The Wit’s Guide to Moustaches

Or, twirl interrupted

Great Moustache, Great Reception, György Rauscher, 1917

“First things first: I want it clearly understood that this moustache I’m wearing is my father’s moustache.”
— Kurt Vonnegut 

They will tell you there are many kinds of moustache: The handlebar, the toothbrush, the soup strainer, the walrus, the parted pencil, the Hungarian, et cetera. In fact, there are just two: The kind of moustache that works and the kind that doesn’t. And through painstaking research, I have found the definitive books on each lip curtain.

“No. 5 was to Coco Chanel what my moustache was to my character.”
— Salvador Dalí

First, what works. In a word, Dalí. In two words, Salvador Dalí. The kooky Catalan led with his upper lip, and Boris Friedewald’s 2016 book Dalí’s Moustaches: An Act of Homage is the biography he deserves. The artist’s follicular fascination began at age 23, when he devoted an essay to the “anti-transcendental ambiance” of moustachioed silent film star Adolphe Menjou. His Surrealist pal Luis Buñuel one upped him by declaring that “just as the sirens have their song, so his great Menjouesque powers radiate from his moustache, that brilliant moustache of the movies.”

“The reason for my moustache is that I do not smoke; it establishes the nervous ceremony of the gestures of the hand in a state of reflection.”
— Salvador Dalí

Dalí took the hint and grew his out. After he visited Hollywood in 1937, Gertrude Stein declared Dalí’s “the most beautiful moustache of any European.” After the war, he found that the press cared more about his moustache than his paintings, so he leaned into it. “I have reached the conclusion that the tips of the moustache are indeed antennae by which I receive a part of my surroundings,” he explained, and an adoring public soaked up every word. He was committed to the bits of hair, and they returned the favour for the rest of his life.

“The public does not need great painting. What it needs is a better moustache.”
— Salvador Dalí

Now the moustache that doesn’t work, the moustache of doubt and self-consciousness, the moustache of Kingsley Amis’s so-so 1995 novel The Biographer’s Moustache. Why does the biographer have a moustache? This isn’t really a spoilable novel, but here goes: “It was on his face now for a mixture of reasons, starting chronologically with dissatisfaction or boredom with his own unadorned looks as seen reflected in mirrors and such.” 

Later his love interest teases him about it: “What induced you to grow it anyway? It’s not as if you’re short or round-shouldered or anything like that.”

“That lip garnish that serves as an expression of some inner ambivalence: even if someone with a moustache is smiling, he’s also always frowning—the mouth can turn up, but the hairs point down. .”
— Joshua Cohen

The crumb catcher works to the biographer’s advantage when she seduces him by wondering about the veracity of the idea that “being kissed by a man without a moustache was like having to eat a boiled egg without salt.” 

Unfortunately, the biographer “found he was so strung up that he failed to notice what she was like to kiss, but he was aware of considerable pressure against his moustache.”

In the book’s grand denouement the biographer shaves, but on the last page of the book, he decides to regrow it. He finally arrives where Salvador Dalí was all along, at a moustache that works. The moral of these two stories: If you’re going to have a moustache, have a moustache. If you’re not, don’t. 

“There’s a man outside with a big black moustache”
“Tell him I’ve already got one.”
— Groucho Marx exchange from Horse Feathers

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Lipso Facto

Such a controversial Riposte Card this month! Anything to boost subscriptions, eh? Thanks to the 67 of you who shell out cash to support this project! The September and October Riposte Cards are coming your way in the mail soon!

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Clearance, Clarence!

There wasn’t an Air Canada pilots’ strike last week, but my News Quiz in the Toronto Star remains worth taking in airplane mode.

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Quote Vote

“Never put anything on paper, my boy, and never trust a man with a small black moustache.”
— P.G. Wodehouse

Wax on, wax off: Where to next week? And remember, write-in candidates are always welcome in the comments below.

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Issue No. 272 of Get Wit Quick was going to delve into the early days of the ride-sharing wars, when Lyft distinguished itself from the brutalists at Uber by putting furry pink moustaches on their cars. Their competitors were Teutonic, austere, and serious; they were fun, whimsical, and furry. They encouraged chit chat. The carstache and their famously talkative drivers were part of a concerted effort to appeal to females, because as everyone in Silicon Valley knows, there’s nothing women like more than being chatted up by strange men with moustaches. Many a close shave was prevented by my book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting. Tapping the ❤️  below is nearly as satisfying as twirling your facefuzz.