Tis a far, far better thing I do... (PriceTower.org)

There are two great thrones in American architectural criticism, that of The New Yorker and The New York Times. It was at these two journalistic institutions that the practice was born, at the hands of its king and queen: Lewis Mumford, that great champion of public works and technics, and Ada Louise Huxtable, still the dean of the design press.

Paul Goldberger has been in the fortunate, indeed unique, position of wearing both crowns. After graduating from Yale, he would find himself at The Times in 1973, a young buck roaming the city he loved, engaged to write just about whatever he thought of the buildings and street life therein. He was, quite literally, heir to Ms. Huxtable, who had not yet been pushed out of the paper for her obstreperous ways, and the two of them shared the job of architecture critic for nearly a decade. Two years after she left in 1982, Mr. Goldberger won the Pulitzer for his efforts.

Thirteen years later, in 1997, he would himself depart one side of Times Square for the other, joining The New Yorker, restoring the Sky Line column begun by Mumford half a century earlier at the behest of Tina Brown. "When I went there, I thought it was as perfect a life as you could have," Mr. Goldberger told The Observer in an interview Sunday evening, "to spend half your career at The Times, half at The New Yorker."

But like so many landmarks, from the Parthenon to Penn Station, few endure. Starting today, Mr. Goldberger will board the notorious Condé Nast elevator, but instead of getting off on the 20th floor, he will report to work two floors up, where Graydon Carter has finally poached Mr. Goldberger for Vanity Fair.

"I've known Graydon a long time, and this is something he has talked about for awhile," Mr. Goldberger said. "When he heard I might be leaving the critic's post at The New Yorker, he called again, and things sort of progressed from there."

An unofficial announcement has been making the rounds, as first reported by The Architect's Newspaper, and Mr. Carter praises his latest acquisition as unparalleled, according to a copy obtained by The Observer. “This is an appointment that thrills me profoundly,” Mr. Carter says in the release. “Paul is about as gifted a commentator on architecture, urban planning and design as anyone you’re going to find these days—in other words, he’s just a brilliant writer.” An interview request to Vanity Fair was not immediately returned.

While Mr. Goldberger acknowledged he will miss The New Yorker in some ways, he said it was his decision to leave the magazine, in part so that he would have more time to tackle a biography of Frank Gehry. He said he is very much looking forward to the new possibilities presented by his new publication, for which he has written in the past, "on a one-off basis" starting five years ago. His first effort was a profile of Ralph Lauren, followed by one of Robert A.M. Stern, who had just finished his magisterial 15 Central Park West. (Mr. Goldberger is quick to point out that he reviewed the building for The New Yorker before he wrote about it for the in-house rival.)

"Graydon's eager to do a broad range of things on design and I'm excited to be doing that," Mr. Goldberger said. "And I'm not being coy, we haven't figured out exactly what the parameters are yet, but there will certainly be stories that are design-oriented, not strictly architecture."

That eagerness is not a small reason for Mr. Goldberger decision to leave The New Yorker for Vanity Fair. "David has, I think it's fair to say, mixed feelings about the architecture column," Mr. Goldberger said of New Yorker editor David Remnick. It is a complaint he has aired before, most recently at a panel hosted by the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Getting stories into a magazine, especially one that has shrunk considerably in size over the past decade, has become more and more difficult.

Four Times Square, an architectural masterpiece outside and in. (REW)

Indeed, there has not been a single Sky Line column since September 19 of last year, followed by two blog posts over the next week, and nothing since. Of the 14 pieces written last year, out of a total of 178 (according to The New Yorker's online archive) over a 15 year career, only six made it into the magazine—five columns and one Talk piece. Never mind that when you google either "architecture critic" or "architecture criticism," Mr. Goldberger's author page at The New Yorker is the second result, after Wikipedia.

Mr. Goldberger professes no animosity toward his former boss, and indeed said this has been one of his best and most productive working relationships. "David was great, just great," Mr. Goldberger said. "But change is good, too. I love The New Yorker, I like Vanity Fair, and I like the possibilities, which seem a lot broader than at The New Yorker."

Much of this is to do with the changing nature of publication, at Condé and beyond, the wealth of opinion online, the dearth of magazine pages, and so on. When was the last time you read a Joan Acocella review? And no, not one of those frivolous Critics Notebook pieces in the front of the book—which Ms. Acocella is at least fortunate enough to have to keep her busy every week or two. The answer is mid-January. Alex Ross is a little more lucky, managing a review of classical music at least once a month, plus regular blogging.

