The List of Famous Hats

The List of Famous Hats: analysis

Introduction

The List of Famous Hats is a 19-line prose poem by James Tate, from his book Reckoner. Its title promises a list, but it never gets past the first item. The speaker sets aside Napoleon's famous public hat for his private bathing cap.

That cap, he explains, was too small, since Napoleon had worn it since birth. It was also three-cornered. The poem ends with a deliberately foolish theory about what lay beneath Napoleon's public head. It is a comic piece about public image, private absurdity and the urge to explain great men.

Summary

Lines 1 to 5 open the list. The speaker grants that Napoleon's hat is "an obvious choice," but says it was only his hat "for show," kept for display. He means instead Napoleon's "private bathing cap." He admits it was much like one "any jerk might buy" at a drugstore, except for two oddities.

Lines 6 to 9 give the first oddity. It was a plain white rubber bathing cap, "but too small." Napoleon's life had been so busy, since childhood and even before, that he never found time to buy a new one.

Lines 9 to 15 explain the consequences. Napoleon himself did not grow much, but his head did, and he had been tiny-headed at birth and used the same cap to the end. It hurt him and gave him "many headaches." The speaker adds that Napoleon hardly needed more. He had to grease his skull heavily to pull it on.

Lines 15 to 19 give the second oddity: the bathing cap was three-cornered. The speaker says learned people make much of this. His own theory, he admits, is "simple-minded." He suggests that beneath Napoleon's public head was another head, shaped like a pyramid "or something."

Themes and meaning

The central theme is the public self against the private self. The speaker dismisses the famous hat as one "for show." He wants the hidden, unglamorous object instead. The poem ends by doubling this split in Napoleon's body: a "public head" with a second head beneath. Fame, it suggests, is a costume worn over something stranger.

A second theme is the deflation of greatness. Napoleon is reduced to a man with a too-small cap, headaches and a greased skull. The speaker calls him a "pinhead at birth" and notes he "didn't really grow that much." The jokes cut a figure of history down to a comic body.

A third theme is the absurdity of explanation. The speaker builds a detailed case on impossible premises. A cap worn from birth and a life busy "even farther back" than childhood make no sense. Yet he presents them in the calm voice of a lecture. The nod to learned debate in line 16 and his own "theory" in line 17 mock the habit of over-reading small facts.

A fourth theme is the broken promise of form. A poem titled as a list offers one item and a digression. The structure itself becomes part of the joke about ambition and distraction.

Tone

The tone is mock-serious and conversational. The speaker hedges like an expert: "I guess" and "to be sure." These phrases lend false authority to nonsense.

Slang breaks through the lecture voice. "any jerk," "like crazy" and "isn't even funny" make the speaker sound like a man at a bar. The clash between lecture and banter keeps the comedy going.

There is a flicker of sympathy in "very painful to him." The aside about Napoleon needing no more headaches is both a joke and a nod to a troubled life. The ending deflates everything with "or something," a shrug in place of a conclusion.

Form and structure

The poem is a single block of 19 lines, written as a prose poem. Lines run from 15 to 20 syllables, except the last, which has 6. There is no metre and no rhyme.

The lines break where justified prose would wrap, so the line breaks carry little meaning. The short final line, "pyramid or something.", lands as a comic tail. The long, rambling sentences mimic a speaker who keeps digressing.

Poetic devices

Bathos line 3

I am thinking of his private bathing cap The grand subject of Napoleon's hat drops to a bathing cap. The anticlimax sets up the whole poem.

Colloquial diction line 4

any jerk might buy Slang lowers the register and puts Napoleon's cap among ordinary drugstore goods.

Absurd logic line 8

even farther back than that A life busy since before childhood is impossible. The speaker states it calmly, which makes it funnier.

Pun line 13

gave him many headaches The literal pain of the tight cap doubles as the figurative headaches of a troubled career.

Hyperbole line 14

vaseline his skull like crazy The image of greasing a skull to force on a cap is grotesque and comic. It shows the lengths of the absurd routine.

Irony line 17

My theory is simple-minded to be sure The speaker admits his theory is foolish while still offering it. He mocks the habit of building theories on trivia.

Symbol line 18

his public head there was another head The two heads stand for a public image and a hidden self. The pyramid shape makes the hidden self strange.

Anticlimax line 19

or something. The poem ends on a shrug. The theory collapses into vagueness just as it reaches its point.

Words worth knowing

tricorn

A hat with the brim turned up on three sides, forming three corners. Here, absurdly, it describes a bathing cap.

vaseline

A brand of petroleum jelly, used here as a verb meaning to grease.

eccentricities

Oddities or peculiarities.

What readers have said

• jordan finds the poem suggestive and conversational, like intoxicating air in a sober world, and welcomes its frivolity. jordan, 2005
• caroline calls it fresh and hilarious, surprising given its title, and agrees that life needs more frivolity. caroline, 2005
• cary finds it hard to describe and joins the call for more frivolity on Earth. cary, 2005
• ea simply finds it one of the funniest things they have read. ea, 2007