Mr. Butler also cobbles together instruments from anything he can get his hands on. Among the most elaborate is a stringed contraption fashioned from a tennis racket, a hockey stick, a metal comb and God knows what else. Listed on the credits of his “Greatest Hits” CD are the Push Broom Cello, the Brush-Axe, the Cane Racket and the ominous-sounding Octavator.

The resulting avant-noise doesn’t lend itself to quiet meditation, yet its ingenuity and gusto are self-evident. Mr. Butler’s performance at Aqua Art Miami, one of the many art fairs that recently descended upon that sunny locale, was diverting, funny and, in the end, irresistible. His neo-Dadaist gizmos and unprepossessing charm put to shame the juvenilia being peddled at the “new alternative art fair.” Do young artists look to inspiration outside of tattoo parlors, slacker quilting bees and the pages of Barely Legal? Apparently not.

The art featured at Aqua couldn’t compete with the faded environs of the hotel that housed it. How can umpteenth-generation punks hope to compete with the honest kitsch of 1960’s décor, artfully arranged surfboards and a decorative hammerhead shark? That didn’t stop collectors, artists, students and curiosity-seekers from filing through, just as they would through Pulse, Scope, Bridge, Flow, Ink, the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) and grassroots affairs like Grendel and Fountain.

The Mother of All Art Fairs, the source from which all these other, smaller events spring, is Art Basel Miami Beach, which has transformed this city into a major player of the international art scene. Blue-chip art dealers began selling their wares in the city five years ago, partaking of the temperate weather, party-hearty atmosphere and access to capital. Since then, Miami Basel has blossomed into a veritable Roman orgy of discretionary spending. Are there really that many people with that much money who can keep such a staggering enterprise afloat?

And is the current and seemingly inexhaustible fascination with art a signal of our culture’s sophistication or its insecurities? Certainly, big money is a draw, as is the scene’s increasing rapport with the worlds of celebrity, real estate and fashion. Keanu Reeves was spotted eyeing objets d’art. The Sun Post, a local alternative paper, featured a not-so-alternative 60-page pullout titled “The Art of Real Estate.” The clientele at Miami Basel sported extreme nips-and-tucks and alarmingly abbreviated mini-skirts. Future sociologists will have their work cut out for them when studying the art subculture; Miami is sure to constitute a significant chapter.

As a media event, Miami Basel is an undisputed success. A friend likened the crowds rushing the gates of the Miami Beach Convention Center to the masses stampeding through the doors of Wal-Mart on Black Friday. The comparison only goes so far: Art Basel shoppers command big bankrolls. Critics rue the Machiavellian nature of it all—one wag suggested that if a governmental agency dared to investigate the art world’s privileged quarters and shady dealings, an Enron-style scandal would ensue. Still, art lovers could take solace in the quality of the work on view.

Dreck may have prevailed at Miami Basel, but the good stuff was good indeed: works by Giacometti, Morandi, Klee, Soutine, Lyonel Feininger, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Lee Krasner, H.C. Westermann, a lone painting by Neo Rauch and two canvases by Gerhard Richter that gave this detractor pause. Marketplace scorekeepers will note that a lot of work by Hans Hofmann, Donald Judd and Alice Neel was up for sale. Ultimately, though, the amount of stuff on display was more than the eye and the psyche could withstand. When a litany of names turns into a blur of experience, it’s hard to keep focus on aesthetics.

Young artists were the chief focus of the attendant art fairs around town, and the energy level among them was palpable, even if most of the art could barely muster a head of steam. The Container Show—two dozen or so galleries exhibiting their wares in shipping containers—had the benefit of a picturesque South Beach setting.

The same can’t be said of Pulse, Scope and Nada, each of which was located in Wynwood, a neighborhood with some shockingly poverty-stricken corners. Locals shouted out bemused greetings to the artsy, well-heeled hordes straggling wide-eyed through their community. It didn’t take a diehard Marxist to detect culture clash.

A glut of art lends itself less to specifics than to generalizations. Was there any contemporary work that rose above the haze? At Miami Basel, the young Dutch artist Jacco Oliver’s Community (2006), a video narrative created by filming consecutive states of an image painted in oils, possessed a winningly poetic élan.

