Kyle Thomas Hemingway: The ephemera edit

An ongoing digital archive of 1,376 items (and counting) proving that I read, I saw, and I actually paid attention.

  • Misia: The Life of Misia Sert

    Misia: The Life of Misia Sert

    by Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale

    “I have many letters from Proust that I’ve never bothered to open…Anybody want them?”

  • Flâneur: The Art of Wandering The Streets of Paris

    Flâneur: The Art of Wandering The Streets of Paris

    by Federico Castigliano

    “Paris is narcotic for a man alone, a never-ending labyrinth where the anxiety of freedom is relieved.”

  • R.S.V.P.: Elsa Maxwell’s Own Story

    R.S.V.P.: Elsa Maxwell’s Own Story

    by Elsa Maxwell

    “Nothing spoils a good party like a genius.”

  • The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America

    “A few months into the run, the woman who gave me my massage on Fridays before the show said, ‘It’s the weirdest thing. You seem to be developing wing muscles.’ Because there were these ridges of muscle I’d developed alongside my spine where I flexed the wings, opening and closing them.”

  • The Plague

    The Plague

    by Albert Camus (translated by Stuart Gilbert)

    “I have no idea what’s awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.”

  • The Stonewall Reader

    The Stonewall Reader

    Edited by the New York Public Library

    “The queens took the lead in the Stonewall Riots. They walked around in semi-drag with teased hair and false eyelashes on and they didn’t give a shit what anybody thought about them. What did they have to lose? Absolutely fucking nothing.”

  • Chromatica

    Chromatica

    by Lady Gaga

  • Cole Porter: A Biography

    Cole Porter: A Biography

    by Charles Schwartz

    “Cole discovered that candy vendors sold more than sweets. They were also the purveyors of those spicy, naughty books that have always been the forbidden fruit of young people. Cole soon made a point of stocking up on these books.”

  • A Streetcar Named Desire

    A Streetcar Named Desire

    by Tennessee Williams / Directed by Benedict Andrews (National Theatre At Home)

    “I can’t stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.”

  • “In the way he dressed, fancy-dress parties and leopard-skin togas aside, Rex was markedly and increasingly conservative in comparison to his dandyish friends. Stephen might sprinkle his hair with gold dust, rouge his cheeks, smear Vaseline on his eyelids, paint his lips, don earrings and mist himself with scents from Worth and Molyneux, but for the most part (despite his brief flirtation with plus fours) Rex dressed ‘unostentatiously’ in corduroy trousers or well-cut suits.”

  • Music, Martinis, and Memories

    Music, Martinis, and Memories

    by Jackie Gleason and his Orchestra

  • “The gleaming low white villa was set into the rocks behind it, as though it belonged there, and guests who glanced out of the windows or stepped onto the private balcony of their bedroom would get the impression that it was almost hanging over the blue sea. The swimming pool, considered the best on the Riviera, was housed in a basin blasted out of the rocks and featured a water-chute so that bathers could slide down into the sea below and swim to a raft tethered just offshore. The huge terrace between the house and the pool was the center for most of the entertainment, and at each end a curved stone staircase descended to the pool.”

  • A Handful of Dust

    A Handful of Dust

    by Evelyn Waugh

    “It would be a dull world if we all thought alike.”

  • “This is a characteristic image from the Bright Young People’s world: the thought of sorrowing in sunlight, good times gone, the myriad champagne corks bobbing away on a stream turned unexpectedly chill.”

  • Funny Face

    Funny Face

    Directed by Stanley Donen

    “Duval, please! I can’t hear myself think, and I’m trying to think in French!”

  • The Children

    The Children

    by Lucy Kirkwood / Directed by Bryn Boice (Speakeasy Stage Company)

    Curtain call at The Children
  • Fiddler on the Roof

    Fiddler on the Roof

    Music by Jerry Bock / Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick / Book by Joseph Stein / Based on “Tevye the Dairyman” by Sholem Aleichem / Directed by Bartlett Sher (Broadway in Boston, Boston, MA)

    “A bird may love a fish but where would they build a home together?”

  • Plaza Suite

    Plaza Suite

    by Neil Simon / Directed by John Benjamin Hickey (Emerson Colonial Theatre, Boston, MA)

    Curtain call at Plaza Suite
  • “I figured the only way to make people love me was to be a million laughs.”