Writers and Such

Looking up at the boxed potato plant vines on 79th Street between Madison and Park. 1:35 PM. Photo: JH.

August 23, 2010. Very warm weekend in New York with cooler nights; muggy weather on Sunday morning and lots of rainfall by late afternoon.

“I resolved to keep my Journal faithfully, never letting a day pass without recording what I had seen and heard: to wit, the peculiarities and nuances of speech of such persons as I might engage in conversation, no matter how trivial or exalted they may be; the impressions made upon my eye by the architecture of houses, churches and public buildings, etc., no matter how mean or exalted they may be; the manners and mannerisms, and the dress and costume of all I may encounter, the rustic and the sophisticated, wherever I find them; always keeping uppermost in my thoughts Bacon’s sound words of advice: ‘Hunt more after choiceness of phrase, and the round and clear composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses.’”
Charles Dickens, age 19, on embarking on a life as a writer.

Writers and such. On Thursday night I went to a birthday dinner for Molly Jong-Fast who is now officially at the beginning of 30-something. The party was hosted by Molly’s mother Erica Jong and her husband Ken Burrows at their Upper East Side apartment with its fantastic views of Manhattan west, north and south. There were about thirty guests including Molly’s in-laws, her father Jon Fast and her stepmother, Barbara.


	The birthday girl and her mom.

Everything about the evening was cozy and en famille. When we first sat down to dinner the birthday girl thanked everyone for being present and told us quite seriously how much she loved her parents, her step-parents, her in-laws and her husband Matt Greenfield.

Knowing Molly as I do, there is no question that these were her honest feelings. They were also the feelings in the room.

I was seated next to the Guest of Honor. On my left was Susan Cheever, the author who is also a neighbor of mine. She was rapt in conversation with an Englishman with salt-and-pepper grey hair. So rapt were they, that I never introduced to her dinner partner, and so I never met him. I wasn’t sure she even knew I was there. Although, the same could be said for Molly and me, and after the first course, Erica and me. We all talked about books we’d been reading.

Writers talking. After the dinner was over I offered Susan a ride home. “Who were you so deep in conversation with?” I asked once we were in the taxi.

“Oh, that was Ken Follett. You don’t know Ken?” No. “What were you talking about?” I continued my curiosity-killed-the-cat probe.

"Middlemarch," (the classic 19th century novel about English provincial life by George Eliot) she answered.

Coincidentally Erica and I had talked briefly about Middlemarch, and, another friend of mine, Joan Kingsley, earlier in the week had told me she was currently reading Middlemarch. I (barely) remembered it from an English Lit course in college. Joan was loving it. She told me she was reading it because her eldest daughter, Kate’s (Katherine Kingsley, author) “favorite book.”

Rick Reiss, Bonnie Reiss, Dale Atkins Rosen, Rob Rosen, Ninah Lynne, Michael Lynne

Sunset looking northwest from the Jong/Burrows apartment on Thursday night at 7:30 pm.

Cheever and Follett’s conversation appeared to go on throughout the dinner. “What were you talking about, about Middlemarch?” fascinated by the idea of two writers at a New York dinner party talking about George Eliot.

“About the relationship between men and women as defined by George Eliot in Middlemarch.”

Jong and Burrows’ parties always have writers at their house, and there are always some who become immersed in conversation about books. I don’t do this; I’m neither well-read enough (or smart enough) to hold my own under such circumstances. Both Cheever and Follett, for example, seem to have read everything, and twice, providing those very personal moments for me when I feel like a dumbbell.

The following day I was looking through the Forbes.com site and followed the story about “the richest writers,” an exponent of the Forbes 400 Richest list. There was Ken Follett. Made $20 million last year. Considers George Eliot.


Lynda Erkiletian.

Last week, our Washington Social Diarist Carol Joynt wrote, in her daily blog, about the new DC Housewives show on Bravo. One of the “housewives,” Lynda Erkiletian, took offense. Ms. Erkiletian also took offense at remarks written by writers at Comedy Central as well as Richard Lawson, writing for Gawker, who referred to Erkiletian as “one of the biggest high-class pimps in Washington." (Ms. Erkiletian has a well-known DC modeling agency). Carol, who like many of us, finds Lawson’s “reviews” of the show hilarious, followed suit by questioning whether or not Erkiletian was “outing her business.”

Well. Ms. Erkiletian got the message and was not pleased. Not at all. In fact, she was irked. (erked?) She had her lawyer, Mark Lane, write letters to Comedy Central, Viacom, Carol Joynt and Richard Lawson threatening a lawsuit if they didn’t apologize.

The last thing Carol needs (who already has a raft of financial burdens of her own — business closing, etc.) is the expense of lawyer to defend her against an irate “housewife” who has a modeling agency whose business is apparently misunderstood by Some People.

So Carol, (and I got this from Page Six) wrote 14 different apologies (one for each misrepresentation of “reality,” etc. to Madame Erk, if you’ll pardon my Franch. What is even funnier is that after all that beseeching and apologia, Carol learned, quite accidentally, from the horse’s mouth, that the “DC Housewives” are contractually forbidden to sue the media. Which leads one to the original conclusion: nothing like a threat of a lawsuit to get yourself some lines in Page Six.

You can read Carol’s sum-up on today’s Washington Social Diary. The most fascinating detail of all this to me, however, and probably one which escaped the younger journalists covering it, was Erkiletian’s lawyer, one Mark Lane, a name familiar to millions of Americans who were around at the time of the Kennedy Assassination.


	Mark Lane with JFK.

In 1966, Mark Lane published a sensational book called Rush To Judgment that took issue with the conclusions of the Kennedy Assassinations as set forth by the Warren Commission, suggesting that the President Kennedy’s murder was a conspiracy. His was the first to put it out there, and it opened the floodgates that to this day still haven’t been closed.

The term “conspiracy theory” came into our parlance with the publication of Mark Lane’s book. Created by the official naysayers. Of course he was refuted and damned from here to hell and gone, but the seeds of doubt that he planted evidentially remain almost five decades later. And for good reasons. A documentary was made of the book the following year (1967), directed by Emile de Antonio and hosted by the author. We may never know (although there are a number of people, including very well-informed and well-connected people I know personally, who believe it was, and can tell you “why”).

None of these “conspiracy” people, incidentally, think the Housewives phenomenon is a conspiracy, however. They think it’s just another old barnacle that has attached itself to the belly of the aging ship called American TV entertainment. Of course it is also a great mass market promo of a few dozen men and women who are playing the American media lottery called Fame and Fortune.

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