The Kingdom of New York: Knights, Knaves, Billionaires, and Beauties in the City of Big Shots

by The New York Observer

  Books & Co.: A Browser’s Idea of Heaven

  FOR A SPECIAL BOOKS & CO. COMMEMORATIVE BOOKLET SHE plans to publish in September, Jeannette Watson has been asking friends and patrons to write down their experiences in the store, which she opened 10 years ago on Madison Avenue at 74th Street.

  Writer Harold Brodkey characterized his experience in the store as “symphonically important to me.” Writer Hortense Calisher called Books & Co. “wild and pleasant and comfy.” Publisher Roger Straus of Farrar, Straus, Giroux, wrote of his delight upon finding his favorite out-of-print authors arranged alphabetically.

  The 10th anniversary is a milestone for the store, according to Ms. Watson, because in their first year of business, she and her then-partner, Burt Britton, previously of the Strand Bookstore on Broadway, nearly went bankrupt as a result of an emphasis on book buying over bookkeeping. “There were times when publishers would call and ask for me and I would say, ‘I’m sorry, she’s not in right now, can I take a message?’ and they would say, ‘Yes, tell her we’re suing her for nonpayment.’ I went home every night and cried.”

  “Eventually, I just started calling up publishers and saying, ‘I know I owe you a lot of money. I want to pay you this money, but I’m going to have to do it monthly.” The publishing companies were supportive, she said, and eventually the store was in the black.

  Illustrated by Victor Juhasz

  JUNE 20, 1988 BY GINGER DANTO

  From Couples in ‘Holy Deadlock,’ Lawyers Earning Mega-Buck Fees

  AFTER THE OPULENT WEDDING, the Champagne receptions, the lavish honeymoon, the Concorde trips, the expensive interior redecoration…and then the love lost, comes the million-dollar divorce. That’s how New York divorce attorney Raoul Felder sees it, every time he scans the wedding announcements to see where divorce lurks. “Marriage is the first step towards divorce,” Mr. Felder said matter-of-factly, citing statistics that show one in every three marriages ends in divorce, and divorce now accounts for more than 50 percent of all court proceedings. But even such numbers are misleading “because there are so many people in the throes of divorce and no way of counting [others] getting out-of-country divorces,” claims Mr. Felder. “The vast number of people are unhappily married, living together in holy deadlock.”

  Through the late 1970’s, divorce settlement involved a simpler, if inequitable, arrangement. As New York was a “title state,” each spouse in a New York divorce theoretically had the right to keep whatever belonged to him or her. With men generally earning and purchasing more than women, however, divorce often left the wife with far less materially than she had enjoyed during the marriage. Time spent raising a family while the husband worked, for instance, did not translate into a packet of assets in the event of divorce.

  The equitable law distribution of 1980 created “marital property” so that assets acquired during a marriage by either spouse became common property divisible at divorce time. If loud arguments were part of divorces prior to 1980, they would now rise to crescendo in the disagreements over who should walk away with what.

  JULY 25, 1988 BY MICHAEL M. THOMAS

  THE MIDAS WATCH: THE PUNISHING HAMPTONS SOCIAL SCENE OF ’88

  IT’S EARLY IN THE SEASON YET, but already the pace and intensity of the Hamptons social punishment are the most daunting in memory. For the last few years, the July Fourth holiday has marked the entrance of a tunnel of time from which, some 60 days later, the survivors will emerge in a condition that makes survivors of the siege of Stalingrad look like recent graduates of the Golden Door. Over the holiday weekend, for example, the powers that be up the road in Smarthampton had the novel idea of staging what by the accounts of those who participated was nothing short of a social triathlon.

  Indeed, one of the things that most interests me about the current season is what a hard time guests are giving their erstwhile hosts: always behind the back, of course, in the best high-society tradition. Ask someone if they had a good time the night before, and what you get is, well, about what you’d expect if you consulted Mario Buatta on the professional merits of, oh…let’s say Richard Feigen. It may be objective, intended as a commendable earnest of intellectual honesty, but as a post-mortem summary of a major nosh of prime Beluga and ’47 Haut Brion it can have a chilling effect. Stirred into this long-fermenting human cocktail, this mélange of muslin and dimity old-timeliness, were some of the glorious butterflies, dressed to the nines, off to celebrate the 20th anniversary of a marriage that few of them had attended and most of the rest of us had. For us plain-spoken folks, it afforded a welcome chance to see the New Society on parade. Such spangles, sequins, bustles and well, I never…!