Mr. Goldberger is not alone in this, as his chief rival, The Times' newly coronated Michael Kimmelman, has been a less regular feature in the newspaper's pages than many had hoped. But at least The Times, which was criticized for appointing a non-expert to this important post, has not given up on the beat entirely. The New Yorker just may have, as there is no apparent replacement lined up for Mr. Goldberger. Any design writing, be it on IKEA, America's next top starchitect or tiny houses is likely to appear in the well of the magazine, not the back of the book. As of this publication, Mr. Remnick could not be reached for comment.

The absence of an architecture critic from the hallowed halls of Eustace Tilley Inc. is not actually as wretched as it sounds. Despite the prominence of Mr. Goldberger and Mumford before him, that is nearly the extent of architecture criticism at the magazine. Sure, New Yorker icon Brendan Gill took up the mantel near the end of his career, in the 1980s and '90s, but like Mr. Kimmelman (and Mumford) he was more of an enthusiast than a professional, like Mr. Goldberger, who has also taught architecture for years and briefly served as the dean of Parsons.

For his part, Mr. Goldberger said he is looking forward to his new gig and the flexibility being a Vanity Fair contributing editor will afford him, particularly to work on that biography of Frank Gehry. "It's a shitload of work," Mr. Goldberger said. "I've never written anything like this before, and I'm quickly realizing that writing a biography is going to take up a lot of time and energy."

That said, he still expects to write a number of things for Vanity Fair this year. But with the April issue already on newsstands, and production so many months in advance, how long will we actually have to wait for Mr. Goldberger to file his first piece?

In his first proper review for The Times, a piece on the then-new One Police Plaza published on October 27, 1973, Mr. Goldberger opened dramatically, as he often does: "Designing a building for the city of New York is the sort of nightmare that makes architects wonder why they didn't go into some easier profession, like neurosurgery."

The same might be said in some way about the business of architecture criticism these days.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

We haven't managed to get our hands on a copy yet, but David Remnick's excellent review in this week's New Yorker relayed the anecdote:

"Two white aides objected, saying that having the First Lady appear in Vogue, inevitably dressed in expensive designer clothing, would look unfeeling when so many people were living in misery. Two black advisers, Valerie Jarrett and Desiree Rogers, argued that, on the contrary, having an educated, attractive African-American First Lady on the cover of Vogue could be a source of inspiration, and counteract a plenitude of negative images. In the end, Obama posed for the magazine wearing clothes from both a young American designer she helped discover, Jason Wu, and J. Crew."

As for whether Vogue editor Anna Wintour's fundraising for the Obamas played a role in her decision, we'll have to wait for the book.

Crumb's cover

Robert Crumb, the alt-comic writer with a piggyback fetish, has always been ahead of his time. That's what made his comics--usually featuring giant Amazonian women with humungous thighs as a chronic masturbatory fantasy-- so transgressive to begin with.

But for all his former subversiveness, Mr. Crumb is pretty mainstream nowadays. Maybe not New Yorker mainstream though: Vice magazine unearthed a 2009 drawing from the cartoonist that was rejected by David Remnick's magazine. Though an answer was never given on why the cover wasn't run, Mr. Crumb suspects it was because the New Yorker was too afraid of offending people with the image of a (possible?) drag queen and a twee person of unidentifiable sex trying talking to a sweating official from the marriage license bureau, with a sign pointing to a "Genders Inspection" office next to his window.

Below, a high res image of the cartoon, which was discovered at the Venice Biennale in June.

Since Mr. Crumb has drawn for the New Yorker before (though now refuses to), we doubt that it was the cartoon's scandalous nature that led to it getting the axe. The magazine just never ran a gay marriage cover drawing in 2009. If Mr. Crumb had submitted it this year, when gay marriage was actually passed in New York and the New Yorker featured a cartoon of two women walking down the isle, it very well may have passed the P.C. test.

(from The New Yorker)

Nancy Franklin announced that she is stepping down from her position as New Yorker television critic on Twitter today.

"I've been a critic for 18 years, and a TV critic for 13 of them. That's a lot of sitting alone indoors playing with one's equipment," Ms. Franklin wrote the Observer in an e-mail.