Dam, Stuhltrager, a gallery located in Williamsburg, stole the show at Scope with a kinetic sculpture by Ryan Wolfe and drawings by Michael Schall. Constructed from circuitry, small plexiglass boxes filled with gravel and blades of long grass, Mr. Wolfe’s installation twitched, flicked and flowed with a mesmerizing lyricism—like three-dimensional calligraphy. Mr. Schall’s intensely realized works in graphite depict hushed post-industrial dreamscapes somewhere between Caspar David Friedrich, Giorgio de Chirico and Dr. Seuss.

At Pulse, the Polish artist Piotr Nathan resourcefully contrived a neo-Constructivist sculpture from a fragmented, graffiti-strewn door. How much is gained by learning that this musical array of arcing geometry was once the door of a public restroom known for hosting fleeting homosexual encounters is, I guess, worth considering. Still, Mr. Nathan’s unerring eye for rhythm, space and interval is self-sustaining and trumps any political subtext.

There were additional attention-worthy artists—the names Piero Dorazio, Hester Simpson, Julie Evans, Lindsay Walt, Mark Wagner and John Duff are scrawled across my notepad—providing welcome breaks from the sideshow atmosphere. The most telling image was at Scope: A pair of devil’s horns mounted on a hefty dollar sign. Money is the root of all evil—didn’t you just know it? The painting was, of course, for sale. Therein lies the hypocrisy, if not the isolated glories, of Miami’s art-fair madness.

New York politicians have been talking about the city’s garbage crisis since the Koch administration. Many fine-sounding solutions have been put forward over the years, but the long-term problem hasn’t changed much. In fact, if anything, the crisis has gotten worse.

New York has lots of garbage and no place to put it, at least not since the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island was abruptly shut down during the Giuliani era.

Now, however, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City Council have agreed on an ambitious plan that will change the way every New Yorker deals with residential trash. That’s because the plan aggressively pushes a concept that New Yorkers haven’t entirely embraced: recycling.

New York produces 12,000 tons of noncommercial waste every day. Getting rid of all that junk isn’t exactly the sexiest of urban issues, but try living in a place that neglects basic sanitation issues.

Ever since Fresh Kills closed, New York has been exporting its residential garbage by rail, by truck and by barge. But now, under the Mayor’s plan and with the Council’s approval, New York will cut down on this dubious export by reducing the amount of stuff New Yorkers simply throw away.

By next year, city officials hope that New Yorkers will be recycling a quarter of their trash. At the moment, New York recycles only about 16 percent of its trash, a pretty paltry sum. If all of this sounds familiar, it should. New York has been talking about recycling for years.

This time, however, the city is serious. Soon, subway stations and parks will have containers for trash that can be recycled. Old and broken computers and other electronic equipment will no longer be picked up as regular trash. They will also be subject to more stringent recycling regulations.

Recycling hasn’t caught on in New York the way that it has in other cities because New Yorkers are, well, New Yorkers. They’re understandably dubious about earnest, do-good policies that seem to work best in places where everybody listens to NPR, grinds their own coffee beans and takes a light-rail train to work.

New Yorkers are a bit more gritty than that. Using biodegradable bags for yard waste, making sure an aluminum can doesn’t wind up with the clear glass bottles—well, it all sounds just a little too clean, a little too earnest, a little too suburban.

But then again, who ever thought that New Yorkers would agree to clean up after their dogs?

New York produces a lot of garbage. It’s time we produced a little less of it.

The Mayor’s plan will make that happen. And it’s about time.

Power Struggle

It’s hard to know who’s more unpopular in New York right now: Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez or Con Ed chairman Kevin Burke. Mr. Rodriguez finished last week with more errors (five) than hits (four), doing little to help the Bronx Bombers in their desperate attempt to chase the Boston Red Sox out of first place.

Mr. Burke, for his part, presides over a public utility that left tens of thousands of Queens residents without power—for cooking, for cooling, for just plain living—for more than a week. While electricity may not mean much to the average Yankees fanatic, it has become somewhat important in the daily lives of most 21st-century New Yorkers.

