Much of Mr. Young's best work in the 70's derived from his despair over the limitations of his generation's reach. In a string of classic albums that began with On the Beach in 1974 and ended with Rust Never Sleeps in 1979, he detailed the collapse of his generation, how the hippies burned out and lost the vigor for change.

Now, so many years later, Mr. Young is releasing two essential documents that, though separated by time and pain, sing volumes about his relationship with America and his particular generation, implicitly explaining how he survived the crash. On the Beach , which has just been released for the first time in CD format, finds Mr. Young in the thick of his despair over the cultural collapse that his generation was experiencing, yet unable to articulate. Mr. Young clearly felt that although something monumental was happening, he was just too close to it to be able to grasp the big picture. But with the benefit of almost 30 years' perspective, he takes another stab on his latest album, Greendale , and not only comes up with some answers, but with another great album as well.

That said, On the Beach and Greendale are very different records. On the Beach sees Mr. Young withdrawing as a form of self-protection from the cultural catastrophes of the mid-70's. The lyrics are nearly too personal, filled with unexplained metaphors and evocative images; the album is about a mood. Greendale is direct, a provocative and inspiring 10-song "musical novel" in which Mr. Young-after years of tough living, both personal and professional-looks back on his generation's lurching arc and explains his love/hate relationship with it.

As a musical novel (a more satisfying alternative to the dreaded "rock opera"), Greendale depicts the collapse of the Green family-refugees of the hippie generation-as their family is torn apart when Jed, one of the younger Greens, kills a cop who has discovered coke and weed in his car. Grandpa Green, an ancient, grizzled farmer spouting country witticisms ("Some people have taken pure bullshit, and turned it into gold") dies from a heart attack, brought on by grief and by the invasion of grasping, grubby media types asking for an interview. Sun Green, his granddaughter, becomes a political activist. Greendale 's bizarre mixture of literalism and symbolism is sometimes clichéd and pedantic, at turns allegorical, and sometimes so blatant it feels like community theater. It's very Neil Young in that way. And yet, it is easily the best thing Mr. Young has done since the death of his producer and second brain, David Briggs, in 1995.

Greendale succeeds, as most of Mr. Young's music does, between the lines. Superficially, it might come off as alternately preachy and cranky and little else, but you have to separate the creator from the creation: The voices and perspectives of the characters in Greendale are never Mr. Young's, although he has sympathies with each. Mr. Young himself survives in the music's subtext, where you can discover the man's most controlled contemplation of the idealism that took over his generation, got corrupted and haunted his career from its very beginning. The Greens, living on the Double E Rancho in Greendale, a small community in northern California, have resigned themselves to pursuing a communal harmony solely within their family; they've realized that their old change-the-world psychosis can only be achieved in a vacuum. The album's first song, "Falling from Above," captures their reductionist 60's fever: "A little love and affection / In everything you do / Will make the world a better place / With or without you."

This remaining morsel of idealism conflicts with the world outside the Double E Rancho, a world alluded to later in the song when "The Hero and the artist" debate their "goals and visions and afterthoughts / For the 21st century." They "mostly came up with nothin' / So the truth was never learned / And the human race just kept rollin' on … / Rollin' through the fighting / Rollin' through the religious wars …. " Mr. Young's hand grows heavy, but the vision crafted of this family fighting for its innocence is the only credible permutation of the idealism his generation initially invested in. The Double E is the Green family's Sugar Mountain, some mystical place where you never have to grow up, a fantasy world removed from the culture.

"Bandit" is the middle-aged expression of the innocent hope that typified so much of Mr. Young's early balladry, especially songs like "Sugar Mountain" or "I Am a Child." The song takes place inside the head of Jed's uncle, Earl Green, who, spending a night alone in a fifth-rate motel, finds hope springing eternal in his soul. Earl consoles himself with the thought that "Someday … you'll find / Everything you're looking for." Mr. Young sings the line in the high, fragile yet soaring falsetto of his early career, and it cuts through the eddying stream-of-conscious lyrics like a bullet. "Bandit" is a remarkable achievement, a song about finding comfort beneath your own skin, realizing that self is the only salve.

