mimicked my readers’ fantasies of a posh British accent and assured them that I knew better, just as they did. I wrote to inflate them. This meant never, ever making a reference they might not understand; anything too highbrow was a no-no. The idea was to stroke their insecurities, not to bring them out.
As an interviewer, I quickly grasped that the key was to ingratiate myself with the subject, to be admiring, even humble, but not Heepish. (In an article, even Heepish would not be allowed to stand without explanation.) And then, after becoming suitably flattered and flaccid, the VIP might disgorge a verbal gem, a meaty indiscretion that could be used as a headline or a focus for my article, a word-for-word, wholly accurate quotation that caged the beast. I was a hunter for the media zoo. These techniques served me exceptionally well, and I found a niche for myself. I did my detective work, kept my sensitive auditory canals open and quivering, and familiarized myself with names, who was who and who was who to whom, and with my Crawler days long behind me, I found myself recognized as a cognoscente of the arts.
Culture in the big city is private business and much of its funding is in the hands of wealthy white women who, although they may not always have the dough themselves, vie for rising status as supporters of the arts. They gleam at benefit dinners, coiffed and perfumed and oiled and lifted, while their hubbies, exhausted from the rigors of deal-making, glance around them in confusion and snore through the rubber chicken. The worst must be the annual PEN dinner, where gloomy writers and gloomier publishers don ill-fitting, frayed tuxedos or dumpy dresses and hideous shoes to eye one another suspiciously as they mingle with the money. Whatever my circumstances, and, rest assured, they have often been close to dire, I am never anything less than well turned out. Hadn’t Mrs. Case, daughter of a plumber in Milwaukee, had a sharp eye for the “right” clothes and good grammar? Hadn’t she sacrificed to send her boy to the “right” schools? Had I been a scholarship runt at Yale for nothing?
And then, through my contacts (and hard work, I might add), I landed the plum, writing articles for The Gothamite on salary. They never would have hired me in the WASPy days of reliably dull but oh-so-clubby self-congratulation, but those days had passed, and they wanted a writer with a squirt of venom when needed. I was their man. The positively nubile, fresh-from-his-undergraduate-studies Anton Tish had made a splash at the Clark Gallery with his installation, The History of Western Art , and I was asked to write a “What’s On About Town” piece, a nod to the buzz. Jeff Koons had unveiled his Puppy a few years earlier, and I was expecting yet another silky huckster—not that I have anything against Koons. He is the American Dream.
Like every good reporter, I did my research. As it turned out, the excitement had been caused not by “Flashbulb! Giant topiary dog!” but by the kid’s supposedly prodigious brain. He had made a puzzle that art wonks were trying to solve, and furthermore, he was mum about it, a buff little boy-genius, who insisted that all people had to do was look and read “a little.” Yes, he admitted the gigantic sculpture of a woman spread out in the gallery was an overblown, three-dimensional allusion to Giorgione’s painting of Venus, finished by Titian; she was in the same position, asleep, one hand behind her head, another at her crotch, red bolster, ochre draperies swimming beneath her nudity. The gimmick: Illustrated Woman. Her creamy body was covered with hundreds of minute reproductions, photographs and texts, some framed, some not, each one “a thought”: Greek vase with the classical male porno themes, erestes and eromenos , Madonna and Child, crucifixions, still lifes, a note that said “Just the West, please.” RESTRICTED was etched on her thumb. PRIMITIVE was scrawled on her
As an interviewer, I quickly grasped that the key was to ingratiate myself with the subject, to be admiring, even humble, but not Heepish. (In an article, even Heepish would not be allowed to stand without explanation.) And then, after becoming suitably flattered and flaccid, the VIP might disgorge a verbal gem, a meaty indiscretion that could be used as a headline or a focus for my article, a word-for-word, wholly accurate quotation that caged the beast. I was a hunter for the media zoo. These techniques served me exceptionally well, and I found a niche for myself. I did my detective work, kept my sensitive auditory canals open and quivering, and familiarized myself with names, who was who and who was who to whom, and with my Crawler days long behind me, I found myself recognized as a cognoscente of the arts.
Culture in the big city is private business and much of its funding is in the hands of wealthy white women who, although they may not always have the dough themselves, vie for rising status as supporters of the arts. They gleam at benefit dinners, coiffed and perfumed and oiled and lifted, while their hubbies, exhausted from the rigors of deal-making, glance around them in confusion and snore through the rubber chicken. The worst must be the annual PEN dinner, where gloomy writers and gloomier publishers don ill-fitting, frayed tuxedos or dumpy dresses and hideous shoes to eye one another suspiciously as they mingle with the money. Whatever my circumstances, and, rest assured, they have often been close to dire, I am never anything less than well turned out. Hadn’t Mrs. Case, daughter of a plumber in Milwaukee, had a sharp eye for the “right” clothes and good grammar? Hadn’t she sacrificed to send her boy to the “right” schools? Had I been a scholarship runt at Yale for nothing?
And then, through my contacts (and hard work, I might add), I landed the plum, writing articles for The Gothamite on salary. They never would have hired me in the WASPy days of reliably dull but oh-so-clubby self-congratulation, but those days had passed, and they wanted a writer with a squirt of venom when needed. I was their man. The positively nubile, fresh-from-his-undergraduate-studies Anton Tish had made a splash at the Clark Gallery with his installation, The History of Western Art , and I was asked to write a “What’s On About Town” piece, a nod to the buzz. Jeff Koons had unveiled his Puppy a few years earlier, and I was expecting yet another silky huckster—not that I have anything against Koons. He is the American Dream.
Like every good reporter, I did my research. As it turned out, the excitement had been caused not by “Flashbulb! Giant topiary dog!” but by the kid’s supposedly prodigious brain. He had made a puzzle that art wonks were trying to solve, and furthermore, he was mum about it, a buff little boy-genius, who insisted that all people had to do was look and read “a little.” Yes, he admitted the gigantic sculpture of a woman spread out in the gallery was an overblown, three-dimensional allusion to Giorgione’s painting of Venus, finished by Titian; she was in the same position, asleep, one hand behind her head, another at her crotch, red bolster, ochre draperies swimming beneath her nudity. The gimmick: Illustrated Woman. Her creamy body was covered with hundreds of minute reproductions, photographs and texts, some framed, some not, each one “a thought”: Greek vase with the classical male porno themes, erestes and eromenos , Madonna and Child, crucifixions, still lifes, a note that said “Just the West, please.” RESTRICTED was etched on her thumb. PRIMITIVE was scrawled on her
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