Pencils down! (SNL)

By now, none of you will have read Prozac Nation author Elizabeth Wurtzel's 5,500-word piece in New York magazine. Sure, some of you might have read the Jezebel summary, or the Huffington Post review, or any one of the thousands of traffic-baiting posts (including this one!) claiming that they can accurately sum up this behemoth.

That is a lie. It is impossible to summarize Wurtzel's end-of-the-year summary, since it encompasses everything: what matters in life, puppies, former employer David Boies, reality, love and a how-to guide on misunderstanding property laws.

But if you have read it and really want to prove to your friends that you have nothing to do at work, here's a handy quiz. Pencils down, everyone!

1.) Which real estate brokerage convinced Wurtzel there was only one rental apartment available in all of Manhattan?
A.) Corcoran
B.) Douglas Elliman
C.) Gandalf

2. ) What movie does Wurtzel compare herself to when dealing with the police?
A) Single White Female
B) Django Unchained
C) Prozac Nation

3. What makes life complete?
A) Kids you do or don’t want
B) Tiffany silver you never use
C) All of the above

4. Who helps Elizabeth Wurtzel figure out how to move?
A) David Boies
B) Her dog Augusta
C) Elizabeth Wurtzel

5. Elizabeth Wurtzel's feminism is most prominent when she says:
A) "I believe women who are supported by men are prostitutes, that is that, and I am heartbroken to live through a time where Wall Street money means these women are not treated with due disdain."
B) "... Hooker Maria’s rage could be explained by her age: recently 50, and out of work."
C) "I am committed to feminism."

So, how did you do? We aren't going to tell you the correct answers, because there is only one reality, but also, understand, that there is another reality where none of this ever happened.

And truly, there is only one thing to say about the whole thing, and it was already said by New York commenter Fighting Irish, four hours ago.

"This piece reads like the Girl You Wish You Hadn't Started a Conversation With at a Party."

And now, let's move on.

Ana Marie Cox, one of the authors named in the lawsuit

The Penguin Group is suing some pretty high profile authors  to recoup some of their advance money, The Smoking Gun reports.

Since an advance is really more of a gamble than a guarantee (authors can be hard to rely on! You can’t rush the creative process! Sometimes editors cancel books!), historically publishers have not held authors accountable. But it is a difficult time for publishing companies and they can probably use all the cash they can get.

Elizabeth Wurtzel signed a $100,000 advance in 2003 to write a "a book for teenagers to help them cope with depression." Penguin wants the Prozac Nation author to return $33,000 – or the first third that is usually given on signing – plus $7,500 in interest.

The publisher is suing New Yorker scribe Rebecca Mead for $20,000, plus interest. She got a book deal for $50,000 for a collection of her writing in 2003.

Former Wonkette blogger Ana Marie Cox is getting sued for her $81,250 (and at least $50,000 in interest). She signed a deal in 2008 with Penguin imprint Riverhead for $325,000

Penguin is also suing "Hip-Hop Minister" Conrad Tillard for $38,000 for a memoir about his "epic journey from the Ivy League to the Nation of Islam," and his subsequent falling out with Louis Farrakhan. Mr. Tillard signed an $85,000 Penguin contract for the book in 2005.

Even Holocaust survivor Herman Rosenblat is getting sued for $30,000 for his memoir about love and survival. The book was cancelled after large parts were found to be fabrication (after he appeared on Oprah).

“Penguin regrets that it had to initiate litigation in these cases, and it did so reluctantly, only after its repeated attempts at amicable resolutions were ignored,” Penguin said when reached this afternoon.

"Penguin this is wrong headed. Authors beware. Books are rejected for reasons other than editorially and publishers then want their money back. Publishers want to reject manuscripts for any reason after an author has put time and effort into writing them all the while paying their bills. Another reason to have strong representation. If Penguin did this to one of Trident's authors we could cut them out of all our submissions," Robert Gottlieb, head of the major agency Trident Media Group, commented on The Smoking Gun post.

Looks like the publishing industry is starting to act more like an industry....

Toure holds court in Brooklyn.

What’s in a name? A lot, if it happens to be Touré: not only did the young Rolling Stone writer and MSNBC contributor deliver a passionate takedown of 9/11 coverage on Dylan Ratigan last week, but in the days that followed, he’s also managed to a) Start a Twitterversy about what your tipping percent says about you as a person, b) release a book about what it means to be black in today’s culture,  c) and announce that he’ll be co-authoring Nas’ memoir. Last night in Brooklyn’s Greenlight bookstore, Touré celebrated the release of his latest book Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness. Hosted by Terry McMillian, the party got hot amidst the crushing fans all trying to squeeze their way into the Forte Greene venue.

MSNBC anchor and occasional Today host Tamron Hall could be found back in the kid’s fiction section, wearing a sexy black leather dress that definitely put her ahead of Kathie Lee or Ann Curry in terms of morning show style. Considering all the bodies pressed into the room, wasn’t she sweating under the thick material?

"I’m from Texas…anything under 80 degrees and I’m cold," laughed Ms. Hall.

A more recent MSNBC hire and former congressional candidate Krystal Ball was also on hand, discussing her recent move from Virginia to Harlem. Although she wasn’t technically sure it was Harlem (maybe just the Upper Upper West side?), but "Touré told me to say it’s Harlem to help with my street cred."

Not that she needs any help in that arena. "I grew up having to deal with this name,"  sighed Ms. Ball, whose infamous Christmas photos involving her husband as Rudolph with an X-rated nose effectively squashed her campaign in October 2010 while keeping her in the top Google search terms for the rest of the year.

Not wanting to reopen that can of worms, we asked if this was because she grew up having people asking for tarot card readings.

"No, because it sounds like it belongs on a stripper," said Ms. Ball.