Greendale does begin to falter toward the end, although not musically. Mr. Young is backed by his longtime cohort Crazy Horse again, and together they achieve a drunken looseness, both in sound and in rhythm, that's always compelling. But as a straight story, Greendale grows incrementally more absurd. After Grandpa's death, Sun Green finds the fighting spirit of her parents' generation: "Truth is all I seek, / Speakin' out against anything / Unjust or packed with lies," she says. The section works better on an allegorical level, as Sun Green finds Earth Brown and, through some apocalyptic interaction, they become one in mind and decide to run to Alaska to fight for the environment. The album's closer, "Be the Rain," finds them dreaming the same dream of hope and transcendence. Mr. Young slightly mucks it up with an over-the top choir singing and egocentric, propagandistic lyrical turns that sound too much like rants. Whatever success the song realizes is derived from the fact that this hope is only expressed in dream: The young, mad fighters, those powerful voices Mr. Young begrudgingly admired, are still just fighting for a fantasy.

What Mr. Young sees in On the Beach is the transformation of those voices into something much more frightening. It's one of four classic Young albums-the other three are Hawks & Doves , Re ac tor and American Stars 'n Bars -that have just been issued for the first time on CD. The other records-especially the last four songs on American Stars 'n Bars and the first half of Hawks & Doves -have their merits, but On the Beach is the bona fide masterpiece of the bunch. In "Revolution Blues," Mr. Young hears a version of the voice of his generation in Charles Manson, a hippie for whom the ends justifies the means. "Motion Pictures" is a letter posted from inside the head of an earlier version of Earl, a person who finds being miserable a comfort. Mr. Young tells us: "All those headlines, / They just bore me now / I'm deep inside myself, / But I'll get out somehow …. "

The real masterwork, though, is "Ambulance Blues," a nine-minute tone poem that ranks among Mr. Young's finest. It's one of his most personal songs, and one of the most difficult to understand: Mr. Young takes us through his personal history, mythologizing and abstracting it in the process. It's impossible to understand it all, though your confusion doesn't really matter-you feel the song, even if you don't get it. The poetic element manages to communicate with us in different ways; it has a sense of sound to it, something primitively evocative.

I imagine Greendale will be as misunderstood as On the Beach was when it first came out. No matter-Mr. Young's never made a record to satisfy expectations. He follows his muse, and this time it took a turn into the heart of America. He had no choice but to follow. With Greendale , you quickly realize that you have no choice but to listen.

"I think people who remain slightly under the radar are sort of the luckiest," said Mr. Arthur via his cell phone. By this, he meant: "Artists who have a good-enough fan base to make a living, but never getting too huge, because ultimately that messes you up.

When he talked to Manhattan Music late last year, Mr. Arthur was on his second tour of Europe for the year, evangelizing his album Redemption's Son . Then he returned to his native country-he hails from Akron, Ohio-to repeat the process. (He played the Knitting Factory on Jan. 10.) Such is the life of your average below-the-radar musician.

The thing is, Mr. Arthur is hardly an average musician: He's an exceptional lyricist and a serious melodist-one of the few young songwriters out there who has a shot at being one of the greats.

And though Redemption's Son (RealWorld) is not a masterpiece, it is one of the most worthy and listenable albums of 2002, as well as a testament to Mr. Arthur's potential. The album crashes almost as much as it soars, but the results are always interesting. And often they are sublime.

Mr. Arthur has a talent for turning freakish human emotions into a kind of in-phase beauty. He's the man behind the counter in Yeats' "foul rag and bone shop of the heart," dressing his dirty wares in elegant lyricism and sensuous pop arrangements. As he sings on "I Would Rather Hide," a song that has an ethereal Brian Wilson–esque intro and a 70's soft-rock sound: "I know that we're all insane when there's no one else around."

Mr. Arthur isn't exactly eager to discuss how he came by this knowledge. His Akron upbringing was off-limits during the interview, though he did recall a supposedly memorable moment in nursery school. "We were making masks, and I purposely set out to make a really freaky mask," he said, without describing the finished product. "I didn't understand what I was doing, but it was the same drive, trying to really expose something."

After forcing himself to graduate high school, he headed north to play in a jazz band in Cleveland. At 18, he moved to Atlanta, where he said he worked odd jobs -pizza chef, door-to-door salesman, guitar-shop gofer-until his demo tape landed in Peter Gabriel's hands in 1996. Mr. Gabriel and Lou Reed auditioned Mr. Arthur at his first solo gig at the Fez downtown, and that landed him on Mr. Gabriel's label, RealWorld.