So Mr. Burke probably is the bigger civic goat at the moment. His utility has been charged with a monumental error in its handling of the Queens blackout. Even as most Queens residents finally get their juice back, local politicians are calling for Mr. Burke’s head. Several elected officials announced that Con Ed’s conduct during the power outage was somehow worse than the Enron scandal.

If nothing else, this kind of absurd outrage ought to make Mr. Rodriguez—who used to play in Enron’s home state of Texas—feel a little bit better. Sure, Yankee fans boo him unmercifully. But at least nobody has compared him unfavorably to baseball’s equivalent of Enron, Barry Bonds.

Con Edison surely has some questions to answer about why and how the blackout occurred, and why it lasted so long. And yes, the buck stops on Mr. Burke’s desk.

But even Mr. Burke’s most demagogic critics must realize that power outages are a fact of life. Sometimes entire cities, entire regions, are left without power because of a storm.

Could Con Ed have been better prepared? Could it have been more responsive? Perhaps. But, in fact, until an investigation is finished, nobody knows what happened. And nobody really knows—at least not yet—who deserves an old-fashioned Bronx cheer.

Alex Rodriguez should be so lucky.

Thomas Manton

Thomas Manton, chairman of the Queens Democratic Party, was an old-fashioned clubhouse politician schooled in the art of getting things done.

His death on July 23 deprived New York of an effective and energetic political leader who loved his profession and his city.

Mr. Manton was the son of immigrants who achieved power the old-fashioned way, through hard work, ambition and a little luck. He was elected to the City Council, and then to Congress, at a time when his home borough was being transformed by a new generation of immigrants and their children. Mr. Manton was one of their staunchest advocates.

Although he retired from Congress several years ago, he continued to be a powerful behind-the-scenes player in city politics. His support for Christine Quinn helped her become City Council Speaker earlier this year. Her tenure in that job speaks volumes about Mr. Manton’s wisdom and judgment.

The Observer offers its condolences to Mr. Manton’s family.

The main problem is that the book doesn’t know what it wants to be: a serious history; a scandalized litany of recent scandals; a practical guide for policy makers; or a sociological deconstruction of the culture that fed the boom. Although it may be possible to combine all these effectively in a single volume, in practice the attempt gives Origins of the Crash the disjointed quality of a work in progress. Rather than extend or deepen the themes raised previously in his columns, Mr. Lowenstein simply repeats them ad nauseam--then stretches to make connections where none logically exist.

Mr. Lowenstein begins by identifying the Leveraged buy-out (L.B.O.) boom of the 1980’s as the cultural moment when the concept of “shareholder value” became a pretext for enriching executives and promoters: “When an L.B.O. failed, society was poorer–jobs were lost, innovations were forgone–but the raiders simply went on to the next deal. The L.B.O. operators bore a moral hazard, for they had nothing to lose.”

This view of the world ignores the reality that the “raider” supplies the 25 to 50 percent of the capital structure that is equity, and that he has everything to lose (a number of them actually have lost everything). That’s why private equity funds that sponsor L.B.O.’s (all but a few of which are now barred from hostile “raids” under the terms of their fund agreements) also typically require their operating executives to invest equity. Also, if a good company has a bad capital structure it does not go out of business, but is instead usually restructured. Debt holders take a haircut, equity holders take a bigger haircut (or are wiped out) and life goes on; jobs and innovations are not necessarily forgone.

Never mind. Mr. Lowenstein is intent on his thesis that the fetishization of ever higher stock prices has lead to a culture in which shareholders and board members have given unwarranted and imprudent leeway to management to get share prices up. We should not be surprised, he argues, when executives who are given a “free ride” through exorbitant stock option grants increase a company’s risk profile or even fudge numbers to get a short term lift in the stock price. “The progression from L.B.O.’s to stock options to a market bubble was nurtured by a consistent ethos,” Mr. Lowenstein argues. Indeed, Mr. Lowenstein contends that absolutely everything about the boom and subsequent crash can be explained by this ethos of “shareholder value”: “Virtually every transgression flowed from this simple corruption,” he asserts.