  Suddenly, there was a buzz, a stir, and the spectacle was enlivened by the arrival of the cadet branch of the Swine family. I naturally pressed close, as I do whenever major hogs are rumored in the vicinity. Kindness precedes me from saying more except that I now understand what the estimable John Fairchild’s coinage of “Fashion Victim” can mean at its zenith. If victimization’s the name of the game, this poor child was put together by the fashion equivalent of Jack the Ripper, from the lace-over-something jacket that looked capable of stopping a dum-dum bullet, down to the six-inch stiletto pumps. Now travel down the highway a piece and look at the ladies of art, themselves women of a certain age, or a few years to either side. An age where the black bird’s footprints can be found. Still, look at these relaxed faces: Gloria Jones, Elaine Benson, Nora Ephron, Jessie Wood, Carol Ryan, Penny McCall, the lady who puts up with me—a whole glorious caboodle of them, and yet not a tough line in the lot. That’s what art does for one, you see. It doesn’t just yield beauty and truth, it’s good for the complexion.

  JULY 25, 1988 BY LOU CHAPMAN

  EXPERTS WARN OF IMPACT OF GREENHOUSE EFFECT ON CITY

  THE SAME ENVIRONMENTAL forces that many scientists believe are raising the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere will cause an increasing amount of salt water to flow up the Hudson River, worsen the effects of major, unpredictable ocean storms and contaminate the underground aquifers of fresh water beneath Long Island—that area’s critical source of drinking water.

  All of that, government officials and environmental experts warn, could have severe consequences for New York City’s drinking-water supplies, tunnels, storm sewers, sanitary sewers, and coastal development, and could hamper the complex workings of John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports. Many researchers say higher ocean levels and the incursion of salt water into freshwater estuaries will be two results of the “greenhouse effect,” a man-made phenomenon that most atmospheric and weather scientists now agree is gradually warming the earth’s climate. The greenhouse effect gets its name because it is doing to the surface of the earth exactly what a man-made greenhouse does for plants: It lets heat from the sun in but not out.

  The U.S. Geological Survey had proposed a study that would cost more than $1 million and take more than three years, to allow planners to predict the impacts of a variety of changes to the Hudson River, including increased salinity and higher sea level. The city is counting on that study on a major state-orchestrated review of water management throughout New York to help decide how to prepare for the future, Mr. Engle-hardt said.

  AUGUST 22, 1988 BY HILTON KRAMER

  A CRITIC’S VIEW: Mapplethorpe Show at the Whitney: A Big, Glossy, Offensive Exhibit

  IN THE ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE retrospective that is currently installed at the Whitney Museum of American Art, there is so much that is highly problematical and so much that is simply offensive—so much indeed that many people will still want to consider it pornographic—that we have no choice but to conclude that it was precisely its air of scandal and provocation that commended the work to the museum’s staff and made it seem not only a suitable but an irresistible subject for a large, glossy, sensational exhibition. The impression—that it is Mr. Mapplethorpe’s subject matter that is primarily, though not solely, responsible for this large-scale show—is reinforced, moreover, by
the fact that he is in many other respects a photographer who contributes little that is new to the language of photography. The formal conventions within which he works clearly owe much to the style that Edward Weston and his many followers perfected years before Mr. Mapplethorpe was born, and this is not a style that in its original form could be expected to elicit much interest nowadays at the Whitney. The best of Mr. Mapplethorpe’s pictures are those that are concentrated on the bodies of nude figures—mostly male figures. Some of these bear a remarkable resemblance to certain sculptures of Gaston Lachaise. By and large, however, these photographic celebrations of exemplary physiques, with their theatrical lighting and arty poses, combine the familiar conventions of fashion photography—especially that of Irving Penn and Richard Avedon—with the formalist conventions of the Weston style.

