The Razor's Edge

The act of shaving is something that continues to enthrall me. As a child I already understood very well that it was a symbol of adulthood – a scene out of ‘I Stand Alone’ comes to mind wherein the misanthropic butcher discredits one of his many enemies: “He hasn’t even learned to shave himself.” But at the same time I saw how my father, after every single shave, needed to patch up his face. Shaving, for me, was a kind of paradoxical ritual; you needed to slit your throat in order to become a man. Later I discovered how Mark Twain too in his infancy felt a strong coming-of-age connection with shaving....