At least she’ll never deal with the pain of trying to find a stage name, unlike the artist currently known as Mos Def, who announced last week that he would be changing his own in 2012. Judging from the excited whispers of the crowd when he showed up late to the party, it may take awhile for the new moniker to stick: Not one person mentioned that someone calling himself Yassir Yasiin had suddenly entered a Brooklyn bookstore. Zadie Smith and Miss Info -- both of big-name fame -- were in attendance, along with artists Julie Mehretu and Sanford Biggers.

Afterwards a small faction moved to the backyard of Stonehome Wine Bar on Lafayette Street, where Prozac Nation and Bitch author Elizabeth Wurtzel was overheard talking about her boyfriend, who wasn’t there yet but was coming, oh wait, here he is. Former Rolling Stone writer and Touré’s current independent agent Sarah Lazin made the table rounds, pausing long enough to ask if The Observer was mainly a real estate paper now, and  if The Forward had a website (it does) and if its comics are printed in Yiddish (they aren’t).

At the end of the night, our waiter added tip to the bill and an extra section for an “extra tip,” but we left before we could ask the author on the proper etiquette for the elusive double-tip.

Update:

Touré's diplomatic statement on last night's dinner charge: "I always tip 20 percent."

About the event Touré told us today: "I didn't want to have a traditional book event, I wanted to have a real party. DJ, wine...I wanted it to be fun. I think it worked."

Meanwhile, Tablet editor-in-chief Alana Newhouse has announced her plans to write television criticism, but we suspect her editing duties will be keeping her plenty busy for the time being.

At Harper Perennial: Allison Lorentzen bought Coming of Age on Zoloft: Notes on My Generation on Drugs by Katherine Sharpe, billed as "a memoir-investigation of the use of antidepressants among young people" and scheduled for a 2012 release to coordinate with Prozac's 25th birthday.

At Crown: Christine Pride bought Klonopin Lunch by Jessica Dorfman Jones, a "dark and often humorous memoir about the author's early mid-life crisis at 30." In addition to drugs there will be "eventual self discovery."

We're rooting for Lexapro Nation next--Prozac is so passe.

The following year, the magazine published another essay by Sandra Tsing Loh, 47, announcing the end of her 20-year marriage—she had an affair—and cautioning readers against what can happen when your husband considers mastering the perfect bouillabaisse recipe a more titillating activity than giving his wife an orgasm.

Meanwhile, remember Prozac Nation author Elizabeth Wurtzel, who once sat crouched on the floor, a young girl staring up at readers through all that self-conscious eyeliner? Now 42, Ms. Wurtzel wrote a piece in Elle this year about her fading beauty and the lonely dating life that accompanies it. Never too shy to turn herself inside out on paper, she is expanding the article into a book.

Now about me: I am 25 and single. If this were the 1950s, one of my multiyear relationships would have resulted in marriage by now. If this were the 1980s, I would concern myself only with purchasing a really nice shoulder-padded suit. Our mothers and grandmothers seemed to have sound instructions. But now—now that the generation of women ahead of us has begun to sound regretful, shouting at us, “Don’t end up like me!”—what we have instead are Cautionary Matrons, issuing what feel like incessant warnings.

Single 40-something women warn us about being too career-oriented and forgetting to factor in children; married women warn us that marriage is a union in which sex and fidelity are optional; and divorced women warn us to keep our weight down, our breasts up and our skin looking like Saran Wrap unless we want our husbands to later leave us for 23-year-olds.

Essays written by Cautionary Matrons are one of the few genres dominated by our gender; Laura Kipnis’ Against Love: A Polemic and Cristina Nehring’s A Vindication of Love, which landed on the cover of The Times’ Book Review, also come to mind. Not that men are strangers to personal narratives, of course. There’s Jonathan Ames, whose frank tales of his sexual adventures have landed him on HBO; and New Yorker writer Tad Friend, who as part of the research for his recently published memoir went on the self-absorbed quest of asking exes whether he was “a mild jerk or a total jerk.” But while men tend to be cheerfully self-deprecating, women are downright apologetic, asking themselves what they’ve done wrong and how to fix it.

Cautionary Matrons extend beyond nonfiction. In Lorrie Moore’s new novel, A Gate at the Stairs, the protagonist, a 20-year-old college student named Tassie Keltjin, looks over at the older woman who has hired her to be the baby sitter of a baby she has yet to adopt into an already lonely marriage and makes the following observation: “These middle-aged women seemed very tired to me, as if hope had been wrung out of them and replaced with a deathly, walking sort of sleep.”

And then there is ABC’s new show Cougar Town. It’s meant to tease out the empowering side of being 40 and single. But few viewers actually want to a visit a place where even someone as MILF-y as Courteney Cox self-tauntingly tugs the goose skin on her elbows—isn’t elbow skin supposed to be loose?—and refers to her vagina as a “coochie cooch.” And there is Jennifer Aniston. She’s not the Cautionary Matron; it is the hidden tabloid editor who sends her threatening missives by blowing up Ms. Aniston’s thighs alongside headlines shrieking: Old! Alone! Childless! 

Of course not all women are unhappy, despite that recent General Social Survey cited by Maureen Dowd and Time (and disputed by Barbara Ehrenreich in Salon). Tabloid-media powerhouse Bonnie Fuller instructed women on how to have the job, the guy and “everything else you’ve ever wanted” in her 2006 book, The Joys of Much Too Much. But how many others are encouragingly passing along the handwritten recipe of their success to us, their younger counterparts? Where are the role models less frightening than Bonnie Fuller?

‘GET MARRIED BY 32’

Last week, I brought all of this up to my friend Jenny, who is 29, single and works in publishing. We were at her Williamsburg apartment and she was making pork chops.

The phrase Cautionary Matron reminded Jenny of a woman whose novel she edited a few years ago. This 40-something author’s novel (and reality) was about an older woman who was desperate to have a child but was dating a man she didn’t like very much, and so over countless lunches and drinks, their talks about the book often turned to men. Or, more specifically, a man Jenny had broken up with and was considering reuniting with.

