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Books

The Bookopticon Breaks Down Publishing Incest

By Kelsey Keith on

What does Jonathan Safran Foer have to do with cocaine? Well, probably not much, but his wife (and fellow author) Nicole Krauss is repped by William Morris agent Bill Clegg, whose forthcoming memoir Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man is about a particularly nasty crack habit. Vanity Fair’s Claire Howorth, in her insidery yet engrossing infographic which explores how “ten potential best-sellers coming out this spring and summer fit into the [publishing industry] firmament,” relates that theme back to the Saturday Night Live crew associated with Simon Rich, whose first book Elliot Allagash comes out May 25. Got all that? Peep all the interconnectedness after the… Read More

Books

John Hughes in Very, Very Short Form

By Kelsey Keith on

Though the creative output of John Hughes had slowed to a crawl in the decade preceding his death in August at age 59, the iconic director’s alter ego JL Hudson wasn’t taking to retirement quite so easily. Penning screenplays, essays, and fiction for his own amusement, some of his later writing — imbued with the same irreverent, sly but tender narrative quality as his film work — saw the light of day as a series called Very, Very Short Stories (some only four brief paragraphs in length). Excerpts after the… Read More

Web

What’s on at Flavorpill: Links That Made the Rounds in Our Office

By Caitlin Brody on

Today at Flavorpill, we had our rebuttal rebutted. We were surprised to hear that Duncan Sheik’s next musical adventure will be an an American Psycho adaptation — although Spring Awakening was dark in its own right. We watched a man get carted around Manhattan by strangers. We realized just how far … Read More

Books

Take Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire

By Spencer Lund on

Marcel Proust often asked a series of questions of himself, his friends and others about life and death and everything in between. Since 1993 Vanity Fair has asked celebrities (both literary and otherwise) to take a Proust-like questionnaire. Now they are releasing a book entitled Vanity Fair’s Proust’s Questionnaire, compiling 101 celebrity responses from the likes of Salman Rushdie, Aretha Franklin, Martin Scorsese, and Norman… Read More

Design

Sartorial Lessons from Vanity Fair’s 2009 International Best-Dressed List

By Caroline Stanley on

We just stumbled across this year’s Vanity Fair Best-Dressed List thanks to an item in the LA Times about the number of art world personalities who made the cut. And it’s true: Cy Twombly, Bruce Weber, Ike Ude, and Count Manfredi Della Gherardesca are all there, mixed in with Hollywood royalty, New York socialites, pretty politicos, and the kind of random fabulous people you usually find on a list like this. Then there were the rather surprising user-generated ratings for these bold-faced names. What we discovered about style and popularity, after the… Read More

Television

Pic of the Day: Annie Leibovitz Turns Lens to Mad Men

By Heather Schwedel on

Vanity Fair’s September feature on Mad Men was supposed to be the cover story, until the powers that be decided on Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett memorial images instead. Luckily the issue still contains Annie Leibovitz’s lavish portraits of John Hamm (shirtless in two of the snaps!) and January Jones. Perfect marriage of photographer and subject: don’t shows like Mad Men exist to be photographed by Annie Leibovitz? And vice versa? We just don’t understand her financial… Read More

Web

What’s on at Flavorpill: Links That Made the Rounds in Our Office

By Caroline Stanley on

Today at Flavorpill, we lost ourselves in The Daily Beast’s wonderful ode to Dash Snow — including never-before-seen images. We read about animal masturbation. We wondered if a lawsuit will derail The Hobbit. We did not want a slice of this pizza. We decided that we need to read the … Read More

Books

How to Prove You’re Refined and Full O’ Fancy Book Learnin’ in a Post-Kindle Age

By Heather Schwedel on

In High Fidelity, Nick Hornby’s pop culture-obsessed protagonist posited that “What really matters is what you like, not what you’re like.” If we accept that our very identities are intertwined with our taste in music, movies and books, the advent of Amazon’s Kindle (now a steal at $299) does start to seem a bit worrisome. In August’s Vanity Fair, James Wolcott laments the passing of a time when every New York City subway ride presented “an opportunity to spy on the reading tastes of fellow passengers and make snap judgments that probably wouldn’t hold up in court.”

Wolcott poses an important question: “How can I impress strangers with the gem-like flame of my literary passion if it’s a digital slate I’m carrying around, trying not to get it all thumbprinty?” Tricky, but not impossible! We’ve got a few… Read More

Theatre

Vanity Fair’s Idea of Theatre Looks Like a Random Assortment of Hollywood B-Listers

By Caroline Stanley on

Humor us for a second: Wouldn’t it have been interesting if Vanity Fair actually talked to respected, less well-known stage actors instead of honing in on every celebrity with a project on Broadway for the upcoming theatre feature in their June issue? … Read More