But what should we do about this? Mr. Lowenstein doesn’t propose an alternative to the current share price as a way of calculating “value.” And rewarding managers on a different basis from shareholders raises important issues that are simply left unexamined. Saying that managers should concentrate on the long term is easier than structuring compensation systems to encourage long-term thinking. Mr. Lowenstein also fails to explore an apparent dilemma: Increased disclosure, which he lauds, is likely to aggravate the volatility of stocks, which he abhors. Beyond a very superficial discussion of the recent Sarbanes-Oxley corporate governance legislation, there’s no systematic discussion here of the policy implications of his views. Mr. Lowenstein tells us time and again that rules that focus on disclosure are not enough, but never tells us what broader rules he would propose. Instead we get chapters rehashing the already well-covered ground of the Enron and WorldCom scandals.

Mr. Lowenstein has set the bar high by inviting comparisons with the classic of the genre, John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Great Crash (1955), a brilliant anatomy of the 1929 debacle. Mr. Galbraith argued that the search for villains was misguided and that the 1929 crash was the “product of the free choice and decisions of thousands of individuals” who were “impelled to it by the seminal lunacy which has always seized people who are seized in turn with the notion that they can become very rich.” Of course he realized and documented with ferocious wit the extent to which “[t]here were many Wall Streeters who helped foster this insanity.”

One of the deficiencies of Mr. Lowenstein’s book is the complete absence of wit. Indeed, he has the slightly hectoring tone of someone trying to hard to make an argument he knows doesn’t quite hold together. Also missing from Mr. Lowenstein’s book is the sense of perspective that Mr. Galbraith brought to his book—which was written 25 years after the event. My guess is that the wounds from our latest bout of collective lunacy are still too raw—we may have to wait a quarter of a century for the definitive account.

Jonathan A. Knee is a Senior Managing Director at Evercore Partners and an Adjunct Professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia Business School.

Last week, on the April 13 edition of the radio program Democracy Now!, host Amy Goodman brought current Voice columnist Nat Hentoff and staff writer Tom Robbins on the show. They were met by the recently resigned Press Clips columnist, Sydney Schanberg, and the paper’s recently fired Washington correspondent, James Ridgeway.

The interview was a boisterous consciousness-raising session about the evils of Michael Lacey, Village Voice Media’s executive editor.

Mr. Lacey, the man responsible for much of the overhaul at The Voice since New Times completed the $400 million merger in November, didn’t appear on the program. But listeners were treated to an FM version of what’s going on at The Voice for the last four months: two sides bitterly talking past each other.

As the dissident Voice staff tells it, the new management is a bunch of out-of-town bean counters bent on dismantling a precious 50-year-old journalistic institution. The new management, in turn, depicts the paper as a haven for thumb-suckers, with a staff so self-satisfied that it refuses to stop writing left-leaning commentary and go out and do some reporting.

In tone and nuance, the standoff now suggests a battle over a decaying historic building—between a pushy, mercenary developer and a bunch of cranky cat-and-newspaper-hoarding tenants.

It wasn’t always this way. Earlier in the relationship, some Voice staffers had warily welcomed the arrival of New Times, hoping the new management would reverse an internal perception of neglect on the part of the former owners.

“The paper was not putting out stuff we had come there to be a part of,” one Voice staffer said. “There is a lot of pent-up frustration.”

And New Times, though the dominant partner, took on The Voice’s name—The Voice’s name had more cachet.

The New Times/Voice deal was approved by regulators in November 2005. In January, Voice publisher Judith Miszner resigned. Editor Don Forst resigned in December 2005. Doug Simmons took over from Mr. Forst, and Ms. Miszner’s position was taken by Michael Cohen, the publisher of Miami New Times.

The top editorial authority was Mr. Lacey, who began flying in, when needed, from Phoenix, Ariz., where he resides.

Mr. Lacey made it clear that though his chain had bought The Voice, he didn’t have much taste for the newspaper as it was constituted. If he was the new landlord, he was talking about a gut rehab at a minimum, and possibly a teardown.

At a Feb. 1 meeting, Mr. Lacey bluntly told staffers of his plans to eschew Bush-bashing commentary for local investigative pieces.

