Cindy Adams makes the rounds. (Photo: Beowulf Sheehan/PEN American Center)

INT. MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY — EVENING CINDY ADAMS is standing with a friend among a crowd of hundreds, surveying the black-tie attendees at the PEN Literary Gala, who include Philip Roth, Zadie Smith, Jay McInerney, Jennifer Egan, Candace Bushnell, Joanna Coles and Peter Godwin.

Ms. Adams is wearing a splashy, graphic print jacket and a bun atop her head. A stream of partygoers greet her. She is approached by the Transom and asked how to work a room.

MS. ADAMS
The first thing you do is ignore Salman Rushdie. Because there’s no party he’s not at.
THE TRANSOM
Oh my goodness. Okay. Did he do something?
MS. ADAMS
No. He’s just everywhere.
THE TRANSOM
You’ve been doing this a while. How do you identify celebrities in a room full of writers?
MS. ADAMS
I am hoping some of these people will recognize me.
I look for a few celebrities—Molly Ringwald is schlepping around here—and whoever else I see. I will tell you, however, that these writers do not dress well.
Take a look at this lady. (Points to a woman across the room.)
You see that big behind and the big arms?

LADY #1, a slender, attractive older woman smiles and heads straight for Ms. Adams.

LADY # 1
I could not believe that Nora died two months after she gave me that prize.
I mean, didn’t she look good that day?
MS. ADAMS
She did. She would not let anybody know.
LADY # 1
We were so close. We always celebrated our birthdays together.
THE TRANSOM
Were you close with Nora Ephron, Ms. Adams?
MS. ADAMS
I didn’t go to her place for Passover, but we knew each other.
THE TRANSOM
Nora Ephron is really having a moment.
MS. ADAMS
She will last for a little while. Everybody is ‘Nora! Nora!’
Which is why Tom Hanks will win something.
(Leans in toward The Transom.) I have no idea who this lady is.

In the background, writer Susan Orlean walks past New Yorker editor David Remnick, who is standing near Salman Rushdie. LADY #2, a brunette in a sparkly white dress, leaves Mr. Rushdie's side and approaches Ms. Adams.

LADY #2
Excuse me. My dad is such a big fan of yours. He’s got a King Charles Cavalier.
He told me, years ago your dog ran out, and he grabbed it, because he's such a big dog lover.
And you wrote him a thank-you note. Do you remember him? ...In a Bentley?

MS. ADAMS
Yes! Yes, I do! He never sent me a note!
LADY #2
You never gave him a return address. You just said, "Thank you, Cindy."
MS. ADAMS
I work at the Post! He could have found me there ... Whose dress are you wearing? It’s gorgeous.
LADY #2
This dress was made for me by Roberto Cavalli years ago. It fits. I’m shocked.
MS. ADAMS
Look at that figure! I hate you. Go away from me!
LADY #2
Let me tell you. I’m 45 years old. I have a 19-year-old. I’m disciplined. I’m a vegan...
I had to tell you for the sake of my dad. He’s not a public person.
He’s a private businessman. He lives in the Galleria. He’s in Fisher Island most of the time.
MS. ADAMS
When he comes back, he can buy dinner. I will have it with him.
LADY #2
He would love that... I know that Salman is my boyfriend.
He’s a good man. I'm a woman, not a child.
I'm not gossip. I'm a mother. (Disappears into the crowd.)
THE TRANSOM
That was Salman Rushdie’s girlfriend?
MS. ADAMS
I have no idea.

Ms. Adams then takes the Transom by the scruff of our silk jacket and walks us around the room.

MS. ADAMS
Look at that lady in green. With her breasts hanging out like anybody wants to touch them!
THE TRANSOM
Do you think people do or don’t want to touch them?
MS. ADAMS
No! Nobody does. I’d rather have a bagel than touch her things. Look at this one.
The pants don’t go down to the floor, and her crotch is very visible.
She’s got a bag that nobody would wear anywhere. On Pitkin Avenue they would refuse it.
THE TRANSOM
Pitkin Avenue, where’s that?
MS. ADAMS
It’s on the Lower East Side. Do you know Delancey?
Do you know Rivington? What are you, gentile?

Ms. Adams nods toward a guest in a loud summery print.