"I wanted to get out of the routine of writing a regular column and to get away from writing itself, at least for a while. It's a good move,and I'm just stupid enough not to be worried that I don't know what I'm going to do next," she added.

Despite the bittersweet tone, New Yorker editor David Remnick is confident she'll be back.

"I fully expect she’ll be back, but not about television," Mr. Remnick, a television fan himself, told the Observer. "There is no law that says once you're a television critic you must be one forever."

As for who will take over the On Television column, he had fewer expectations.

"We'll look around," he said. "Who knows? I'm doing what you do. I'm reading."

Ms. Franklin will do two more columns, he added. (Please, Ms. Franklin, do New Girl!)

She joined the New Yorker typing pool in 1978 and over the next decade climbed the ranks to nonfiction editor. She became a theater critic under Tina Brown and has been television critic since 1998.

The soiree at 583 Park Avenue had kicked off with a sober multimedia tribute to the late photojournalists Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros. But unlike previous years, even a cascade of wine and self-congratulation could not keep crushing mortality at bay. It was everywhere!

Los Angeles magazine snagged the feature writing prize for "The End," an exploration of what befalls the body after it dies.

Christopher Hitchens's Vanity Fair essays on his battle with esophageal cancer won the columns and commentary award. In accepting, Graydon Carter paid tribute to his longtime friend and colleague, but ended on a light note. "He's made remarkable signs of recovery--he's lowered his intake of Scotch," Mr. Carter joked, "but he has developed a taste for sherry."

And then there were the undead, the editors not present--they'd been fired or pushed out--but whose work lived on in the approval of the American Society of Magazine Editors. Harper's editor Ellen Rosenbush accepted the award for reporting, although her predecessor Roger D. Hodge had edited the winning piece, and Times Magazine editor Hugo Lindgren took home two Ellies for pieces published under Gerry Marzorati. The subjects of their award-winning work? The mysterious suicides at Guantanamo Bay prison and the bedrooms of dead soldiers, respectively.

From the "Last Supper"-style press table looking over the balcony, the crowd was reminiscent of a circle of Dante's Inferno but the Transom was informed that the ballroom had been built by Christian Scientists, who believe that death itself can be staved off by the healing powers of prayer and virtue.

For the secular reader, longevity is all one can hope for. To that end, ASME honored Rodale's service titles, Women's and Men's Health, the latter for a piece called "I Want My Prostate Back." On stage, editor Dave Zinczenko launched into a public service announcement about prostate cancer. It was second only to Tom Wolfe's Creative Excellence Award acceptance speech in length.

Life among the living remains, as T. S. Eliot wrote, very long.

kstoeffel@observer.com

Journalists from newsrooms, magazine offices and studios across the country digested the information, repackaged it appropriately for their readers and viewers and moved on to the next order of business. For a select few, that meant planning for the weekend's events, the most high profile of which was the annual White House Correspondents Dinner--a tradition begun in 1920 that brings together the press and the people they purportedly cover for an evening of entertainment, shmoozing and, as the name implies, dinner. It is the nexus of a series of events, mostly cocktail parties and a few selective brunches, that extend throughout the weekend and are hosted by various media organizations and attended by Washington insiders, journalists--and increasingly, California-based attendees with a presumed interest in public policy, like Kim Kardashian and the Jonas Brothers--some of whom are invited as guests to the dinner by media organizations represented there.

At 4:52 p.m. on Thursday afternoon,  The Observer emailed The New York Times' executive editor, Bill Keller, to ask whether the dinner--an affair wherein journalists who are tasked with covering beltway power spend an evening socializing with it--is at worst, an outright conflict of interest, and at best, well ... a bit unseemly. Former New York Times columnist Frank Rich, who recently left the paper to become a columnist for New York magazine, had criticized the paper's attendance at the event and was said to be influential in curtailing its official appearances a few years prior. (Mr. Rich, who was out of the country, did not respond to The Observer's requests for comment.) The Observer wondered whether Mr. Rich's departure changed the paper's thinking on the issue. "GROAN," Mr. Keller responded via e-mail. "SUCH a done subject. Why don't you try Dean Baquet in the Washington Bureau? I'm sure he'd LOVE to answer your questions."

