When the American poet Kenneth Goldsmith came over to talk to my students in 2001, I took a shine to his shoes (Camper 16937-004 EUR44 USA 16937MPM Black 44 XX CAT.35). I then found a pair in Paris and then another pair in Leeds and finally the fashionable clogs arrived in York. In total, I have worn what came to be known in our house as ’Kenny’s shoes’ for the last nine years. Once when I stayed with Kenny, Cheryl and Finnegan in New York, sleeping on Cheryl’s studio floor, Kenny walked through the room and said: “Hey, aren’t those my shoes?” and I just nonchalently replied, “No, those are mine.”  Recently, I came across this short piece of text in my Samuel Beckett biography: ”When Beckett and Joyce were alone together, however, mutual silences were often one of their principal methods of communication - silences, as Beckett put it, ‘directed towards each other’. Joyce usually sat in the attitude familiar from photographs, legs crossed, the toe of the crossed-over foot pointing downwards in its tight, patent leather shoe, or twined round the calf of the other leg. Beckett adopted a similar posture, the faithfulness and humility of the imitation being emphasized by the fact that he had also begun to wear similar footwear even though such natty shoes did not suit his feet and he suffered accordingly.” Apparently, it is not uncommon to wear the same shoes as your literary heroes.

Simon Morris, Shoes (2011)

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