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  • The Atlantic

    Debbie Harry Stares Back

    The Blondie singer’s memoir, <em>Face It,</em> wryly recounts making the most of being ogled.
    by Spencer Kornhaber Oct 12, 2019 4 minutes
    Source: Celeste Sloman / The New York Times / Redux

    After speeding through Debbie Harry’s eventful life in just 245 pages, the Blondie singer’s memoir, Face It, in its final chapter, lists stuff about thumbs. “I think first of that game where you try to trap the other guy’s thumb under yours while the rest of your fingers are gripping their fingers,” the 74-year-old Harry writes. “Then there is the old saying ‘I’m all thumbs,’ which is a peculiar mental image and is a feeble excuse for clumsiness.” Opposable thumbs, hitchhiking thumbs, thumbs up, thumbs down, Tom Thumb, thumbnail sketches, strangler’s thumbs, thumbscrews, thumbtacks, twiddling thumbs … each concept gets briefly discussed, making for five pages of thumb content.

    There is no grand point to this exercise. “I thought

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