone-rattler! And for God’s sake, men -- grow a ’stache!
It may all be, yes, whimsical. But meaty concerns lie behind the book’s calculated fruitiness.
“A lot of what’s in the book comes from my sense that the world today is made to be worked in, but not lived in,” Whimsy says. “We need to learn how to be civilized again. The 20th Century made us all barbarians with car keys. The values of ’affected provincialism’ -- they’re humane, not mechanistic or bureaucratic.
Everyone wants to be an expert these days, but the affected provincial is a serious dilettante. You mess around and you stumble over things.”
Given all that, it may come as no surprise that Whimsy delivers his message in scrumptiously florid prose: “Those who take up the solemn duty to become an agent of beauty and joy have committed themselves to live, as an example and inspiration to others, a deliberately beautiful life.”
Testify, Whimsy! The Affected Provincial’s Companion may never dislodge The South Beach Diet as a guide to post-modern American living, but it is a lot more fun than any rivals in the field. After reading this eccentric’s creed, it feels good to know that a book this quirky can still get published. And good, too, to know that Whimsy is out there, tending his bug-eating plants and dreaming up his next shot at boring mainstream life.
“I’ve never lived in a city, and in a way it’s been a blessing,” the Affected Provincial himself says. “I can be off in my own little corner coming up with all sorts of ideas, and when I fail miserably, no one needs to know. When I come up with something good, I can take it to town like a prize pig.”
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asap contributor Zach Dundas is a writer in Portland, Ore.
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