“And she said, ‘Well, you’re not in a position where you need to do that just yet,’” said Jenny. “But just make sure, whatever you do, that you get married by age 32. Because if you’re not married by 32, no one will want you and you’ll end up like me.”

Jenny leaned back in her chair and swirled her glass of wine. “It was just such a crazy thing to say!” she said. “But it was so honest, too, that it still haunts me. It’s not that I even think ticktock in a biological sense. I think ticktock in terms of what she said about turning 32! And how crazy is that?”

And yet the messages stick. After Jenny read Ms. Gottlieb’s piece in The Atlantic, she stayed an extra year in a relationship that she wanted to end at the time. “I was thinking it wasn’t working out, and then I read that piece and I thought, ‘Well, he’s a nice, cute guy who likes me; maybe I shouldn’t break it off,’” she said.

Last week, by phone, Ms. Gottlieb said this was not her intention and that her forthcoming book will clarify things a bit. (After the article, she received countless letters from women—alarmed by her tale of loneliness—who had read it and immediately got engaged to their less-than-scintillating boyfriends.)

“The article was like I was someone’s big sister and I was saying here’s my experience and all of the misconceptions I had,” Ms. Gottlieb said. “I think you guys are actually lucky because you’ll get a more mixed set of messages. When I was in my 20s, women were all about having it all and ‘a guy is great but he is not the main course.’ We got a single message and it was all, me, me, me, me, me. ‘You go girl!’ And now those of us that grew up with these messages are finally admitting that those messages of empowerment may actually conflict with what we want.”

Ms. Tsing Loh’s piece was directed at her generation, but she said she wasn’t surprised that young women were reading. She speculated about the reason for this apparent surge in matronly warnings: “I think because we’re really surprised!” she screamed into the receiver. “In our 20s, the world was totally our oyster. All those fights had been fought. We weren’t going to be ’50s housewives, we were in college, we could pick and choose from a menu of careers, and there were all these interesting guys out there not like our dads. We were smart women who had a lot of options and made intelligent choices and that’s why we’re writing these pieces. We’re shocked!” Shocked because even with all those choices, Ms. Tsing Loh’s marriage didn’t work out.

“It must be very confusing,” she said sympathetically. “We were the protégés of old-guard feminists: ‘Don’t have a baby, or if you must, have one, wait till your 40s.’ We were sold more of a mission plan and now you guys … Well, sadly, it all seems like kind of a mess. There is no mission. Even stay-at-home moms feel unsuccessful unless they’re canning their own marmalade and selling it on the Internet. You just have a bunch of drunk, depressed 45-year-old ladies going, ‘A-BLAH-BLAH-BLAH!’”

THE ANTI-MENTOR

At a birthday party later last week, in the West Village, I ran into my friend Caryne, who is 31, single, tall and striking, and works at a nonprofit. When I asked her if she’s ever had a Cautionary Matron, she widened her eyes and nodded. “I call her my Anti-Mentor!” she said.

Caryne’s Cautionary Matron is her former boss, who never married but had a series of disappointing romances. “Rarely do I hang up the phone with her and feel comforted. Usually, I feel anxiety and paralysis about the decisions that I need to make to avoid everything she warns me about.”

I asked Caryne why she thought our mentors have taken to enjoining rather than encouraging us. She said she had to think about it and rang me a few days later.

“They are the first generation of women who were presented with choices,” she said. “I think they are in the process of reflecting on a half-century of existence and are realizing that ‘having it all’ was really a lie. Sometimes I think the idea of ‘having it all’ can almost be more disempowering than ‘having it all’ because one is never allowed enough time or energy to excel in one area of their life.”

When confronted with grim advice, some young women go on the offensive. Said Jenny of her Cautionary Matron: “I think there is an element of jealousy there. If she can go back and do it over again, she would. But she can’t and I’m here so …”

Ms. Gottlieb had a response to this: “I think it’s part denial and part arrogance. I get it because I used to be that way in my 20s. I wanted the fairy tale. I thought that I deserved to have it, that it was my inalienable right! So that’s the arrogance, and the denial is that they simply can’t acknowledge that they, too, could become these older regretful women who wished they knew what was important in love earlier on. We’re not envious—we’re wiser.”

Ms. Wurtzel echoes this sentiment, writing in her Elle piece: “Age is a terrible avenger. The lessons of life give you so much to work with, but by the time you’ve got all this great wisdom, you don’t get to be young anymore.” And later: “Oh, to be 25 again and get it right.”

When I contacted Ms. Wurtzel, hoping for an extra pearl or two about how I, as a 25-year-old, might learn from her mistakes and “get it right,” she emailed that she “didn’t have an audience in mind when I wrote it, but if anything I was thinking in terms of people who could relate to it, not so much people who could learn from it.” She also backpedaled a bit from her cautionary stance. “Of course, I’m 42 and I’m not married, but I don’t feel sorry for myself. … It’s not that I’m not sad sometimes, but I’m definitely not sorry.”

Perhaps. But then there’s this part in her piece about her love life today: “Dating this person for three months, that one for a few weeks, sometimes longer. They come, they go, someone is always coming as someone else is going; it’s not like there’s no one, but it’s all so lonely.”

When Jenny—already fearful about turning 32, thanks to her personal Cautionary Matron—read Ms. Wurtzel’s article, she emailed me the following: “Ugh. Now I am going to sit, coma-like, on the sofa and contemplate my impending decay. Great.”

ialeksander@observer.com

In the meantime, the women’s rights establishment is placing its hopes elsewhere. Feminist icon Gloria Steinem, former vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, the National Organization for Women, the Feminist Majority and the National Women's Political Caucus have all endorsed Representative Carolyn Maloney.

