Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Janis Joplin’s handbag

An inventory:

There are: two movie stubs, a pack of cigarettes, an antique cigarette holder, several motel and hotel room keys, a box of Kleenex, a compact and various make up cases (in addition to a bunch of eyebrow pencils held together with a rubber band), an address book, dozens of bits of paper, business cards, match box covers with phone numbers written in near-legible barroom scrawls, guitar picks, a bottle of Southern Comfort (empty), a hip flask, an opened package of complementary macadamia nuts from American Airlines, cassettes of Johnny Cash and Otis Redding, gum, sunglasses, credit cards, aspirin, assorted pens and writing pad, a corkscrew, an alarm clock, a copy of Time, and two hefty books — Nancy Milford’s biography of Zelda Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel.
What Was in Janis Joplin's Handbag? (The Hairpin)

A related post
Q and A (Marianne Moore’s handbag)

comments: 2

Julia Schnabel said...

This post seems to have generated a LOT of stories! While it's definitely interesting...it's not all that peculiar. They reposted at the Joplin page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/janisjoplin) and Twitter @janisjoplin as well...Why are people so surprised she was a reader?!

Michael Leddy said...

Julia, I don’t think it’s peculiar or surprising that Janis Joplin was a reader. My interest in this inventory is my interest in stuff, things. If you look at the related Marianne Moore post, you’ll see what I mean.