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Show Lorraine Nelson: A Biography in Post-It® Notes Conceive a man by nature and misfortune prone to a pallid hopelessness, can any business seem more fitted to heighten it than that of continually handling these dead letters, and assorting them for the flames? Herman Melville, < Bartleby the Scrivener One of the very first questions the biographer must answer for himself concerns where to begin his subject's story. Some biographies begin at the end with a funereal nod; some start in the familiar birth-bed; while still others attempt to establish a footing in the higher branches of the family tree, beginning, for example, with the life of a famous matriarch. Of course, there is no formula, and some apostate biographers even choose somewhere in between, medias res, with the hero's life in full flower beneath the light of some significant sun. But a truly difficult subject (like this one) may require a more radical approach. Perhaps I should begin by confessing there is something in me that yearns for Lorraine Nelson-some rare and impermanent quality that makes her indescribably attractive. This is true even though my infatuation is clearly a peculiar brand (i.e., uninterested in sex or even companionship). In fact, I've never so much as seen Lorraine Nelson. It's true, I could imagine for her a pigtailed girlhood, picture her crook-toothed and skinny in family photos, or fashion stories about her school days at Somewhere Junior High- her first sock-hop, that first awkward kiss, the charismatic teacher who befriended Loraine and then (she felt) betrayed her by leaving to teach the love poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to i aboriginal kids in the tropics. But, in truth, I really don't know a single thing about Lorraine's origins. In fact, on the whole, she remains a complete and total mystery to me. The story has by now acquired the status of legend among those in the disposable office supply industry. Arthur Fry, a new product development researcher at 3M, frustrated with the scrap j paper he would use to bookmark his place in his church missal, experienced an epiphanic |