Mr. Arthur is an anomaly on the RealWorld roster, which is mainly devoted to practitioners of world music, such as Mr. Gabriel and the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. And, not surprisingly, he admitted during the interview that he was unhappy with the way RealWorld had been promoting Redemption's Son .

But getting a label berth enabled Mr. Arthur to get his foot in the door, even if he's still trying to get into the Big Room. "I'm still at the place where I struggle to make a living, and I'd like to struggle less," he said.

That said, much of Mr. Arthur's work is about struggling and failing and coming clean about it. "Vulnerability is entertainment," he said on his tour bus.

But when it comes to his own work, Mr. Arthur claimed that there's another element in the mix. "My experience and my personality are the clothes the songs are wearing, but [the thoughts] are ultimately coming from a deeper place-from a spirit of the universe."

That may sound trippier-than-thou, but listen to "Favorite Girl," one of the album's best songs. The track starts as a languorous guitar-and-piano kiss-off to a vain lover, with Mr. Arthur singing in the hushed tones of an addict well-acquainted with the power of his addiction. Then the chorus elevates the song. "I don't know what I should do / I've been so happy being unhappy with you," he sings as cellos gently rise and fall, later adding: "And if salvation only comes when you fall? / Oh lord, it's so hard for me to believe / Oh lord, I'm still waiting for you to call." Anyone who lives in this universe knows that there is always room for one more original song about sadomasochistic love affairs.

Of course, in the wrong hands, vulnerability and liberation can amount to Top 40 dreck. But Mr. Arthur's nuanced lyrics are devoid of bombast, never whiny and always brutally frank.

His music, too, tends to be quiet, though it defies easy generalizations. The layered acoustic guitars and piano recall the music of Nick Drake and the early work of Leonard Cohen, who is clearly an influence. But Mr. Arthur also works with hip-hoppy drum loops and gauzy, electronic sounds with touches of grunge, synth-pop and emo-ish chamber pop. There are hummable melodies of different kinds, and everything is given the same texture and power by his voice-which ranges from searing falsetto to gravelly croon-and shimmering harmonies.

Mr. Arthur works best when he works simple, as he does on "You Are the Dark", with its stripped-down-staircase melody plucked on an acoustic guitar and fretless bass, and its down-and-out lyrics: "I guess I'll live up in my head / I'd call you up, but my phone is dead / And I need too much."

You can't blame Mr. Arthur for experimenting, but Redemption's Son suffers from too much of it. There is a tendency to pile on the instruments and effects. Two of the best-written songs, the title track and "Honey and the Moon," are nearly crushed by heavy-handed production.

But even the songs that fall short have a wounded beauty that captures his (and our) struggle to struggle less. Mr. Arthur doesn't avert his eyes from the kind of fucked-up behavior that makes others blink-and cringe. And the retentive, introspective glances on Redemption's Son make him worthy of a place on our radar.

Mr. Oberst is in quite a confessional mood on his latest, somewhat grandly titled CD, Lifted, or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (Saddle Creek).

But don't let that smudge of pretension get in the way. On Lifted , Mr. Oberst–as–Bright Eyes enlists the listener to become his shrink as the singer/songwriter examines himself vividly and ruthlessly, spilling his guts across 13 songs that total 73 minutes of music. It's an incredibly ballsy album: naked and real, uneven at times, but completely honest. It's also his best, most emotionally sophisticated and tuneful album to date. Mr. Oberst is an authentic Ryan Adams, with the kind of passion and purpose that hasn't been applied by a fashion stylist.

Perhaps because Mr. Oberst, given his age, is still struggling to find his identity, the subject looms large on Lifted . In "False Advertising," one of the finer cuts from the album, Bright Eyes sings: "And I know what must change / Fuck my face / Fuck my name, / They are brief and false advertisements …. "

Lifted is Bright Eyes' fourth full-length record (not counting a number of EP's he's released over the years), and the artistic distance he's come is notable. Earlier records veered toward the punkish, and though traces of that genre persist-most notably in Mr. Oberst's other project, Los Desaparecidos-he seems to have settled into a folk-rockish singer/songwriter mode.