Here’s what author Erica Jong, one of the relatively few Kennedy-supporting feminists, has to say about that: “I think that the old-time feminists have their heads up their asses. And you can quote me. Basically, I think that Carolyn Maloney is a wonderful woman, and a wonderful politician and political leader. But electability matters and it is not the elite who elect.”

And here, by contrast, is what Nation columnist Katha Pollitt has to say about Caroline Kennedy: “I guess the thing about Caroline Kennedy is except for being a woman she has never expressed herself on any feminist issue. I mean, she has been--she hasn't done anything for women's rights in any area at least that I'm aware of--and that's what feminism is about. So, she fund-raised for the public schools, that's nice but--let's not kid ourselves.”

Maloney, who turns 60 next month, was elected to Congress in 1992—the first woman ever to represent Manhattan’s Silk Stocking district. The former chair of the House Caucus on Women's Issues, she was instrumental in passing a bill that pushed for federal funding to clear a backlog of rape kits, an effort later depicted in the Lifetime movie A Life Interrupted: The Debbie Smith Story. She just wrote a book called Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated: Why Women's Lives Aren't Getting Any Easier.

She belongs to what is referred to in academic circles as "second wave feminism." This is the generation of Steinem, of Betty Friedan, of Billy Jean King, and even of Hillary Clinton. These are the women that pushed for equality in the workplace, for reproductive rights, for women's studies departments at colleges and universities.

Kennedy, 51, is younger than this generation, more a beneficiary of its work than a partner, and when Gloria Steinem, last weekend, endorsed Maloney for Senate and suggested Kennedy run for Maloney's House seat (in a nice symmetry, Maloney represents the district where Kennedy lives), she seemed to be delivering a message: earn it.

If this reminds you a bit of the Democratic presidential primary campaign of Hillary Clinton—the first and only female senator from New York—against Barack Obama, it should.

"Lots of feminists who backed Hillary Clinton felt that [Obama] had jumped the queue," said Ann Friedman, an editor at the blog Feministing, who thinks there is a similar sentiment among some feminists about Caroline Kennedy. "I think those things are present in their opposition [to Kennedy]."

Opposition might not be quite the right word, since few of these women have offered any direct criticism of Kennedy. Earlier this week on a tour of upstate New York that roughly followed Kennedy's own travel, Maloney was asked if Kennedy's celebrity bothers her.

"As President Carter said, 'Life isn't always fair,'" she responded. Asked about her chances against Kennedy, she added, "If it's a celebrity beauty contest, I'm definitely not going to win."

This is pretty hard-bitten stuff from a wealthy Upper East Sider, and it's not unlike Clinton's presidential campaign, during which the former first lady sometimes projected perhaps a somewhat inflated sense of having overcome incredibly long odds, given that she had also been a prominent Democrat for decades.

"I think as a general rule, women are more prone to a question of when they deserve it," said Friedman. In this case, she went on, "It's not strictly an issue of qualifications, it's not strictly an issue of experience. Often those things are often bound up in the question of 'deserve,' and I think Caroline Kennedy kind of brings that to the fore."

Kennedy is, in some ways, a good post-feminist icon. Younger women, studies show, don't identify with the term "feminism," but they are rich with the less aggressive "gender consciousness."

Lisa Maria Hogeland, an assistant professor of English and women's studies at the University of Cincinnati, wrote about this in an oft-cited essay for Ms. magazine in 1994.

"One measure of feminism's success over the past three decades is that women's gender consciousness—our self-awareness as women—is extremely high," she wrote.

Feminism is gender consciousness, according to Hogeland, but the reverse isn't true.

"Feminism politicizes gender consciousness, inserts it into a systematic analysis of histories and structures of domination and privilege," she wrote.

"This is in one way the result of the success of feminism," said Professor Janet Jakobsen, director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women. "That there should be more than one woman who is qualified potentially for this seat is good, right?"

"Given that," Jakobsen went on, "then how do people break down? And what are the other divisions besides gender that come to the fore? [I] think that Carolyn Maloney's experience is really crucial. And also the work that she has done—she has been a leader, certainly in New York State, in terms of any issue having to do with women—the person you would turn to is Carolyn Maloney."

She added, "Those haven't been Caroline Kennedy's major concern."

They haven't, and that in part reflects Kennedy’s own generation. She came of age when feminism was established, and when the political activism of the second wave was waning.

"I wonder if it's indicative of what's happening in feminism right now, and I think there's something to that," said Alyson Cole, an associate professor of political science at CUNY's Graduate Center and Queens College. "I think that there is a way in which it's almost switching—the younger generation's more open to Caroline Kennedy, and sort of the idea that woman takes a woman's seat and that seems sort of appropriate."

"The question is, does she really have the experience?" Cole added. "And I think the argument could be made that, for what she needs to do, and especially for Hillary's seat, she's not really that different."

In many ways, the public debates about Kennedy's candidacy among women have very little to do with her. It's Americans wrestling with the idea of political dynasty, or celebrity culture, or wealth.

In The New York Times last weekend, Lisa Belkin wrote about women returning to work after having children--although that's not precisely what Kennedy is doing, and she has never made any related claim.

In another Times piece, Susan Dominus implied that Kennedy's brother, John, would have been better received and wondered if there is a "vague, collective longing" for her to remain the "dignified, tasteful Kennedy," although it's not clear if Kennedy herself is interested in the same.

Elizabeth Wurtzel, an outspoken feminist often cited as part of the "third wave," does not think Kennedy is being treated with any sexism. "No other women with less blue blood could even attempt to get away with what she seems to in fact be getting away with," Wurtzel wrote in a recent piece for The Daily Beast. "This is not sexism; this is reality."

"One of the things the American public has problems thinking about is a combination of a question of privilege," said Professor Jakobsen. "So Kennedy means privilege—that's what they stand for." She added, "It's either privilege or sexism—it can't be both. Very hard for people to think both those things at the same time."