  As for Mr. Mapplethorpe’s famous framing devices—the use he makes of fabric, mirrors, etc., in order to turn his pictures into one-of-a-kind art objects—all one can say is that they represent a tacit recognition that the photographic images are often not in themselves of sufficient power or interest to stand on their own. If you have a taste for campy minimalism, you will probably love these devices. I find them pretty trashy.

  The truth is, there are about a dozen pictures in this show that have some real artistic quality—but you couldn’t mount a major retrospective on an accomplishment of that size. And so it has been left to the “forbidden” subject matter to carry the burden of the show. There is no denying that the result is a sensational exhibition—but the sensation in question doesn’t add much to the experience of art.

  MAY 7, 1990 BY DANIEL LAZARE

  Evans-Brown Team—or Is It Brown-Evans?

  HARRY HADN’T NOTICED IT, BUT TINA WAS INCENSED. “Yuppies,” she snorted. “That’s what they are, complete yuppies. What’s yuppie about it is the perception that you have to keep doing one thing all your life, and if you don’t you’re a failure.

  “Harry,” she went on, “who was the triumph of English journalism, who edited the best paper in the world, what [newspaper] would he want to edit here? There’s nothing to edit, absolutely nothing.”

  Tina is Tina Brown, editor of Vanity Fair, favorite magazine of the nouveau riche. Harry is Harold Evans, former editor of the Sunday Times and Times of London, now in charge of Condé Nast Traveler. The alleged yuppies are the editors and writers of Spy magazine, who did a nasty little number in a recent issue on Si Newhouse’s leading husband-and-wife team.

  The Spy feature opens comic-strip-style in the 1970’s with Tina, 22 and fresh out of Oxford, refusing to budge from Mr. Evans’ doorstep until the great man of English journalism consents to see her. Then it flashes forward to 1981 when Rupert Murdoch, having just purchased the London Times, is unceremoniously giving Harry the boot while Tina (by then his wife) is piling accolade upon accolade as the swinging editor of Tatler, a society monthly. It winds up in contemporary Manhattan where Tina edits Vanity Fair while poor Harry, as Spy sees it, oversees articles on iguana stew and sunblock SPF’s. “Harry’s on the phone,” an assistant calls out. Replies Tina, in the midst of some glamorous fashion shoot: “Take a message.”

  Moral: how the mighty have fallen, how the worm has turned, etc. All of which is rather carry on Spy’s part, but not entirely inaccurate. True, he’s bounced around a bit since being canned by Mr. Murdoch in March 1982 (not 1981, as Spy reports) for showing insufficient loyalty, in the Australian’s view, to Britain’s monarch, Margaret Thatcher. He served as a director of Gold Crest Films & Television in London. He wrote a book, Good Times, Bad Times, about his experience working at, and being fired from, The Times. He taught journalism at Duke University. He served as editor of Atlantic Monthly Press. He participated in a short-lived but unsuccessful attempt to start up a competitor to the Hartford Courant in Connecticut. He spent two years at U.S. News & World Report. Now he edits stories about budget hotels in Manhattan and travel bargains in Budapest.

  Though at age 60 Harry Evans is no longer rocking the foundations of British government, as he seemed to do every couple of years in 1970’s, he says he’s satisfied.

  “My fortunes haven’t fallen,” said Mr. Evans, a short, somewhat rumpled figure. He sits in a corner office decorated with front pages from the Sunday Times in the 70’s, a huge map of the world and a Helmut Newton photo of a woman standing naked in the middle of Prague.

  “I actually am as happy as I’ve ever been and as fulfilled as I’ve ever been,” he said in a recent interview. “Clearly, I did not like losing the editorship of The Times, but I don’t read what I’ve done since as down. I’m a bit defensive about that. I’ve been asked to edit three papers in England since leaving The Times, but I didn’t want to do it. That part of my life was over. I wanted to do something fresh and different.”

  “Doing a magazine is harder,” he added in a follow-up conversation. “It’s invented anew every month, whereas at a newspaper any old fool can follow the flow of events. When I was at The Times, I would start a flow of reports coming in and then would tell the staff, ‘Do this,’ or ‘Do that.’ On a magazine, you don’t have that sort of conveyer belt.

  “In England, the feeling is that Harry Evans is coasting,” said a reporter for The Economist.

