Book Club

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"When we think of what it means to live life on our own terms, it's generally in regard to our personal dealings. It translates into not taking crap from anyone and is embodied in the cares we lose when we decide not to be something but to be someone. It all sounds good—heroic, defining, self-actualizing. There is nothing we admire more than a rule breaker, except when the rules we break are the ones of basic human decency. If part of the terms we live by involves refusing to acknowledge an atrocious world war being waged, if not on our doorsteps, at least in our neighborhoods, a war that will affect everyone we know, and leave no one unchanged, we risk turning from a rebel into an unbearable solipsist. Chanel found World War II to be uninteresting, vulgar, and inconvenient, and so she turned her back on her city, her community, and her industry. The walls are very thick at the Hotel Ritz, and behind them she sat." [The Gospel According to Coco Chanel]