On Lifted , Mr. Oberst's melodic skills are on full display as he shifts gracefully through a spectrum of styles, from pseudo–talking blues to waltzes. He's managed to curtail the metaphorical excess of his earlier albums, while once again demonstrating that he is one of the most literate and witty songwriters of his generation.

Lifted is a coming-of-age song cycle that deals with the moment at which love can no longer be idealized; that moment when the innocence of youth becomes hardened by the complacency and cynicism of adulthood. It's a well-trodden path, full of fragrant, sophomoric soap opera, but Mr. Oberst finds fresh material by essentially flaying himself alive. On the stark "Waste of Paint," Mr. Oberst seems to sing from a street puddle, nearly shouting the lines "Like love is some kind of lottery / Where you scratch and see what's underneath / It's 'Sorry,' just one cherry / 'Play again' / Get lucky."

Throughout the album, Mr. Oberst, who sounds like a more fragile version of the Cure's Robert Smith, inhabits his lyrics, communicating his emotional distress with whispers and bellows and wavers and cracks in his voice.

The best song of the album-and arguably of his career-is "You Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will." And as its Raymond Carver–esque title suggests, it surgically cuts to the very heart of the matter, which is the end of a relationship in which the woman seems to have grown up faster than the singer. "You say that I treat you like a book on a shelf," he sings nearly matter-of-factly, "I don't take you out that often / Because I know that I completed you / And that is why you are here / That is the reason you stay here / How awful that must feel." The metaphor-somewhat clunky though it may be-is beautifully attenuated. He comes back to it in one of the final verses, singing "It took so long to figure out / What this book has been about."

The final verse is the punch in the gut-the relationship isn't dead, just dying: "Now I write when I'm away / letters that you'll never read / You said to go explore those other women / the geography of their bodies / but there's just one map you'll need / You are a boomerang, you'll see / You will return to me."

Listening to Mr. Oberst is like listening to Bob Dylan in the mid-60's: What he's saying is fundamentally altered by the way he says it. He's his only interpreter, and a consummate one at that. When he looks back-and sometimes it can be nauseating when someone so young adopts that role-we are interested, because his desire is not to regress, but rather to push into a clearing.

Lifted isn't perfect, even if certain songs are damn close. "Lover I Don't Have to Love," with its sharply grating drum loop, is nearly unbearable and makes you reach for the skip button. And the final cut, "Let's Not Shit Ourselves," falls flat on its face once Mr. Oberst starts to rail against the mass media. He's too fine a student of the soul to waste his words on such tired targets. Mr. Oberst gives-and shows you-everything that's in him; he practically turns himself inside-out on this album. So take the good with the bad; forgive his excesses even as you embrace them. It's the kind of contradiction Bright Eyes would appreciate, and Mr. Oberst would despise.

The American cover of Ravelstein , which was published by Viking/Penguin, depicts a photograph of an espresso-stained demitasse and a half-full glass of water at the Café de Flore, a haunt of Ravelstein, who was closely modeled on Mr. Bellow's late friend and colleague, Allan Bloom. Most international editions of the novel reproduced that image.

But when Gallimard, the French equivalent of Simon & Schuster, published the Gallic edition of Ravelstein on March 14, the book's cover featured a photograph of a decrepit, large-nosed, large-eared, shriveled and slight old man with his hair combed up into two horn-like tufts. The image doesn't fit the description of Abe Ravelstein, Allan Bloom or even Chick, the character that serves as Mr. Bellow's surrogate in the novel. Rather, it's a picture that shares many qualities with traditional French and German caricatures of Jews from the 30's and 40's-which, naturally, does not sit well with those close to the dean of American Jewish fiction.

Though Mr. Bellow did not return calls, his biographer, James Atlas, called the Gallimard cover "quite astonishing" after The Transom faxed him a copy of the image. Noting that the image looked nothing like Mr. Bellow's description of Ravelstein or even the real Allan Bloom, he said: "It's an anxious, furtive face-the face of a Jew in France.

"On the other hand, it figures," Mr. Atlas continued. "French intellectuals harbor anti-Semitism in the guise of radical politics. The cover is an example of the subliminal, unconscious anti-Semitism of the French."

Roger Kaplan, a lifelong friend of Mr. Bellow's, said he had been hired to "look over [Gallimard's] shoulder" during the translation process, but he had not seen the cover until The Transom showed him a copy of it at his apartment. Mr. Kaplan's face registered a mixture of shock and bewilderment when he saw the image, and his comment was almost identical to Mr. Atlas' response. "I find [the cover] astonishing," Mr. Kaplan said. "The problem … is that it seems to be poorly conceived editorially. In the context of the book, it doesn't represent Bloom. It must be a caricature."