MS. ADAMS (CONT.)
Look at that one.
THE TRANSOM
It’s like Lilly Pulitzer died or something.
MS. ADAMS
Very good! That’s one in a row for you.
Look at that bag. They carried those during the war!
THE TRANSOM
What are you wearing, Cindy?
MS. ADAMS
It’s old Armani. It’s $4,500 three years ago. Look at my pearls.
I don’t believe in poverty. It’s not my thing.

Dinner bells begin to chime. Guests make their way to their tables. The Transom starts to part ways with Ms. Adams. We thank her for her time.

MS. ADAMS
Just don't quote me being too vicious!

“Summer is not the time to pretend suddenly that you are an avid fisherman or yachtsman,” says Ms. McGrath, the editor of PureWow, a web site and daily lifestyle email for readers who have graduated from DailyCandy. “You don’t need rope everything or shell plates. You don’t need those in the city. Hello, you’re in a walkup.”

I first met Ms. McGrath when she was the design market editor at InStyle, which meant that she got paid to shop for items for the magazine’s home section. Such editors tend to be the envy of those with lesser jobs, as well as taste, and her own persuasions are crisp and preppy with a dash of humor and DIY whimsy. Ms. McGrath’s favorite designers are Eddie Ross, Ruthie Sommers and Mark D. Sikes.

PureWow’s motto is “Elevate the everyday,” a credo that suits Ms. McGrath. While office drones the world over sip filtered water from morning-breath-infused plastic souvenir cups, at InStyle, Ms. McGrath would bring a glass carafe to the cooler and pour it into a cocktail tumbler, out of pleasure rather than affect. She kept her stationery in a lucite box, all the better to actually use it. And her desk was never cluttered with the usual office detritus—all the drab stuff was neatly tucked away to make room for a spiky orb from Kelly Wearstler, a gilded snakeskin tray that doubled as her “inbox,” and a humongous Jo Malone candle. “It’s all about hiding the stuff you don’t want people to see—it makes for a better-looking life,” she said.

When it comes to summer home design, she likes to make a moment of it, much the same way some people approach fall and winter holidays: “I don’t have a summer house, so I have to find summer in everyday ritual,” says Ms. McGrath, who lives with her husband and two-year-old son on the Upper West Side. “Have sheets you only use during the summer. The rest of the year, pack them away.”

On a recent afternoon, she found lots of inspiration at three Tribeca shops: Stella for towels and sheets; Roberta Roller Rabbit for all manner of colorful prints; and Steven Alan Home to get that mod urban farmer feel. (“Instead of the awkward, ‘Hey, so glad you came, but do you know where those cute little baskets went?’ I can just buy, and not pocket, all his amazing finds,” she says.)

Even more than bright accessories, Ms. McGrath explains summer style chiefly as an absence of wintery clutter. Putting silverware on the counter and hiding your menus in the drawer—that type of thing. “Summer is a clean slate, a chance to remove the cobwebs and do the life you don’t normally do,” she says. “For a couple of months, pretend the guests are coming tonight and hide all the crap you don’t like in your life.” Just don’t hide it in a captain’s trunk.

• Stella, 184 Duane St. (212) 233-9610
• Roberta Roller Rabbit, 176 Duane St.(212) 966-0076
• Steven Alan Home, 158 Franklin St. (646) 402-9661

fpenn@observer.com

Tama Janowitz. (Photo Jakub Kollárik)

Jay McInerney is reviewing wine for the Wall Street Journal. Bret Easton Ellis is in post-production on The Canyons, a film he wrote that stars Lindsay Lohan opposite porn star James Deen. Meanwhile, Tama Janowitz, the third corner of the pop-lit trinity that defined New York in the ’80s, is now living in Ithaca as she tends to her eight poodles, two horses and one ailing mother.

Wait, eight poodles?

“It was part of a midlife nervous breakdown,” the Slaves of New York author told the Transom. “I kept thinking, one made me happy so I should get another one. Then I was going to start showing them as a hobby, but that world is too dreadful to contemplate. Then I thought I’d breed them and that would give me a nice income. Then I wound up with eight of them, and I couldn’t bring myself to sell them. They’re all spayed and neutered now.”

Ms. Janowitz made a rare trip downstate last week for a dinner party hosted by Wantful, a new gifting site flush with $5.5 million in VC funding that wanted to introduce itself in splashy fashion to the likes of gallerist Tony Shafrazi, actress Rain Phoenix and Ms. Janowitz, along with her husband Tim Hunt, a print and photographic agent for the Warhol Foundation.

