as Tomkins held forth on, say, comic books, a television sitcom,
the biology of emotion, his problem with Kant, and his
enthusiasm for the latest fad diets — all enfolded into one
extended riff.
During the Depression, in the midst of his doctoral studies at
Harvard, he worked as a handicapper for a horse-racing
syndicate and was so successful that he lived lavishly on
Manhattan’s Upper East Side. At the track, where he sat in the
stands for hours staring at the horses through binoculars, he was
known as “the professor.” “He had a system for predicting how
a horse would do, based on what horse was on either side of
him, based on their emotional relationship,” Ekman remembers.
If a male horse, for instance, had lost to a mare in his first or
second year, he would be ruined if he went to the gate with a
mare next to him in the lineup. (Or something like that — no
one really knew for certain.)
Tomkins believed that faces — even the faces of horses —
held valuable clues to inner emotions and motivations. He could
walk into a post office, it was said, go over to the Wanted
posters, and, just by looking at the mug shots, say what crimes
the various fugitives had committed. “He would watch the show
To Tell the Truth, and without fail he could always pick out the