Sprezzatura and the Sincere Mustache

Un divertente racconto sullo scrivere, per il New Yorker soprattutto. "I said of a person I was writing about that he had a “sincere” mustache. This brought Bingham, manuscript in hand, out of his office and down the hall to mine, as I had hoped it would. A sincere mustache, Mr. McPhee, a sincere mustache? What does that mean? Was I implying that it is possible to have an insincere mustache?
I said I could not imagine anything said more plainly.
The mustache made it into the magazine and caused me to feel self-established as The New Yorker’s nonfiction mustache specialist. Across time, someone came along who had “a no-nonsense mustache,” and a Great Lakes ship captain who had “a gyroscopic mustache,” and a North Woodsman who had “a timber-cruiser’s guileless mustache.” A family practitioner in Maine had “an analgesic mustache,” another doctor “a soothing mustache,” and another a mustache that “seems medical, in that it spreads flat beyond the corners of his mouth and suggests no prognosis, positive or negative". John McPhee, newyorker.