The equation for Maloney is a less complicated one. She is the embodiment of a feminism that has a history, that is clearly defined and that is, frustratingly for her supporters, less politically relevant than it once was.

"I think," said Professor Jakobsen, "That what they feel is that the reason Carolyn Maloney doesn't have a shot is because she has been so strongly identified with women's issues. Because she was in the House starting at a time when women couldn't think about succeeding in the highest offices in the nation—and they feel that she's being overlooked because of that set of associations. That in some sense she's trapped in a historical moment that is no longer the case, but with which she is associated. And I think that makes them angry."

Certainly, there seems to be little equivalent indignation among traditional feminists on Kennedy’s behalf.

Gary Ackerman, who has represented parts of Long Island and Queens for decades, recently drew parallels between Kennedy and pop singer Jennifer Lopez and, in a separate interview, Kennedy and Alaska governor Sarah Palin. The remark about J. Lo was obviously hyperbole, but the Palin comparison has stuck, and been repeated, although most renditions of the metaphor neglect to mention that in addition to several verbal tics, Palin was under investigation for abuse of power and under scrutiny for improper use of state funds at the time of the campaign. Caroline Kennedy hasn't been accused, even, of poor driving skills or meanness.

"I do there has been sexist stuff said about Caroline Kennedy in the course of this debate," said Friedman, citing talk of "Princess Caroline" and her pony. "You could make a critique based on legacy that isn't gendered, and I think that's a valid critique, but I think that it's been done in a gendered way."

More remarkable than Ackerman's insults is that Maloney, not long after, defended him. Asked on Errol Louis' radio show if Ackerman's comments were sexist, Maloney responded, "Gary Ackerman has been a strong supporter of women's rights," and added, "He is not a sexist."

There is so much diversity among "third wave" feminists that the term is actually more a useful indicator of age than political philosophy, which is partly why there seems to be no particular enthusiasm for Kennedy among the younger generation. First, she's not one of them. Second, she hasn't necessarily tried to reach them. And third, because this is a post-racial, post-gender generation, they aren't going to back her just because she's a woman.

Asked what politicians fit the "third wave" model, Jakobsen named Barack Obama.

"It's his style," she said, "but it's also this 'post' thing."

Friedman, the Feministing blogger, supported Obama in the primary. "On the issues, on their records, Clinton and Obama were not that far apart," she said. "At Feministing, I feel like that was a constant tracking point that we returned to during the primary." It was something that "trumped gender for us," Friedman said, adding, "Or for a lot of us, I should say—we're not a monolith."

Katie Roiphe, author of the controversial book The Morning After and daughter of author Anne Roiphe, agreed with the second wave-generation idea that Caroline Kennedy has done little to earn the seat. At the same time, she said, she doesn’t see any compelling need to support Carolyn Maloney – or any other woman – for the seat, either.

“That the mere fact of being a woman isn’t enough to inspire enormous feminist support is actually a good sign,” she said.

Referring to the self-identified feminists rallying for a female replacement for Hillary Clinton, she said, “I just think that the influence of that particular kind of feminism is less powerful than it was, and I think it’s a narrow-minded view that’s no longer capturing the public imagination in a way that it did, say, a decade ago.”

--additional reporting by Josh Benson

An earlier version of this article was published on PolitickerNY.com on Jan. 12.

Mr. Lapham, his round tortoise-frame spectacles resting firmly on the bridge of his nose, was talking about his recent efforts to get more young people to attend readings and events hosted by the quarterly. "For the fun of it," he explained.

"My editors are young, they are all under 30, and I trust them," said Mr. Lapham. "When people get to be of the older demographic, when they get to be 50, they tend to read history and watch the History Channel. When I conceived the quarterly I thought that would be the audience, but I was surprised to find out how many young people liked it."

Scattered among the antique leather couches and grandfather armchairs in the room were indeed groups of 20-somethings--the boys with disheveled hair and the girls in vintage dresses. Except, that is, for the quarterly's 23-year-old assistant editor, Elias Altman, who was delighted when his well-fitting suit was complimented by The Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel. (Mr. Altman informed Ms. vanden Heuvel that his linen pocket square was lent to him by Mr. Lapham.)

Among the readers (who included Francine Prose and Calvin Trillin) that evening was Elizabeth Wurtzel, who published a memoir about depression, Prozac Nation, when she was 26; she's now 41 and an attorney at Boies, Schiller, & Flexner LLP. Originally Ms. Wurtzel was supposed to read Sylvia Plath. Then Mr. Lapham suggested Teddy Roosevelt, but the text failed to "move" Ms. Wurtzel and she selected a passage from Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, which she studied on the train ride over while listening to Guns N' Roses.

Ms. Wurtzel graduated Yale Law School last May and began practicing just this year. But earlier that day, Gawker had reported that Ms. Wurtzel had failed to pass the New York State bar exam.

"Wow, really? I had no idea. I didn't even see that. That's interesting," Ms. Wurtzel said of the report, with an awkward half-smile. "It's a weird test. I think when you go to a different school than Yale you are better prepared for it. It was definitely hard. I guess when I should have been studying, I was kind of having a good time."

Since taking up her new part-time job working for Mr. Boies, Ms. Wurtzel said she has not given up writing. In fact, she has been able to do more of it.

"The problem was that when I was just sitting in my room writing, I wasn't actually getting that much done. Now that I work, I'm getting more writing done," said Ms. Wurtzel. "And law is actually a little bit like literary criticism because when you look at cases, you're looking for the detail in the case that will help you prove your point."

The Transom wondered if the ubiquitous photo of Ms. Wurtzel in her 20s that still graces every article written about her-the one where she's crouching down and staring up into the camera, thick eye-liner around her eyes-is a haunting presence.