Now, the organization of the paper is being changed. Much of the front of the book is being overhauled. Mr. Ridgeway’s column has been killed, and so has Mr. Schanberg’s Press Clips column and Toni Schlesinger’s Shelter column, which provided quirky interactions with apartment and loft dwellers. The film-review budget has been cut by two-thirds, according to a source, and some film reviews are now being contributed by freelance writers from other New Times papers. According to Voice staffers, New Times has also dismissed The Voice’s three-person fact-checking department and laid off two of the five copy editors. Last month, Mr. Lacey killed interim editor Ward Harkavy’s blog, the Bush Beat. The end-page essay has been discontinued. Voice writers now have to use the New Times stylebook, and according to a source, there are words—including “meta” and “subversive”—that are now banned from the paper.

In a phone conversation, Mr. Lacey said that all the changes are designed to create space for more magazine-style reported pieces. Commentary, at least as currently practiced in The Village Voice, has no place in the New Times regime.

“I want our writers to start reporting,” Mr. Lacey said. “One of the things that happened with the Internet and blogging is that it made simple punditry in newsprint irrelevant. It’s no longer timely.”

(“Everything I do is reporting,” Voice columnist Nat Hentoff said by phone. “I have no patience for people who write off the top of their heads based on what other people have said.”)

“I’m going to change the dynamic,” Mr. Lacey said. “It’s true for any paper we operate: We have a reputation for doing hard news. We call people up and get the information. We dig the records up. If people aren’t comfortable with that, they’ll have to find employment elsewhere.

“This is so simple,” Mr. Lacey said. “It’s almost like reading See Dick Run. Our job is to go out and get the information about how the deal went down. All the punditry that goes on in your head at 2 in the morning is no more valuable than a sophomore in college debating over espresso. The deal is always more interesting and more complicated than you know sitting at your typewriter. Once you go out and start talking to people, you get a lot of new information.”

Mr. Schanberg, the media critic, said he decided to resign after Mr. Lacey told staffers he didn’t want references to outside reporting in The Voice. “I came to the conclusion he didn’t like my work,” Mr. Schanberg said. “I couldn’t work for someone where my product wasn’t respected.”

(On Jan. 3, Mr. Schanberg took on the Bush administration over the National Security Agency wiretapping story. On Jan. 17, he wrote about James Risen’s book on N.S.A. wiretapping.)

Mr. Lacey is currently interviewing candidates for a permanent editor—his most recent interim editor, Doug Simmons, was fired last month. According to one staffer, more than 50 candidates have been considered. Mr. Lacey declined to name potential selections, but said he is considering applicants from national magazines, daily papers and alternative weeklies, and hasn’t set a timetable for his decision. He is not limiting his search to New York City–based candidates.

“That would be a real plus, but ultimately, it’s the writers who have to know New York City. It’s not like any city is unknowable, or unlearnable. The question is: Will they put in the effort to work all the time to grasp this place?”

Once he lands his new editor, Mr. Lacey said the role of a weekly paper such as The Voice is to set the agenda, not comment on it.

“All that chatter, all that blogging—it’s people writing about what other people have reported. We can our wrap our hands around the throat of the beast, find out what happened, and give that to readers,” he said. “It’s fun. It’s a kick-ass way to make a living. We have found a way for all the troublemakers at the back of the school bus to make a living. You want to sit in your room and ruminate? Not on my nickel.”

Can Mr. Lacey’s new rumination-free, troublemaking Voice convince a new generation of readers accustomed to getting their classifieds on Craigslist, their music reviews on Pitchfork and their dose of political commentary from The Daily Show to not pass by the free stacks that wait lonesome on Village corners?

“When Dan Wolf was the editor, you would find conflicting points of view in every issue,” said Ed Koch, a friend of Voice founder Wolf. “After his departure, I thought The Voice became much more radical in its point of view and more uniform. When it becomes predictable, you ignore it.”

“The original Voice was an iconoclastic newspaper,” said New Yorker media critic Ken Auletta, who covered city politics for The Voice in the early 70’s. “Increasingly, the paper became predictable. You would pick up a headline and know what’s in a story. Despite the fact it’s now free, you’d walk by it and not read it because you’d know what’s in it. I suppose I’m being unfair because I wasn’t reading it that often. And maybe I missed it, but there were few surprises.”

For some, The Voice has remained relevant on beats, including labor, class and politics. “Wayne Barrett I read closely,” said Patrick Healy, The New York Times’ chief New York political correspondent. “He is a real institution on the political beat.”