Mr. Kaplan, who lived in France for several years, said that the cover seemed to be a typically French attempt at humor. "In France, the use of stereotypes for humor is not as politically incorrect as it is here," he said. "Comic caricatures have been part of the French theater traditionally."

And what does Gallimard have to say about the Ravelstein cover? Christine Jordis, who is in charge of selecting English books for translation at the French publishing house and who oversaw the translation and publication of Mr. Bellow's novel, denied that there was any wicked intent behind the cover choice. "[The cover] represents a man that would represent the general idea of the book," she said. "This is a face of humor, and this is a humorous book."

When The Transom asked Ms. Jordis if the cover was chosen to exploit the specifically "Jewish humor" of the book, she replied: "If we had perceived anything of the kind, we would have chosen another cover."

Told that Ms. Jordis' found the cover image funny, Mr. Atlas spat back: "Bullshit. Where's the humor?"

Casa de Ricky

Ricky Martin may be living la vida loca de un pop star, but when it comes to real-estate investments, he's more conservative than his press would indicate.

Recent articles in Entertainment Weekly and the New York Post have reported that Mr. Martin paid approximately $11 million for two combined condominium apartments totaling 4,400 square feet, and including five bedrooms and seven bathrooms in the still-under-construction AOL Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle. But the two Insignia Douglas Elliman brokers who handled the sale, Dennis Mangone and Pablo Alfaro (brother of fashion designer Victor Alfaro), told The Transom that the reality of Mr. Martin's deal is much different than what has ended up in the media.

The brokers told The Transom that they don't ordinarily speak to the press about their sales, but felt compelled to set the record straight because, as Mr. Mangone put it, the press accounts were "wrong by everything: price, room count, exposure and how many apartments it is."

In reality, Mr. Mangone said, Mr. Martin purchased a single four-bedroom, four-bathroom apartment totaling 3,000 square feet. According to the broker, Mr. Martin paid closer to $8 million for the place, several million less than previously reported. Although Mr. Mangone would not reveal which floor the apartment was on, he did say that it's located in the "upper two-thirds" of the building. He added that Mr. Martin would have Central Park and city views from his floor-to-ceiling windows.

"It's not small, but it's not too much of a statement," Mr. Mangone said of the condo. "It shows good judgment and good taste."

-Frank DiGiacomo

Jackie, Oh!

On the afternoon of Friday, May 31, two days before the first installment of Barbara Kopple's "reality mini-series" The Hamptons aired on ABC, 28-year-old matrimonial attorney Jacqueline Lipson sat in her office at the law firm of Berkman, Bottger & Rodd, on East 42nd Street. On her desk were files, letters and a jar of Jolly Rancher candies.

"I am getting a lot of flak," said Ms. Lipson, who wore a dark dress in anticipation of the weekend. She had already seen the documentary in which she has a recurring role as a single girl on the prowl for a husband. She'd also read all the bad press that her cinéma vérité performance had generated, and she admitted to The Transom that "it hurt a little."

Ms. Lipson reeled off all the mean things that had been said about her. First, ad man and Hamptons Independent newspaper owner Jerry Della Femina had written in his local column that Ms. Lipson "makes your skin crawl." Then, not only had the New York Post 's Page Six column excerpted Mr. Della Femina's written remarks, a few days later the tabloid's TV critic, Linda Stasi, had written that Ms. Lipson was a "yuppie lawyer" and "skeevy." Oh yeah, and Entertainment Weekly deemed her "sadly desperate."

Ms. Lipson flashed one of her big Ultra Brite smiles when she finished. None of the reviewers had noted that about Ms. Lipson, or that she looked great in a bikini-something Mr. Della Femina couldn't manage in a million years. Instead, the media had all seized on the same comment Ms. Lipson made early in the film: "Like, I need to be engaged by 29, because I will not be not married at 30," she'd said. There was also her declaration that "I will have a boyfriend in September. Like, I told my father to start saving, I'm not kidding."

Ms. Lipson had voiced-too confidently, perhaps-the desires of hundreds, maybe thousands of women in the metropolitan area, and she had been excoriated for her candidness. But she said she didn't regret her comments.