Seven minutes later,  The Observer received an e-mail from Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet. "Here is the deal," Mr. Banquet wrote. "We are not being holier than thou, or criticizing anyone who chooses to go. But we came to the conclusion that it had evolved into a very odd, celebrity-driven event that made it look like the press and government all shuck their adversarial roles for one night of the year, sing together (literally, by the way) and have a grand old time cracking jokes. It just feels like it sends the wrong signal to our readers and viewers, like we are all in it together and it is all a game. It feels uncomfortable."

An hour earlier, in the Situation Room of the White House, senior intelligence advisers explained to the president that there was a 60 to 80 percent chance Osama bin Laden had been located in a compound in Pakistan that the C.I.A. had been scouting for months, and the president needed to decide whether he would move ahead with an air strike or a ground strike, or if he would wait to gather further intelligence.

Around 7 p.m. that evening, Mr. Baquet followed up: "I don't want to trash the small and medium size papers that really care about this. It's just the way we feel." (For the record,  The Observer is a small-size paper, and does not officially attend the dinner.) 

It was Friday morning at 8:28 a.m. in New York and  The Observer scanned news of the Royal Wedding in London, which attracted approximately 22 million viewers in the U.S. As we prepared to head to D.C. to further inspect the Correspondents Dinner attendees up close, a meeting was taking place in the White House Diplomatic Room. Before boarding a helicopter to Alabama to survey flood damage, the president called his senior aides in and told them: it would be a helicopter strike. Security Adviser Tom Donilon; his deputy, Denis McDonough; and counterterrorism advisor John Brennan decided to move forward with Operation Geronimo, scheduled to take place on Saturday.

That evening in the W Hotel lobby, one of the first of the weekend's various parties had begun. Around 8:30 p.m. Hilda Solis, dressed in fuchsia, was ushered past New Yorker party security. "Secretary of Labor," her handler said to a young man with earpiece and iPad. Secretary Solis bounced in place to the elevator music. Forty-five minutes later editor David Remnick rested a plate of sushi on a table and debriefed The Observer. "Do you know about Mike Kelly?" In 1987, Kelly, then a  reporter, set the precedent for outrageous escorts by bringing Fawn Hall, Iran-Contra femme fatale. Kelly was killed reporting in Iraq in 2003. Asked about the decision by his former employer, The Washington Post, to bring Donald Trump as its guest of honor, Mr. Remnick replied, "Well, that should be interesting because I just ripped his ass. I'll have to stop by and say, 'Hi'."

About an hour later, The Observer intercepted the dinner's emcee, Saturday Night Live head writer Seth Meyers, who provided intelligence on the impending roast of the president, a tradition of the annual dinner. Mr. Meyers was not nervous, "healthy butterflies," he said. "It's easier to make fun of a politician you do like," he said. "It comes off as less angry."

Saturday morning. Operation Geronimo had been rescheduled due to weather.

The weather was just fine at Tammy Haddad's annual Garden Brunch--held at the former home of the late Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, which is now owned by venture capitalist Mark Ein--the weekend's festivities now in full swing. The Observer spotted New York Times reporter Mark Leibovich, who is reportedly working on a book about the incestuousness of beltway culture. Also in attendance were Olympic snowboarder Shaun "The Flying Tomato" White, Morgan Fairchild and Chace Crawford. Rupert Murdoch was ushered from the living room to the patio after being approached by reporter Gabriel Sherman, known to be working on a book about Fox News. Actor Tim Daly, in beard, shades and a threadbare velvet blazer, went largely unrecognized and explained to another guest that he wanted to meet Buzz Aldrin, who was being wheeled around the patio. He played [astronaut] Jim Lovell in the HBO series, he explained. Rosario Dawson, a guest of CNN, made sure to note that she was invited because of her advocacy work and not her celebrity status.

Mid-afternoon, REM bassist Mike Mills convinced an unidentified suit to submit to the powers of magician Gerard Senehi. "Mentalist," Mr. Senehi corrected. "If you call me a magician again, I'll kill you." Mr. Senehi correctly guessed the foreign word the suit has written on the back of his MSNBC business card. It was already written on Mr. Senehi's own business card, which he extracted from his wallet, to Mr. Mills' delight.

The Palin family arrived surrounded by photographers and clamoring fans and a TV producer was seen bragging about having given Sarah Palin his card.

