By E. Jean Carroll Outside July/August 1983 “Uh, Jean?” “Yes?” “Are you awake?” “Yes.” “What the hell is that?” “What?” “That funny glare outside.” (Pause.) “The moon, Fran.” We are in a tent. Fran Lebowitz is lying on my right; George Butler on my left. Fran lights...
By James Wolcott The Village Voice September 6, 1976 Has any writer since Boswell possessed a shrewder sense of careermanship than Truman Capote? Gore Vidal expertly packages his arch, marcelled aphorisms for television consumption, Norman Mailer at his most combative...
By Julie Baumgold New York Magazine October 28, 1984 Inside Mortimer’s on the day of Truman Capote’s New York memorial service, two small segments of society were in tumult. In the side room, C.Z. Guest was holding a luncheon for twenty-four of Truman’s good...
By Alex Belth The Stacks Reader March 30, 2023 Bill Zehme, who chronicled the lives of show business personalities in the ’80s and ’90s, died last weekend after a ten-year battle with cancer. He was 64 and one of the most personable and likable people you’d ever want...
By John Schulian The Los Angeles Times August 18, 1991 Exactly one day before I raised my right hand and marched into the Army in that blighted year of 1968, I saw the future I wanted. It was a sight that had eluded me throughout graduate school, but now, with the...
By Sara Davidson Sara Davidson’s blog November, 2021 “Who’s calling?” I told him my name, and said I wanted to tell her how much I liked her work… Then, realizing he was also a writer, I stammered, “I…I mean…I like your writing also…” “Just a minute,” he said. Joan...
By Alex Belth Esquire Classic November 8, 2021 Jon Bradshaw always said he would die young, but he probably didn’t think he’d keel over on a public tennis court in Studio City a few weeks shy of turning forty-nine. The smart money had said he’d meet his fate on...
By Alex Belth Esquire Classic May 25, 2021 At the end of the last century there were plenty of “Best of the Century” lists and one that was most entertaining was Ron Rosenbaum’s 1999 column for The New York Observer in which he argued that Pale Fire by Vladimir...
By Ron Rosenbaum The New York Observer September 29, 1999 So I’m in this car with Dennis Hopper and Sean Penn, two generations of Hollywood Bad Boys. Hopper’s driving, Penn’s in the back. This is maybe a dozen years ago when Sean was still with Madonna, and Hopper had...
By Albert Goldman Life Feb. 7, 1969 The publication of a book is not often a major event in American culture. Most of our classics, when they first appeared, met with disappointing receptions, and even the much-ballyhoed best-sellers of recent years have rarely cut a...
By Jon Bradshaw New York January 10, 1977 The Quality Inn is an inferior hostelry in the upper reaches of Regent Street. Two men entered the inn and took a booth toward the back. The taller man, a playwright, carried a large leather bag. For reasons which later...
By Ron Rosenbaum Slate August 2, 2011 Now, my father wasn’t a big reader and rarely wrote letters, much less to authors. But when I went through a phase in high school of constantly carrying Catch-22 around and quoting from it and writing things like, “There was only...