"I wish I still looked like that! I'm very conscious of the fact that I am 41 now. Age creeps up on you and suddenly you're 41. It's weird," replied Ms. Wurtzel. "Your looks suddenly change dramatically and you just don't look the same. I'm actually thinking of writing about it, though I don't want to write yet another miserable book that lots of people can relate to. But it's a worthwhile subject."

Sprrrring -a-ding-ding! Yep, 'tis the season when New Yorkers take to shivering at outdoor café tables, squeaky basketball starts to be edged out by sleepy baseball, and superannuated actors crawl out of hibernation to do charming local gigs …. Today, former Cybill Shepherd sidekick Christine Baranksi reads from two John Guare plays, The Loveliest Afternoon of the Year and A Day for Surprises , at the somewhat beleaguered National Arts Club . The playwright-practically the only living one we can stand -will be there, which almost makes up for the sad little buffet lunch they put out. Oops , breaking news! Ms. Baranski just got a "part in L.A." (you go , sister girlfriend), or so a publicist told us, and will be replaced by either a) Kevin Bacon's wife Kyra Sedgwick (like a sultry Julia Roberts ), or b) bulimia survivor Ally Sheedy ! Stay tuned . Later, fleshy actor Alec Baldwin opens a Selected Shorts short-story reading series at Symphony Space . Tonight's theme: "New York Stories." Low-level Thomas Beller–Parker Posey watch in effect ….

[Baranski's replacement, National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South, 12:45 p.m., 362-2560; Baldwin, Broadway at 95th Street, 8 p.m., 864-5400.]

He's a gambler! Meet Andy Bellin : Vassar grad, Paris Review contributing editor and author of Poker Nation: A High-Stakes, Low-Life Adventure into the Heart of a Gambling Country (not to be confused with former Letterman writer Jill A. Davis ' recently published dirty novel, Girls' Poker Night , nor Elizabeth Wurtzel's Prozac Nation ). The new book is about Mr. Bellin's total fixation with poker, which he learned on his mother's knee at age 7 and which eventually led him to drop out of an astrophysics graduate program at Wesleyan. "My father is a reconstructive and plastic surgeon in New York, so he really dug the idea of me becoming a scientist," said the author, 33, "and he took the news kind of hard. And even at the time I was working at the Paris Review , people would say, 'Oh, what is Andy doing?' and my dad would say, 'He's a failed astrophysicist.'" Well, you can't really blame him-that's what George Plimpton always tells people about himself! "When people ask about the book, I feel like such a fantastic fraud," said Mr. Bellin. "I'm so bloody dyslexic, I'm like, 'What am I doing here? Isn't there someone more qualified?' Then I realize that all I'm really talking about is poker and me ." Tonight he'll be fêted at the Paris Review , where he was originally hired in 1995 to bring the magazine "into the 21st century." Alas, we think they still have rotary phones.

[George Plimpton's house, top-secret Upper East Side location, 6 p.m., by invitation only, 207-7590.]

Thursday 21st

Sex-in Soho? Don't you feel that, more and more, Manhattan

resembles a sort of tittery 18th-century salon, with women yammering about their bra-cup sizes to all and sundry? Short-story writer and spiffy-looking freelance journalist EmilyWhite readstonight from hernewtome, FastGirls:TeenageTribes and the Myth of the Slut , part of a budding subgenre of bawdypersonal memoir/criticism/reportage that includes Leora Tanenbaum's Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation and, of course, the queasy Elizabeth Wurtzel "feminist classic," Bitch . Meanwhile, a few blocks away, under the dull glare of those maudlin, energy-inefficient Towers of Light: doe-eyed author Ben Schrank celebrates his second novel, Consent , at the coyly named bar Happy Ending. Bonus dirty excerpt! "We kiss. It's more like we're licking each other. I have her hands pressed back, above that towel bar, up against the wall." And that's on page 16, folks! Later, this scene is re-enacted live and en masse as the "wild, downtown" sorts at Paper magazine-kind of like Talk , except still in business-celebrates its "Annual Beautiful People" issue, which has actor Billy Crudup on the cover because, as editor David Hershkovits explained to us, "He's in something on Broadway." (For those who are curious, he's in The Elephant Man.)

[ Fast Girls reading, Housing Works Used Book Store Café, 126 Crosby Street, 7 p.m., 334-3324; Consent party, Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street, 6 p.m., by invitation only, 334-9676; Paper magazine party, Pressure, 110 University Place, 9 p.m., by invitation only, 226-4405.]

Friday 22nd

Wigged-out gent! Englishman-in-New-York Paul Huntley has been messing around with actors' coiffures for 50 years! Yowza. A former actor, he learned his trade in London at a wig academy , was summoned here by Mike Nichols in the 1970's to do the hair for Uncle Vanya with Julie Christie and has remained ever since, though he finds the apartments in New York City "overheated." We asked for some "hair-raising" stories. " I try very hard to be diplomatic, but there are moments when you want to, perhaps, kill someone-but in the nicest possible way," he said. "I remember in a production of Lorelei , Carol Channing hadn't actually pinned her wig on terribly well, and she came on and did a routine and suddenly it totally fell off. She didn't care, bless her heart, she didn't care, she was a trooper-she just left it lying there and continued her routine in a stocking cap." What does he consider his"crowning"achievement? " I adored Amadeus when I did it; I love 18th-century. And I suppose TheProducers , because that's rather special-those wonderful chorus girls in it who look glorious." Tonight, in the theater world's last-ditch bid for attention before the Oscars on Sunday, Mr. Huntley receives the Theatre Development Fund's Irene Sharaff Artisan Award.

[Marriott Marquis, 1535 Broadway, cocktails and ceremony, Astor Ballroom, 6 p.m., installation of original costumes, wigs, etc. to follow, Sky Lobby, 37th floor, 221-0885.]