Later that evening in the reception room of the Washington Hilton, a throng of people, including Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Piven, began moving toward the main hall of the hotel for the White House Correspondents Dinner. Greta Van Susteren engaged Donald Trump as a crowd looked on.  The Observer asked Mr. Trump who he was excited to meet at the dinner. "Everyone. Everyone," he said.  A Washington Times reporter thrust her comically oversize microphone at him: "Mr. Trump, what do you have to say about the rumor that Kim Kardashian will be your running mate?" He answered without looking at her: "That's, uh, I can't, that's not true." She persisted: "What about Khloe?" Trump and the throng trudged forward: "No, no." The reporter grinned as she turned away, pleased with her line of questioning.

At approximately 8:30 p.m., the president arrived at the dinner. Shortly thereafter, he left the dais, following Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' lead. As revelers continued to sip their Champagne, the president was informed the Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi's son had been killed by a NATO airstrike.

An hour later, the New York Times reporter Peter Baker won the Aldo Beckman Award for his "deep insight about how Obama operates, from his response to the terrorist threat to his struggles to contend with what the president himself called our 'big, messy democracy.'"

At 10:22 p.m. Seth Myers was well into his routine for the evening. "People think bin Laden is hiding in the Hindu Kush," said Myers, "but did you know that every day from 4 to 5 he hosts a show on C-SPAN?" The president laughed heartily. Myers later noted: "I am, of course, contractually obligated to attend the MSNBC party. Everyone knows how the MSNBC party works: President Obama mixes the Kool-Aid, and everyone drinks it."

An hour later, The Observer was at the Italian embassy for the MSNBC party, where Rachel Maddow mixed drinks and tended bar below a sign that glows in cursive, pink-neon lettering: RACHEL'S BAR." The Observer asked her if she thought the dinner was a little too cozy. "I don't go to the dinner, I just go to this," she said. "What are you asking me is too cozy? That thing that I didn't go to that I don't know anything about? You should ask me about something else. I didn't go!"

The Observer asked MSNBC president Phil Griffin how the evening was going for him: "It gets better because, you know, we're making a statement," he said. "An event like this, we're letting everybody know, we're here. We're in Washington, a place for politics, we should be celebrated on a night like tonight. It's a night to let all the issues be put aside for one moment to step aside and enjoy yourself. O.K.?"

Eliot Spitzer entered the party. "I thought journalists weren't working tonight," he told The Observer.

At 1 a.m., Cee-Lo took the stage. The Observer squeezed its way over to Sarah Palin, holding court with the largest crowd at the party. Sean Penn was sitting across the room at a table with four other people, including REM's Michael Stipe. Ms. Palin, for her part, was vocal about the role of the press in such proximity to the president. "Well, I still would like the White House Press Corps to ask our president a bit tougher questions about where he really wants to go with this economy and does he understand and believe in free markets or does he really believe in government's ability to plan our economy for us? So I want the press corps to ask those questions!"

The next morning, the weather was nice in Pakistan--nice enough that Operation Geronimo received another green light. In Washington, it rained, but President Obama was reported to have played nine holes of golf.

Just after mid-day in the Hay-Adams Hotel Penthouse , the Reuters-McLaughlin Group Brunch was filling up; on the terrace, attendees noted a spectacular view of the White House. Inside, a caterer spilled an entire dish of butter onto The McLaughlin Group's Eleanor Clift.

Around 2 p.m., the president met with the core Operation Geronimo team before the final "go" order was given.

A few minutes before at the brunch, the Financial Times New York editor Gillian Tett was cornered by anti-tax lobbyist Mark A. Bloomfield, the president and CEO of the American Council for Capital Formation. Post-business-card exchange with Mr. Bloomfield, she talked to The Observer about her table's guests: "We had both the chairman of the S.E.C. and the chairman of the F.D.I.C. We weren't expecting to get both and they both said yes immediately. You know what's brilliant about the whole evening? Most of the time all these people would be at loggerheads, and at this, they're all relaxed."

"When you put them all in a room together and it's 3,000 people and it's all the show-business stuff, it looks kind of icky," said FT columnist John Gapper. "But actually, the reality is: How am I not supposed to not ever have lunch or talk with these people? You get a story out of it."

But the story was happening elsewhere. At 3:45 p.m. EST/12:45 a.m. PKT, explosions were heard by locals in Bilal Town, a suburb of Abbotabad.