"The way I looked at it, there's nothing in it that I would take back," she said. "I think I was being honest; I think I said a lot of things that people normally think. I talk about a five-year plan-everyone has a five-year plan. They might not say it out loud, but they do. So because I said it out loud, I feel like that's why I'm getting such flak."

Ms. Lipson smiled again. "Everyone's looking for Mr. Right," she said. "That's just a fact."

At that point in the conversation, The Transom's tape recorder died and, as is usually the case, The Transom was broke. Ms. Lipson cheerfully handed over $10. Five minutes later, the interview resumed.

Ms. Lipson said she thought Ms. Kopple's documentary "was really well done," and she was grateful that the filmmaker had been kind in the editing room. "There are things I did in the summer I'm glad aren't on there," she said, laughing. She declined to be more specific.

"Barbara's great; Barbara's wonderful," Ms. Lipson said. "She really, really cares about you. When this whole Jerry Della Femina article came out, I called her-hysterical-because it was not something that I expected by any stretch, and she left me this message." Ms. Lipson said she had saved the message on her answering machine. "She was going on about how 'you're wonderful, you're beautiful,'" the attorney recalled. "It was just, basically she was upset that I was going through any pain. She said, 'This should be such a wonderful time for you, and it upsets me that anyone is taking that away from you.'"

In terms of the bad press, Ms. Lipson said: "I've gotten to a point where I'm laughing." A friend of hers had related a comment that Julia Roberts once made in an interview, that she ignores bad press. "I said, 'Who am I to be compared to Julia Roberts?' Should I call her up and say, 'Julia, what should I do?'"

Otherwise, Ms. Lipson was taking a philosophical viewpoint. "My reputation's not going to be destroyed," she said. "I'm so not a skin-crawly person. There are certain things you may want to say about me; 'skin-crawling' is just really not one of them."

And she was still glad that she participated. "It's all about life experiences," she said.

Ms. Lipson is no longer dating Evan, the guy she hooked up with in the Hamptons, but she said they remain friends. For almost three months now, she's been dating a new guy-a 30-year-old lawyer-though she declined to reveal his name.

The following day, Ms. Lipson and her new beau drove out to Sag Harbor to attend the premiere. She was hoping to meet Billy Joel because, she said, she wants his song "Just the Way You Are" to be sung at her wedding, and it's her dream for Mr. Joel to sing it himself. Alas, Mr. Joel did not show.

In the theater, she sat next to her fellow media victim, Josh Sagman, whom The Wall Street Journal called both "asinine" and "a jackass" in the same article. The two watched themselves on-screen and laughed with the audience.

Afterward, there was a $250-a-head benefit for the STAR Foundation, Christie Brinkley's no-nukes charity, and then an after-party at the American Hotel. But Ms. Lipson decided to drive back to Manhattan. She'd be out in the Hamptons the next weekend. She and a girlfriend are running a share house in Bridgehampton.

-George Gurley

Ovitz & Out

Former Creative Artists Agency über- agent and founder Mike Ovitz proved he was a true Hollywood escape artist in 1996 when he walked away from a bad run as head of Walt Disney Pictures with a spiffy $100 million parachute. But apparently he was saving his slickest moves for his exit from his ill-fated Artists Management Group.

When Mr. Ovitz announced on May 6 that he was selling the bulk of A.M.G. to punky Los Angeles music representatives the Firm, he gave no indication about what would happen to A.M.G.'s New York office, long considered by its employees to be Mr. Ovitz's ignored "ugly stepchild."

But A.M.G.'s New York staffers got their answer on the morning of May 17 when, according to sources close to the situation, the head of the Firm's information technologies department-a.k.a. "the computer guy"-arrived unannounced from Los Angeles at A.M.G.'s 140 West 57th Street offices. After some puttering, the I.T. head told four staffers and two interns that a locksmith would be arriving later in the day to change the locks, and that they should clear out their desks. One agent was contractually allowed to finish up in the offices for an additional two weeks.

"Can you believe this is a management company?" said one former employee. "These people don't know the first thing about how to work with human beings."