Saturday 23rd

Feeling puckish? Strap on your knee pads for a coed "Heroes in Uniforms" hockey charity tournament benefiting Sept. 11 charities, with the FDNY, NYPD and Port Authority teams going up against National Hockey League alumni plus a not-very-coed-sounding mix of famous people, like Alan Thicke ( Growing Pains ), 90210 refugee Jason Priestley and maybe tennis genius John McEnroe . Bring extra mouth guards.

[Chelsea Piers, 1 p.m., Pier 60, 888-430-5200.]

Sunday 24th

Oh, Oscie …. So we're total red-carpet whores , but our Precious booked a ski trip to some remote part of Idaho, where we're not even sure they have TV, for this weekend-nice going, baby ! Anyway, you can practically do the Oscar routine in your sleep: There's a) Entertainment Weekly 's minor-celebrity-studded, cigar-waving party at Elaine's , slightly more fraught this year because of all the loose talk that EW editor and thinking-woman's sex symbol Jim Seymore is being kicked upstairs by those meanies at Time Inc., or b) the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' official, if slightly creaky, celebration, to be held this year at Le Cirque and hosted by movie-of-the-week veteran Dina Merrill . "Yesterday we had this wonderful tasting lunch," said Ms. Merrill, who plans to wear a sequined evening coat atop a dress designed by Peggy Jennings. "The first course was a lobster dish, and it's from In the Bedroom because the guy was a lobster fisherman; and then the main course was lamb, inspired from GosfordPark ,with golden onion rings; and then dessert was a chocolate thing that had to do with A Beautiful Mind -it's something that reminds you of your youth." Burp! P.S.: If Moulin Rouge sweeps, we're gonna stay in Idaho and open a B&B.

[ Entertainment Weekly , Elaine's, 1703 Second Avenue, 6 p.m., by invitation only, 957-3005; official Academy party, Le Cirque 2000, 455 Madison Avenue, 6 p.m., by invitation only, 388-1400.]

Monday 25th

Two Davids: If you're gay, but not in that fake-lesbian man-titillating way (see Once and Again , Kissing Jessica Stein , Ally McBeal ): straighten your shoulder pads and stride down to Washington Square for this year's N.Y.U. Fales lecture, "Mommie Queerest: Joan Crawford and Gay Male Subjectivity," delivered by University of Michigan English professor David Halperin -not to be confused with Ecco Press editorial director Daniel Halpern (although, coincidentally, it is Small Press Week). If you're avowedly, insistently, almost-protesting-too-much straight : terse playwright David Mamet reads not-yet-published work at the 92nd Street Y. Don't bring Granny if she's not fond of four-letter words!

[Halperin, N.Y.U. Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square, 6:30 p.m., 998-2596; Mamet, 1395 Lexington Avenue, 8 p.m., 415-5500.]

Tuesday 26th

Bam or vroom? Overheated celebrity "chef" Emeril Lagasse may have been kicked off NBC, but he'll be a peacock tonight in Chelsea, where he and Child magazine are hosting a party for his new children's book, There's a Chef in My Soup! The man pushes spices pretty hard, so arm your tots with Ritalin and antacid …. Meanwhile, a bit farther uptown,

Rabelaisian society ladies like Marina Rust and Nathalie Gerschel Kaplan alight on the "steering committee" (get it?) for the New York International Auto Show's gala preview; richer-than-G*d comedian Jerry Seinfeld is a sponsor, and wrap-dress queen Diane von Furstenberg one of the honorary chairs. What it benefits: the East Side House Settlement in the South Bronx, a region that would have much better air quality if they'd clear out all the cars.

[Emeril Lagasse book party, Chelsea Market, 75 Ninth Avenue, 7 p.m., by invitation only, 499-8149; New York International Auto Show, Jacob Javits Convention Center, 655 West 34th Street, 6:30 p.m., 718-292-7392.]

Wednesday 27th

Hoary performers continue to spread their "spring wings " as once-comedic actor Robin Williams , having successfully passed through the touchy-feely, sincere teddy-bear thespian phase (one can only hope) that perhaps reached its apogee in Good Will Hunting , returns for his first stand-up comedy gig in 15 years. Tonight, he tells lowbrow dirty jokes in highbrow Carnegie Hall-not bad for the former Mork from Ork, eh?

[57th Street and Seventh Avenue, 8 p.m., 247-7800.]

Now, Random House proclaimed, tech-savvy readers could use their computers to download the prose stylings of writers like Elizabeth Wurtzel, Lewis Lapham, Robert Samuelson, New Yorker staff writer Tad Friend and dot-com chronicler Po Bronson. New titles by these authors would be available only as e-books; the publisher would not print hard copies.

It was a big, bold gamble, a thumb in the eye to 546 years of post-Gutenberg publishing. It was also a giant dud.

Six months after Random House's earth-rattling boast, e-books are about as popular as Jar-Jar Binks action figures and Color Me Badd records. With e-book titles such as Ms. Wurtzel's Radical Sanity fizzling on the e-shelves–sales through last week had just cracked 100 copies nationwide–enthusiasm within the publishing world toward e-books has significantly dampened. And now, Random House is reneging on its no-hard-copies pledge: AtRandom.com recently announced that it will offer print versions of its e-books.

"Right now, it's kind of a nonexistent marketplace," said Sam Lipskar, a publishing agent.

Lest we sound like Luddites, it's important to state that it's very possible, if not likely, that people will eventually come to embrace electronic publishing. Already, certain e-books–like Stephen King's Riding the Bullet , released for free last year–have succeeded. But so far, the ballyhooed e-book phenomenon has been pure hype, and Random House's euphoric AtRandom.com announcement–once viewed as the forecast of a revolution–has been significantly downgraded.

In an interview on Friday, March 9, AtRandom.com Books' editorial director, Mary Bahr, sounded more like someone who spends hours wandering the stacks at the Strand Book Shop than an e-book revolutionary.