An IT guy Abbotabad noted over Twitter: "A huge window shaking band here in Abbotabad Cantt. I hope it's not the start of something nasty :-S"

At 3:50 p.m.: Osama Bin Laden was "tentatively identified as dead."

At 7:01 p.m.: Osama Bin Laden was positively identified.

At 8:30 p.m.: President Barack Obama was given a final briefing on the operation.

And at 9:45 p.m., every major television network interrupted its broadcast with an update that the president would be briefing the nation. The Apprentice was cut short before America could find out who had been fired.

11:35 p.m.: News of the operation had already leaked out through unofficial outlets on Twitter feeds, some of which had been formerly sprinkled with the Correspondents Dinner's preferred cutesy moniker for itself: "#nerdprom." At 10:24 p.m., Donald Rumsfeld's Chief of Staff and Navy Reserve intel officer Keith Urbahn tweeted, "So I'm told by a reputable person they have killed Osama bin Laden. Hot damn."

Then the president addressed the nation. Nearly ten years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden was dead.

The biggest story of 2011--the behind-the-scenes workings of which had happened within single-digit miles of the elite of the nation's press corps, in closer mass proximity to the president than they are at nearly any other time of the year--had broken.

And it had not leaked. Except perhaps at 10:24 to Urbahn, and via Dwayne Johnson, better known as The Rock. "Just got word that will shock the world - Land of the free... home of the brave DAMN PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!"

Mr. Johnson did not attend the dinner. 

kstoffel@observer.com, fkamer@observer.com

With the erasure of Osama bin Laden hours away, D.C. fixated itself on this slight glimpse of fame—it was nighttime and the end of the weekend of the White House Correspondents Dinner.

“Bristol Palin!” Wolf Blitzer said to The Observer as they both leaned against the cracked marble bar-top. People and Time had wrapped the ceremonial first party of the weekend, long forewarned to be the last chance to experience something other than drunkenness or pre-brunch hangover.

When approached earlier, Ms. Palin refused to talk about two things: whom she wanted to meet at the dinner, and the president’s birth certificate.

“Is she still here?” Mr. Blitzer asked.

She wasn’t.

“I’m looking for celebrities but I’m really bad at spotting them,” he said. “National-security-type figures, foreign leaders, yes. Celebrities, I’m not particularly good at. But I’ll find some.”

Over at the W for The New Yorker’s party, David Remnick stood looking out the window next to Sean Penn, a contributor to the Huffington Post.

“Evidently, that’s the Treasury Building,” Mr. Penn said. He was pointing to the building draped in yellow glow that houses the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The Washington Monument shot up behind it.

“David Remnick is a fantastic writer,” Jon Hamm told The Observer.

Standing by the sushi platters, the man who plays Don Draper pointed to The Observer’s tweed jacket. The Observer glanced down at his sleeves and fraying elbow patches.

“That Rag & Bone?” the actor asked.

The reporter had purchased the item for a few dollars at a thrift store in the South.

“No,” he said.

“Shit’s great, man,” Mr. Hamm said.

Next was a party co-hosted by The Atlantic and that magazine’s peer institution, the Web site Funny or Die.

ON SATURDAY THE CORRIDOR beneath the Washington Hilton stuffed a publication in each of its identical rooms. A tired Samantha Ronson spun at Reuters, purply-eyed, headed back to New York after. Andy Samberg posted up at the bar at CNN. Arianna Huffington kissed friends on the cheek. Tina Brown and her handlers beelined toward the dinner, her bob of porcelain hair glossy as ever. CNBC’s Jim Cramer tried to pluck a beer from a bar after closing time and went Mad Money on the man slinging drinks at the Reuters booze kiosk until he relented.

Mayor Bloomberg lingered near Steve Buscemi.

“What’s the main difference between Washington and our city?” The Observer asked.

“Talk to Stu Loeser, my press secretary!” the mayor yelled back at him. “What part of that don’t you understand?”

The Observer smiled and, upon recognizing that sneer, missed New York City.

Mr. Blitzer had apparently learned how to spot celebrities.

“Oh, Wolf’s my date,” said Mila Kunis. “He’s showing me around.”

He had other fans, too.

“I hear that Wolf Blitzer is somewhere around,” Scarlett Johansson told The Observer. “I would really love to meet him.”

But Ms. Johansson was taken. The Washington press corps had been abuzz over the rumors that she’s dating Mr. Penn, an occasional freelancer for The Nation.

