Triangle Week: The Tailor's Face and Hands

Welcome to a week-long appreciation of Triangle by Katharine Weber, a LitBlog Coop Summer 2007 Read This! Nominee.  We'll have interviews, podcasts, quizzes, mash books and a guest appearance by Katharine Weber herself.  I'm not sure what she'll have to say, but I do believe she'll be happy to answer questions when she shows up later this week.

One popular misconception of Triangle is that it is a straightforward chronicle of a famous American disaster, whereas actually the Triangle fire which killed over a hundred working women in 1911 is only the springboard here for a highly unpredictable journey of the imagination courtesy of a sly and skilled novelist.  With that in mind, though, I'd like to begin this week with a look at a very well-designed and informative website about the Triangle fire maintained at Cornell University.

As I wrote earlier on this blog, I share with Katharine Weber a Queens, New York (Forest Hills, even) heritage, and my ancestors, like Katharine's, worked in the garment industry in exactly the capacity described by the fictional Esther Gottesfeld in Triangle. 

I don't know if poet Robert Pinsky's ancestors also worked in the old garment industry in New York City, but it's worth mentioning that his moving poem Shirt appears as the overture to the novel Triangle. If Pinsky's poem hadn't been available, Katharine Weber might also have chosen a song lyric by yet another Forest Hills native, Paul Simon's Fakin' It.  "I am the tailor's face and hands ..." This song wasn't about the Triangle fire, but it might have been about Katharine Weber's book, and the song's other lyrics echo some of the other book's themes as well.  So, let's begin LBC Triangle week with a singalong of this Simon and Garfunkel tune.

Fakin' It

by Paul Simon

If she stays, she stays here.
The girl does what she wants to do.
She knows what she wants to do.
And I know I'm fakin' it,
I'm not really makin' it.

I'm such a dubious soul,
And a walk in the garden
Wears me down.
Tangled in the fallen vines,
Pickin' up the punch lines,
I've just been fakin' it,
Not really makin' it.

Is there any danger?
No, no, not really, just lean on me.
Take the time to treat your friendly neighbors honestly.
I've just been fakin' it,
I'm not really makin' it.
This feeling of fakin' it
I still haven't shaken it.

Prior to this lifetime
I surely was a tailor.
("Good morning, Mr. Leitch.
Have you had a busy day?")
I own the tailor's face and hands
I am the tailor's face and hands
and I know I'm fakin' it
I'm not really makin' it.
This feeling of fakin' it
I still haven't shaken it

Triangle also reminds me of a famous statue of a tailor working a sewing machine which you can find on 7th Avenue in Manhattan's fashion district.  The expression on this man's face says a lot.  There is no statue of a young female factory worker on the spot in Greenwich Village right near Washington Square Park where the Triangle fire took place, though, and I think there should be one.

Please check back later today for an interview with Katharine Weber, and later this week for more activity from other LBC members.

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