"Words printed on a page provide a reading experience that is one we're accustomed to –but also, as it turns out, one that is extremely efficient," she said. "A paperback is not enormously expensive for us to produce and the reader to buy."

Ms. Bahr became the AtRandom.com chief after her predecessor, Jonathan Karp–who had helped negotiate e-book deals for Ms. Wurtzel, Mr. Lapham, Mr. Bronson and others–surprised his colleagues by leaving the publishing house to go work for the film producer Scott Rudin. (That pairing didn't take, however, and now Mr. Karp is back at Random House.)

While Mr. Karp once touted the no-hard-copies pledge, Ms. Bahr now says that AtRandom will be selling trade-paperback editions of all its titles. She also said that next fall's list of Random e-books won't have any novels on it, and that readers shouldn't expect much in the way of long-form literary journalism, either.

"Books that are narrative–that have a beginning, a middle and an end, that you're meant to read through for pleasure–it's a better experience when it's words on a page," Ms. Bahr said, noting that she was speaking, in this case, as a reader of books as much as an editor of them.

The two titles that Ms. Bahr will push hard as e-books are the increasingly media-ubiquitous Dr. Ian Smith's Dr. Ian Smith's Guide to Medical Websites and a series called Code Notes, which will consist of reference titles on computer programming. And in an attempt to make the e-book reading experience more compelling, Ms. Bahr said that each title will have a heavy Web component. For example, with Code Notes, e-book readers will have the opportunity to go to a companion Web site that offers drills and chatrooms. "There's a real value to that kind of digital book," Ms. Bahr said.

Indeed, AtRandom.com hasn't thrown in the e-book towel.

To celebrate its first list, on March 8 AtRandom threw a very traditional book party at W New York Union Square. The editors, agents and authors drank white wine, ate red-bell-pepper slices and mingled, but there was a sense of pessimism and defensiveness in the room.

When it came time for Jeff Blackburn–an executive for Amazon.com, which has partnered with AtRandom to sell its titles–to give his perfunctory congratulatory remarks, he ended on a dour note. "The one criticism I have to make is that people expect to find just about anything" on Amazon, he said. So far, the e-book offerings have been rather thin: "We need to make up that gap." Mr. Blackburn also said that the e-books had to be more compelling than regular print books, drawing an analogy between the straightforward VHS videotape and the bells, whistles and directors' commentaries found on DVD's.

But also weighing heavily in the room that night were the dismal sales numbers released in an Associated Press story the previous day: In the first two and a half weeks they were offered, just 40 e-book versions had been sold of Ms. Wurtzel's Radical Sanity , a Jane Pratt-style advice book for younger versions of herself, and 26 copies of Cameron Dougan's first novel, Because She Is Beautiful. Ms. Bahr said that the numbers were held down by some early problems, like getting the titles to display properly on Amazon.com, and that the glitches have since been fixed. She added that initial reports from two of AtRandom's distributors for the past two weeks suggest that sales are picking up, with Ms. Wurtzel's 100-plus in sales leading the pack.

Reached by Off the Record, Ms. Wurtzel wasn't terribly dismayed by the double-digit sales number.

"I'm not surprised," she said, adding that she had hoped the book would be much cheaper than its $10 retail price. "It seemed like an experiment, a whole new way of publishing books." ( Radical Sanity was recently released as a paperback, too.)

Other e-book authors were similarly cautious. Henry Alford, a regular contributor to Vanity Fair and The New York Times Magazine, said he initially expected his AtRandom humor book, Out There: One Man's Search to Find the Funniest Person on the Internet , to be an e-book "for a while." Now, he said, "I think of it as a trade paperback."

Gersh Kuntzman, the New York Post columnist and author of Hair! Mankind's Historic Quest to End Baldness, said his impression was that the upcoming release of his title as an e-book was a marketing tool, and that the main event was the actual paperback edition, set for release in April.

"I do think there is a future for e-books," Mr. Kuntzman said. "But there's no present for e-books–or, quite frankly, almost anything on the Internet right now–so Random House is doing the right thing by putting a full commitment behind the printed versions of all our books."

Sam Lipskar, the agent who represents Mr. Kuntzman, agreed that for the foreseeable future, e-books will primarily be a form of marketing: "I think [AtRandom] clearly recognizes that a lot of the electronic marketplace is driving print sales."

Richard Abate, an agent at I.C.M. who is handling electronic-rights deals for authors, agreed. "People are recognizing that e-books can be used to drive paper books," he said. As for the promised revolution, he and others will have to wait.

As New York City's Mayoral race begins to build, the New York Post is getting its city room in order. After a somewhat long and slow process, the Post filled its metro-editor post by naming Sunday editor Jonathan Auerbach to the position.

Working under him will also be political reporter Gregg Birnbaum, half of last year's influential "Campaign Buzz" team, who was named the paper's political editor.

Publisher and editor in chief Ken Chandler, editor Xana Antunes and managing editor Stuart Marques had first looked outside the paper for a metro editor, but then began looking inside their own shop. "I think he will be a great metro editor," Mr. Marques said of Mr. Auerbach.

Well-regarded in the Post newsroom, Mr. Auerbach worked with Ms. Antunes when the latter edited the business section. When Ms. Antunes was named editor, Mr. Auerbach became Sunday editor.

The metro-editor slot had been vacant since John Mancini jumped in January to Newsday 's city bureau in Queens, part of that paper's effort to gradually win WPIX 11-watching readers in New York City.

No one was named to replace Mr. Auerbach as Sunday editor.

As political editor, Mr. Birnbaum will oversee coverage not only of City Hall and Albany, but of Washington, D.C., as well. This means that Mr. Birnbaum–one of the paper's best reporters–will no longer be writing. "Campaign Buzz," however, will most likely live on into the next election cycle with new personnel.