The firings unceremoniously confirmed persistent speculation that the Gotham office, which one source said cost Mr. Ovitz "several hundred thousand dollars a year" in overhead, was doomed. Strangely enough, sources said their hopes that their East Coast outpost might survive as part of the Firm were bolstered when, just weeks before they were let go, Mr. Ovitz purchased an estimated $20,000 worth of office furniture for the space. Up until that point, much of the office décor had been rented, and the New York staffers had long regarded Mr. Ovitz's reluctance to buy them a decent couch as one of the signs that their days were numbered.

An A.M.G. spokesman confirmed that one executive and one assistant had been let go on May 17, and that there may have been an I.T. staffer in the New York office that day. He denied, however, that the computer guy had anything to do with the dismissals, claiming that a "senior person" at the company had informed staffers that they were terminated.

The A.M.G. spokesman confirmed the furniture purchase and said that it demonstrated that it was "business as usual in the New York office before the Firm deal went through."

A.M.G.'s New York employees were not as shocked by the whiplash turn as they might have been. They have had a tumultuous run under Mr. Ovitz, who founded A.M.G. in 1998 with partners Rick Yorn and Julie Silverman-Yorn, a client list that included Robin Williams, Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz, and mammoth plans to generate television, books, films, m;usic and comedy projects.

Then plans soured, a batch of television shows tanked, and clients began jumping ship. One former A.M.G. employee told The Transom that staffers had long joked that A.M.G. stood for "All Money Gone."

The New York office opened in March 1999 in temporary space at 54th Street and Madison Avenue, in a building owned by Mr. Ovitz's friend, the real-estate developer Jerry Speyer. In January 2000, the company moved to austere Art Deco space in the old General Electric headquarters at 50th and Lexington. But sources said that A.M.G.'s rap-music division vetoed the space, claiming that it wasn't an appropriate place to bring their urban clients. In the confusion, it was reported that A.M.G.'s landlords didn't get paid, and the company was evicted at the end of May 2000.

The three-person staff then set up shop in book scout Drew Reed's West 15th Street apartment, while sources said that Mr. Ovitz dithered over establishing a new base for them. One source said that during the six weeks that the company operated out of Mr. Reed's place, the Los Angeles office took messages and insisted that the New York staff was just having "phone trouble."

The A.M.G. spokesman said that the period during which the office was at Mr. Reed's apartment was a gap "in between leases."

In July 2000, theater producer Marty Richards invited A.M.G. to share his West 57th Street office space, which it did until September of that year. That month, A.M.G. finally found digs at 140 West 57th Street-just two buildings down from the Metropolitan Towers, where Mr. Ovitz keeps his New York apartment.

Despite his proximity, Mr. Ovitz was never exactly a looming presence at the office. One former employee claimed that the chief had visited his New York satellite no more than six times during the company's three-year life span, and another said that he hadn't made the trek downstairs once in the past year, though he had been spotted on the street outside the office and at a neighboring Starbucks.

Another source speculated that Mr. Ovitz was even in his upstairs apartment on the day that the computer guy was dispatched to clear out the office. A.M.G. partners Rick Yorn and Julie Silverman-Yorn were at the Cannes Film Festival at the time of the firings.

"And you wonder why the guy goes out of business," said one former employee, who remembered that despite the constant sense of impermanence, A.M.G. bosses in Los Angeles fed their New York brethren constant promises of success just around the corner.

"A.M.G. was like the Soviet Union," said the source. "They'd be telling you it was the best harvest ever, and then you look in the grain silo and nothing's there. It was like our leaders were the Politburo. They were all busy covering their own asses. Like Communism, on paper the idea sounds great, but in practice it's a disaster."

In response to the accusations that Mr. Ovitz ignored his New York arm, the A.M.G. spokesman said, "Many executives and senior personnel visited with the New York office. Additionally, there were twice-weekly staff conference calls with the New York office where there was shared communication and information, and other acceptable management methods were in place to run the office."

-Rebecca Traister

The Transom Also Hears …

Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he'd consider former AOL Time Warner chief executive Gerald Levin as a candidate for New York City schools chancellor, but what does Mr. Levin think? Claiming that he was now a "private citizen," Mr. Levin wasn't exactly eager to discuss the subject as joined the masses dining al fresco at the Citymeals-on-Wheels benefit at Rockefeller Center on June 3. Asked if there was truth to the reports that he was being considered for the schools gig, Mr. Levin, who was sporting a quality tan, replied: "Sounds like rumor to me."

-F.D.