Robert Caro, Calvin Trillin Voted Into Arts Academy

The prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters has announced eight new inductees, including historian Robert Caro, New Yorker humorist Calvin Trillin and poet Paul Muldoon. Founded in 1898, the academy is "an honor society of 250 architects, composers, artists, and writers," according to its web site, with new members voted in as "vacancies occur." Read More

Remembering Molly

Fine writers and close friends gathered Tuesday afternoon to celebrate the passions and the prescience of Molly Ivins, the larger-than-life Texan who spent every day of her life fighting for what she believed in, until cancer killed her last January, at the age of 62.

The crowd at the Society for Ethical Culture included former Read More

Calvin Trillin Loves His Wife

On a recent un-wintry Wednesday, two days after his latest book arrived on shelves, Calvin Trillin, the 71-year-old writer, humorist and food-lorist, sat in his West Village townhouse looking perplexed. Three S-shaped lines were etched across his forehead, and whenever he spoke, they squiggled up and down like waves.

“I wasn’t exactly aware that I Read More

September 29, 2004 – October 6, 2004

Wednesday 29th

Perhaps it’s the cloves simmering in the hot apple cider , but sniff hard enough and there’s a definite scent of pontification in the air—which can only mean one thing: tweedy highbrow festivals! And we don’t mean the San Gennaro Feast, which thankfully packed up all its mobbed-up meat-on-a-stick a few days Read More

Eight Day Week

Wednesday 4th

If you’re a young Ivy Leaguer who was always the “class clown,” maybe toiling now for Modernhumorist.com and looking for a job that actually pays money, crash Comedy Central’s 10th Anniversary party tonight. Crash strategy : be male ; three days of face stubble ; ironic corduroy blazer . Whose rumps to smooch: Read More

The Way We’re Rich Now: Microsoft and Manolo Blahniks

The New Gilded Age: ‘The New Yorker’ Looks at the Culture of Affluence. Edited by David Remnick. Random House, 432 pages, $26.95.

When did we lose the 1990′s? I’m not niggling about the change of millennium and all that. I’m talking about the decade-that- almost-was, that quaint and earnest America of, say, the first winter Read More