  The Village Voice’s editor-in-chief, Jonathon Z. Larsen, said: “People who don’t know Harry tend to view him as the fifth wheel to Tina, but in fact the guy is incredibly good. I remember I went out to lunch with him when he was just starting Condé Nast Traveler, and I told him it wouldn’t work, that no one reads travel magazines and I thought, my God, this guy has really pulled it off…. While all the other start-up magazines are going down the tubes, here’s one that really works.”

  If Condé Nast Traveler is a step down, the lower perch has been doing pretty well. Last year, ad pages rose 53 percent over the year before. In the first four months of 1990, they rose 17 percent over the same period in 1989—a mite slower but still a decent gain considering that the average monthly lost about 3 percent over the same period, according to the Media Industry Newsletter. Circulation has climbed to about 750,000, according to executive editor Thomas J. Wallace.

  Unlike most travel journalism, which is a variant of brochure-writing devoted to describing the best three-star restaurants and the most elegant hotels, Condé Nast Traveler takes pains to describe the downside as well. In addition to giving the lowdown on 60 picturesque Mediterranean islands, a recent issue had playwright David Mamet grousing about the quality of English food (“I don’t think most Londoners can identify a vegetable with a gun to their heads”), plus a rather acerbic comparison of the merits of New York and Los Angeles.

  Of course, editing a new travel magazine is one thing; being the Queen of Glitz is quite another. That’s Ms. Brown’s department. She doesn’t so much edit a magazine as sit astride an arc stretching from New York’s junk-bond-borne Nouvelle Society to the purveyors of mass entertainment in Hollywood. The result, depending on whom you ask, is either a magazine that is the embodiment of this fast-moving set or simply a glossy tip sheet on who in this milieu is at the moment and who is not.

  Fumed a well-known New York journalist of Ms. Brown’s magazine: “It’s the embodiment of everything obscene about the Reagan 80’s.”

  “It’s brilliant,” acknowledged another, “no question about it, but it fills me with disgust.”

  One former Vanity Fair writer, recalling the time he proposed a story about a certain bright-burning celebrity, said: “My editor, in anticipation of what Tina would say, asked, ‘Do you know these people well?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t know them at all.’ And he said, ‘Well, you know, we want it to look like you belong in this world.’ The standard viewpoint that the journalist should be objective, they’re not interested in that.”

  Ms. Brown, not surprisingly, adheres to the view that Vanity Fair “works” because it’s like a three-course meal mixing trifles with more substantial fare.

  Of course, editing a new travel maga
zine is one thing, being the Queen of Glitz is quite another. That’s Ms. Brown’s department.

  SEPTEMBER 19, 1988 BY JOSEPH C. GOULDEN

  ‘FIT TO PRINT: A.M ROSENTHAL AND HIS TIMES’

  FOR ALMOST A YEAR, I HAD BEEN INTERVIEWING PEOPLE IN New York who either worked for or otherwise knew A.M. Rosenthal, then executive editor of The New York Times. Oddly, in all those months I caught only a fleeting glimpse of my subject across a crowded luncheon room at an East Side café. When commencing my research, I wrote Rosenthal, told him what I was doing, and expressed the hope we could talk eventually. Rosenthal’s reply, in effect, told me not to expect any of his time; that he was a busy man and had more important things to do.

  Fit to Print: A. M. Rosenthal and His Times is about the power and insecurity of Abe Rosenthal, and how his talent and persona combined to make him one of the more successful newspaper editors in America—and also one of the more detested. Professionally, Rosenthal was sui generis, a newsman who excelled at every job he undertook, from copy boy to foreign correspondent to editor. “The smartest son of a bitch who ever walked into a newsroom,” his old friend Theodore H. White, the political writer, said of Rosenthal a few months before his 1986 death.

  Rosenthal is not a very likable human being. He is a man of strong emotions, both negative and positive. He sends flowers to friends in the hospital, and he expects cards on his birthday and other occasions. But friends also know he is hypersensitive to any criticism, however mild, either of himself or to The Times. A person who often offends Rosenthal can find himself suddenly, brutally and permanently cut out of his circle. He also likes to pass along personally the good news of a promotion or a raise. Friends see in his behavior a desire to be loved; a hope that people would look beyond what he calls “my dark side” and find someone who truly cares about humans.