Don’t Die 
Jenny Diski
There’s a science-fiction short story, I can’t remember by whom, which has a New York journalist on a hiking tour, lost in the Appalachians. He comes across a ramshackle house lived in by a family of hillbillies and they give him a bed for the night. In the morning at breakfast he notices that one of the girls has her headscarf tied in a manner he’s never seen before – it’s strange but very elegant. One by one he discovers that all the other members of the family are wearing an article of clothing in an unknown way, or have run up a frock or made a sweater or decorated their dungarees to look startlingly different. When he asks about it, they each tell him they just sort of thought they would, no big deal, gotta milk the cow, chop some wood, see ya. He stays a while and it emerges that he has discovered in this one family the actual source of fashion, the single place from which all new trends spring and stream out to couturiers, glossy magazines and eventually the city streets. No one, not even the family themselves, had any idea that was how it worked.
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From the LRB letters page: [ 29 November 2007 ] Joshua Cohen.
Jenny Diski has finally finished her novel Apology for the Woman Writing, which will be published in November.
Other articles by this contributor:
Did Jesus walk on water because he couldn’t swim? · Jewish Seafarers
XXX · Doing what we’re told
Oh, Andrea Dworkin · Misogyny: The Male Malady by David Gilmore
Don’t think about it · The Trouble with Sonia Orwell
Flowery, rustic, tippy, smokey · Jenny Diski drinks a cup of tea
It’s so beautiful · V is for Vagina
A keen horseman with a new pair of green suede chaps is guaranteed to ride into the sunset · A Slight and Delicate Creature: The Memoirs of Margaret Cook
Hang on to the doily · Catherine M.
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