The party—also sponsored by the Cool Hunting website—was at 632 Hudson, a new event space that looks like the home of an overfunded bohemian eccentric. We found ourselves sharing a bench at the dining table with Ms. Janowitz and three others, a slightly awkward setup when it came to eating soup or ducking out to the bathroom. After the bench-sitters failed in several attempts to scootch the seat forward en masse on a count of three, Ms. Janowitz sat back and resignedly brought the bowl of Fat Radish pumpkin soup to her chest.

Ms. Janowitz, by her own admission, has been a bit depressed up in Ithaca, sorting through a lifetime of books, poems, coverless Harper’s magazines from the 1890s and Frank Zappa LPs piled high in the home of her mother, a retired Cornell English professor.

She didn’t look the slightest bit glum at the gathering, however, gamely posing for party pics in a shimmery red pantsuit and gold disco boots, her hair a big, punky platinum shag with taupe tips, in homage to Debbie Harry. We guessed that Ms. Janowitz did not achieve that look at an Ithaca salon. “No, I did it myself,” she said, explaining her technique: “You dump the whole bottle of color on your head, and you sit there until it’s done.” Ms. Janowitz had taken the Cornell bus down to the party, held just a few blocks away from the converted 10-by-13-foot meat refrigerator where she wrote Slaves of New York, her 1986 collection of stories about 20-something artists trying to make it in Manhattan.

Speaking to her now, you get the sense that even a meat refrigerator would beat the lonely chill of Ithaca, where “the men are all unemployed and the women are all supporting huge families by working in nursing homes,” she said. Plus, the kitchen in her mother’s home—once a gardener’s cottage for a mansion long since torn down—has not been renovated since the 1940s, by her account. “Instead of a dishwasher, there’s a radiator under this tiny enamel sink.”

Ms. Janowitz hasn’t lived in Manhattan since she moved to Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, 14 years ago, along with Mr. Hunt and their daughter, Willow. That borough, of course, is the inspiration for another writer credited with capturing the grand aspirations and romantic woes of young New York.

We asked our dining companion what she thought of comparisons between herself and Lena Dunham, the Girls auteur and soon-to-be-$3.7-million author. “I don’t know who she is,” Ms. Janowitz said. “I only know about deer hunting.”

What does Lena Dunham have that her fans want for themselves? We’re going to rule out her fashion sense and her strange and limited love life, as well as her self-described “Fat Upper Pussy Area.”

Aside from her charmed artsy childhood, what her admirers envy most about Ms. Dunham are her writing talent and commercial success. Yet these are the very topics that will get short shrift in Not That Kind of Girl the book, while she is otherwise occupied itemizing her 1,459-calorie-a-day intake. At least, to judge by the proposal, which is not public and therefore emphatically not for review. But what the hell—it’s Lena Dunham!

Laced with her familiar self-deprecating wit and done up in colorful cupcake doodles, the proposal organizes her musings into six chapters: Work, Friendship, Body, Sex, Love, Big Picture.

More memoir than strict advice, the outline is long on anecdote and light on takeaway.

There are pages and pages devoted to her variously indifferent, degrading or just plain boring sexual encounters, punctuated by admonitions to the reader, along the lines of: Don’t you go and try that now. You deserve better!

But why should Ms. Dunham have all the fun?

She says her hope in writing the book is to inspire others to learn from her mistakes and tell their own stories. “There is nothing gutsier to me than a person announcing that their story is one that deserves to be told, especially if that person is a woman,” she writes.

Assuming her book is geared toward young, urban, underfunded creatives much like Hannah Horvath, more self-expression is hardly what’s called for. These are the folks who devote Tumblr blogs to their own facial hair, can’t make mac and cheese without Instagramming it, and post every dress on Pinterest as though it came straight from the Vogue fashion closet.

What this generation really needs is jobs that pay off their student debt. To that end, here’s a more useful piece of professional advice than anything one is likely to glean from Ms. Dunham’s eventual book: go learn Ruby on Rails.

Of course, Ms. Dunham is not a career coach but an entertainer. As such, she’s funny, wincingly candid and supremely relatable. She really does have the BFF thing down.

But there’s a way that people who mine their lives for material wind up saying everything in a stage whisper. Some of her tales begin to feel like dispatches of a life overly examined, of a brain that insta-converts every moment into a tweet if not a line of script or a paragraph in her next essay. At an S&M club in Japan, Ms. Dunham dons a vinyl nurse’s outfit because “interesting people need to have stories like this.”

TV shows and books—and book proposals—certainly do.