At a party hosted by MSNBC, The Observer had Rachel Maddow mix a French 75, went to the Johnnie Walker Cigar Tent for whiskey and a smoke and saw Elliot Spitzer walk in. Then he left to watch the autograph seekers at the enormous mansion.

The next morning, The Observer woke needing coffee and walked five blocks, a long search for something omnipresent in his home city, but soon found a cup and a Sunday Times. A man he’d seen just hours before exited the Hilton, slowed down and politely approached. He knew this man: thin cheeks warped inward like old balsawood, oversize head, live-wire shock of white hair.

Then came a question that has never been uttered in New York.

“Where did you manage to find that coffee?” the Talking Heads singer said.

Mr. Byrne, you were always right. Home is where I want to be.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

Mr. Remnick on Slate:

"Michael [Kinsley] invented one of the first really good, uh, call it a magazine, paper, whatever—I guess paper is not the word we should use ... It's terrific—look, his contribution couldn't be greater to American journalism."

On Bill Maher:

"You know, Bill Maher and I grew up—he was a neighbor of the drummer of a rock band I was in; eventually it went by the name of Derek and the Dialectics—and during breaks in rehearsing in my friend's basement, I played basketball in Bill's driveway."

On being unsentimental about the printed product:

"Given a choice between the survival of the long-form narrative journalism, criticism, cartooning—all the things that we do—and print itself, there is no contest. No contest. I, at the age of 51, may still think, for me, the best technology for reading the New Yorker at this moment is the print version. But that's just me. If your son, decides otherwise, that he wants to read it on an iPad, kenahorah [so be it]."

On Gail Collins:

"She's very funny."

On football-writing in The New Yorker:

"It's not our strongest thing."

On Tina Brown:

"I thought Tina did some very important things."

On American Idol:

"The reason I don't like American Idol is that a lot of the talent seems to be a replication of the singing style of Mariah Carey and Whitney Huston. I don't need it."

A great novel, one that is for the ages, can still be written. Memorable stories, long and short, continue to be created. Without a doubt, the next male or female Hemingway, Faulkner or Fitzgerald is out there somewhere, hard at work. But with the exception of a few ambitious-and obsessively competitive-fiction writers and their agents and editors, no one goes to a current novel or story for the ineffable private and public clarity fiction once provided.

Exhibit A in the argument that fiction is now a marginal enterprise: Everybody complains that The New Yorker list is inbred, house-approved, a mere PR ploy for the magazine, but no one does anything about it. If fiction were really alive, if it were still the vibrant experience it used to be, then an artistic affront like the "20 Under 40" junior pantheon would be something against which literary people would deploy all their creative energies. About 150 years ago, the established taste represented by the French Academy's annual Salon inspired the gorgeous, seminal mischief of the Salon des Refuses, a counterstatement suffused with every liberating, original quality that the Salon's official productions lacked. Where are the counterlists to The New Yorker's 20? Where is the mischief in the little literary magazines, the fiction-publishing monthlies like Harper's and The Atlantic, the countless online sites devoted to contemporary fiction? Isn't such sharp dissent what the Web was supposed to empower?

Alas: The practice of fiction is no longer a vocation. It has become a profession, and professions are not characterized by creative mischief. Artistic vocations are about embracing more and more of the world with your will; professions are insular affairs that are all about the profession. The carefulness, the cautiousness, the professionalism that keeps contemporary fiction from being meaningful to the most intellectually engaged people is also what is stifling any kind of response to The New Yorker. After all, kick against The New Yorker's conventional taste and you might tread on some powerful person's overlapping interest. You might anger Nicole Aragi, fiction super-agent. You might alienate a New Yorker editor! Literary triumph in Manhattan is now defined by publishing one or two pieces in The New Yorker each year. That is too narrow a definition of literary triumph.

Exhibit B: James Wood. May the gods bless my former New Republic colleague, and may he keep reviewing novels for another hundred years, but the very emergence of Mr. Wood signals the decline of fiction, his driving passion. Hegel was right: The owl of Minerva spreads her wings at dusk. It is only when an artistic genre becomes small and static enough to scrutinize that a compensating abundance of commentary on that genre springs into existence. Imagine a critic during the Golden Age-yes the Golden Age-of American fiction after the Second World War writing with Mr. Wood's exquisite self-consciousness about the rules and regulations of fiction, rather than about-as the Wilsons, Howes, Kazins et al. did-questions of life and society that a particular novel evoked. If fiction were still urgently alive, it would not allow itself to be so easily formulated, evaluated and assigned a grade.

