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The weather has been cold, damp, interminably British. I inadvertently cut off most of my mermaid hair in what I’m calling the Still Smell as Sweet
On the way home last night from a lovely evening of books and dinner and drinks with old friends, I felt happy enough about my blue and gold nest with soft sweet sheets and soft sweet permakitten and soft sweet quiet awaiting me. Then I remembered it was peony season and sighed just the tiniest bit. Once, just once, I thought, I’d like a suitor who was the type to buy me peonies. I granted myself one second of self-pity standing in the cold rainy darkness, staring up at my empty apartment outlined by the night sky. Then I stopped at the corner deli and bought $50 dollars of pink and crimson and magenta blossoms–heavenly, heavenly scented and tinted and textured–and came home and filled all my vases with their beauty. There are harder problems to solve–few, in fact, with such joyous solutions.
‘Slaves of New York,’ Now and Forever
Mention breakout 1980s novelists, and the names Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney inevitably top the list. But back in the day, Tama Janowitz was easily as big a deal as either of those boys. Witty where they were edgy, she set her comedies of errors among the rubble of Alphabet City and the rarified air of Upper East Side townhouses, and she lampooned the rites and rituals of the creative class with a rouge-tipped mischief that recalled the love child of Edith Wharton and Dorothy Parker – if either had been the type to wear Godzilla earrings. Continue Reading →