Hey, Hey We're the Manqués!
People Say We Manqué Around! The Imitative Triumph Of Giddy Second-Raters Can Be Addictive and Definitive! So What If You’re Not Great—You Can Always Pretend
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The Observatory
And it means not exactly that you’re a flop, but “short of or frustrated in the fulfillment of one’s aspirations or talents.” Which means chalk up one for most of the human population. It’s particularly true, or at least self-assigned, among writers and “creative people.” So, back in the 50’s, writers became “Ernest Hemingway manqué,” method actors became “Marlon Brando manqué,” witty women became “Dorothy Parker manqué.”
After this had gone on for a while, the mandarins of culture started getting worried. How could the younger generation be churning out such a load of crap? Where were the giants? Flannery O’Connor famously responded: “So many people can now write competent stories that the short story as a medium is in danger of dying of competence.”
Today, big actors, writers, painters, baseball players, politicians are notable by their palpable absence. What remains are yearning echoes of greatness, a generation of Manqués, very good, very close … no cigar! Some have devoted their lives to getting there, beautiful and sleek engines of imitation. But the Manqués are just short of that—pardon our Franglais—“je ne sais quoi.”
For instance, when you hear Clark Gable deliver the line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” It’s so hammy! And so good. Is anyone today man enough to deliver that line? The great remake of Gone With the Wind will never happen because no actor today will deliver a line like that. And if he did, he’d be hooted out of the theater.
Yet we still need leading men, swagger and that crooked grin. George Clooney is not Clark Gable, but he’s sure listened to him.
Often the quality of the Manqué becomes its own thing. Starbucks is coffee manqué, but as bad, or good, as it can be, it has become the Thing.
Taken together, the greatest in this generation may become just like Starbucks, triumphantly successful Manqués who finally become the Thing. Check them out on page C12, and feel free to browse. You might want to try imitating one of them someday.
To see a larger version of the Observatory click on the image below. To read a text version click here.
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Marilyn Revisited
By the end of the 1970s, Andy Warhol was everywhere.He was endemic, up there with Elvis, Jesus and Coca-Cola. His silkscreen aesthetic was instantly recognisable - the Warhol look had been used on album covers, in ads and on the cover of Time magazine. Read More »
Bacon By Freud
Lucian Freud first met Francis Bacon in 1945. He had heard about this mysterious and distinctive artist from Graham Sutherland.Within a short time, Sutherland had arranged for both artists to join him for a weekend at his home in the country, and they met at the station on the way there.
Read More »Domestic Meditations
The deceptive simplicity and rigour of Giorgio Morandi’s Natura morta, painted circa 1948, was reflected in the artist’s own life. Stories of his hermit-like existence are legion and have become legendary as the artist is conjured up in our imaginations in his cell-like studio in Bologna, alone save for his ever-increasing array of vases and old bottles.
Read More »
Wow, I'm getting such a jolt of nostalgia for SPY circa 1988! Let's see, they did Coasters, Chameleons, Refuseniks... how'd they miss Manqués?
And are you seriously going to tell us Jack Nicholson couldn't get away with "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn"? In fact I have the nagging feeling he already said it...
and most certainly, The New York Observer 2.0 is The New York Observer manqué...what a crap article. And that gushing profile of the T-shirt queen, where o where have your teeth disappeared to?
For all the people in the world.
For the sound of a gentle delight describing
a candle and a loving profile, for a luminous care
that now fades away leaving a flame on a delicate
sadness, for a beautiful ground now forgetting
a tear, and then, in the sunshine, for all the people
in the world, for the song of a weeping in the
light of a sunrise….
And if I see or hear the word "manque" again, I'm going to cry. The transformation to being just another tabloid nearly complete.
In the cold.
In the cold
of a darkness
I see the profile
of a beautiful sun,
and so, when
a pleasure seems
a sorrow at the
end of the morning,
I hear the sensitive
wind recalling
my faith.
Charlie Kaufman, The Cohen Brothers, the inimitable "Dude", Michael Chabon, Arrested Development, Larry David...it's a dialectic...even clark gable is a copy of someone else...we slip, we fall, we grapple with, with tension, & rise, and triumph, and slip and fall all over again...calling this an age of manque is only appropriate if your vision is limited...the next horizon is describing the irrational in such vivid detail without a Joyce, a Freud, a Proust to rely on...none of the afformentioned are "flops"...
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