Exhibit C: The ascendancy of nonfiction. The most interesting, perceptive and provocative writers of our moment write narrative nonfiction. A couple of months ago, a story appeared in the pages of The New Yorker that had people talking with an intensity I had not encountered in a long time. The story was called "Iphigenia in Forest Hills," by Janet Malcolm, and it was about a Bukharan-Jewish woman named Mazoltuv Borukhova who was accused, and eventually convicted, of hiring a hit man to murder her husband. Ms. Malcolm was frankly-defiantly, even-sympathetic to Ms. Borukhova and contemptuous of the justice system that put her away. She also constructed a riveting subplot about Ms. Borukhova's little girl, who had been shoveled into the unforgiving bureaucratic machine of New York State's child-guardian system. People were swept up into the complex tale Ms. Malcolm had woven as if into a richly layered novel. Did Ms. Borukhova deserve the author's sympathy? Had justice been served? If so, was justice enough? What will happen to the little girl?

Such existential urgency and intensity were the feelings with which people used to respond to novels by Bellow, Updike, Mailer, Roth, Cheever, Malamud-the list goes on and on. Mary McCarthy's The Group was a best seller, and a critical success, and a scandal, and a book read by "civilians"-i.e., not just aspiring fiction writers who read other fiction writers the way doctors read professional journals and lawyers keep up with the law reviews. But, then, in those postwar decades, there was another sign of how central fiction was to people's lives. So-called commercial fiction was just as relevant to people's lives as so-called literary fiction. Herman Wouk's The Winds of War, James Jones' From Here to Eternity, Chaim Potok's The Chosen, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Marjorie Kellogg's Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon-these novels were all what was called commercial fiction as opposed to literary fiction, but they mattered to people. They illumined the ordinary events of ordinary lives (I can hear James Wood retching), and they were as primal as the bard singing around the pre-Homeric fire. Now everything literary is also furtively commercial, but nothing is popular, except for the explicitly commercial fiction that the literary crowd refuses (or is unable) to write.

In the end, the best argument against The New Yorker's self-promoting, vulgar list is the editor of The New Yorker himself. You want to read a great story about American politics today, overflowing with sharp character portraits, and keen evocations of American places, and a ripping narrative? Read Mr. Remnick's book on Obama, because you won't find it in American fiction. Looking to immerse yourself in a fascinating tale of contemporary finance? Forget fiction. Pick up Michael Lewis' latest book-not to mention his earlier ones. Yearning for a saga of American money and class? Well, Dreiser is dead, and there sure isn't anyone to take his place, so go out and get T.J. Stiles' The First Tycoon, an epic telling of the life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

For about a million reasons, fiction has now become a museum-piece genre most of whose practitioners are more like cripplingly self-conscious curators or theoreticians than writers. For better or for worse, the greatest storytellers of our time are the nonfiction writers. The proof? No one would dare rank them, presume to categorize them by age or exploit them as a marketing tool. Their writing is too relevant and alive.

editorial@observer.com

Following Wired lead comes with the unenviable task of living up to that magazine's numbers out of the gate (the Wired iPad app out-sold the magazine at the newsstand in its first month).

"Listen, it's Wired," Glamour's Cindi Leive told The Observer earlier this summer. "Are readers of every magazine going to respond exactly that way right out of the gate? No. I'm sure they have more readers with iPads right now than I do."

Last week Wired creative director Scott Dadich emphasized the importance of risk-taking in app development.

"The success of the magazine I think is based on that willingness to take risk and the culture that Chris [Anderson] allows at the magazine has really — I think you're seeing that in the success of the app so far," Mr. Dadich told The Observer.

"We’re trying to fail quickly and pick ourselves up and learn from our mistakes and, as quickly as possible, get a product that our readers are in love with and that we enjoy making and that our advertising partners feel is helpful to them as well,” Mr. Dadich added later.

The New Yorker isn't known for playing around with the format of the magazine. Working with Adobe, Mr. Remnick will have plenty of chances to show that he's not afraid to take his magazine out on a digital limb. What does he have to lose?