Memory lane
Franz Kafka once wrote, "It is hard to tell the truth, for although there 'is' one, it is alive and constantly changes its face." Telling truths is something that popular, prolific author and memoirist Felice Picano does extremely well. This is most evident in True Stories: Portraits from My Past, his latest collection of expanded personal essays and life reflections. While some are new, many of these pieces have enjoyed publication in other anthologies, but Picano presents them in their unedited form, free from the shackles of word counts and the red editing pencil.
In the introduction, Picano bows to the "strange, wondrous, or simply nutty" people who have passed through his life, since they're the ones who helped him become the writer that he is today. By extension, his writings are a grand gesture to "those I related to, over the years."
As far as celebrity encounters are concerned, Picano boasts a lion's share of personal interactions with divas, doyennes, and a few gayer-than-gay scribes along the way. The "British Auntie" in the opening story is none other than poet W.H. Auden, who accidentally (and quite flamboyantly) dropped a geranium flowerpot down onto St. Mark's Place where a youthful Picano and "working" actor-pal George Sampson happened to be strolling. While "his costume was curious and his apartment a horror," Auden remained magnificently "something to behold."