But current and former Voice staffers see New Times’ focus on local reporting and seeming disinterest in national politics and commentary as an abdication of duty, of a dismantling of their institutions. And it was Mr. Lacey’s March 31 firing of Washington, D.C., correspondent James Ridgeway, a 30-year veteran of the paper, that has been the clearest signifier of that new direction.

“It just didn’t make sense that we have an office in D.C. when what we needed to do is concentrate on New York City,” Mr. Lacey said.

“[Mr. Lacey] wants to cut the budget and fatten profits,” said Karen Durbin, The Voice’s editor from 1994 to 1996. “I hate to be blunt about it, but it makes my blood boil. The paper always did national and international coverage. It was part of who we were, and part of who our readers are.”

As editor, Ms. Durbin sent Mr. Ridgeway to Haiti to file dispatches on the civil unrest there. “The Voice always stood on two pillars, politics and culture,” she said.

“What the new owners haven’t grasped yet,” said staff writer Tom Robbins, “is that New Yorkers care more about what’s going on in the Bush administration than they do what’s going on in the Bloomberg administration.”

Mr. Ridgeway, a Newspaper Guild member, has retained attorney Jan Constantine and is currently considering legal options to fight his dismissal. “We’re reviewing our options,” Ms. Constantine said by phone April 17. She said she’s been retained by Voice writers worried about their job security and further dismissals.

“Well, I think all journalists should check their ego at the door,” Mr. Lacey said, when asked if Voice staffers might be angry about giving up national ambitions. “The history of this business is filled with people who have to turn their heads sideways to fit through a door because their ego is so large. Humility never hurt anyone.”

But it’s hard to achieve a state of humility through force. For one thing, a newspaper with radical staff changes is a grim place to show up each day. On April 17, online managing editor Nathan Deuel quit to take a position at Rolling Stone. On April 6, Web manager Akash Goyal also quit the paper, according to a source.

“There have been many good music editors, but Chuck Eddy was the most efficient, most professional I worked with,” said Voice senior editor and rock critic Robert Christgau on April 18. “He was fabulous to work with. He was the only editor who got his sections in not on time, but ahead of time. He was so easy to work with. He was great.”

Fortune may be bracing for another senior-staff departure. The magazine’s star Enron reporter, Bethany McLean, has held talks with The New York Times Magazine and the still-unnamed Condé Nast business title, according to sources close to Ms. McLean.

“I’m totally happy covering the Enron trial,” Ms. McLean said by phone from Houston on April 18. “I’m not planning to make any decisions until the trial is over. It’s the final chapter to this Enron saga. I’m really grateful to Fortune to let me spend the time to cover it.”

Last month, senior editor Daniel Roth departed for the Condé Nast magazine, helmed by Wall Street Journal alumna Joanne Lipman.

At Fortune, Ms. McLean was recently promoted to editor-at-large. A Fortune spokesperson said the promotion wasn’t made in an effort to counter a competitor’s offer.

“Like all our writers, we value Bethany highly. As with all our writers, we want to make sure she’s happy. But any recent changes in the editorial structure is not specific to Bethany.”

—G.S.

“For someone to style a book as a memoir and take liberties with strict factual accuracy of the account is not unusual,” said Jonathan Kirsch, an author and publishing attorney. “That’s the world we live in, and publishers tolerate it. They might even encourage it, because it makes the books juicier.”

But the opinion that mattered was Oprah’s.

As the news of Mr. Frey’s apparent fabrications—laid out in a sprawling report on the Smoking Gun Web site Jan. 8—spread, the professionals weren’t the ones who counted.

“This book will come and go, but the ripple effect could be much bigger if it causes Oprah to say, ‘I don’t want to get into this again,’” said literary agent Lynn Nesbit. “This would be incredibly damaging for the book industry.”

It was Mr. Frey’s memoir that marked Oprah Winfrey’s return to her role as a rainmaker in the world of modern literature. In 2002, the talk-show host had turned her terrifyingly influential on-air book club away from contemporary authors, choosing instead to goose the sales of classics like The Grapes of Wrath and Anna Karenina.

But Mr. Frey tempted Ms. Winfrey back with his ostensibly real-life tale—first published in 2003—of battling to overcome a life of addiction, degradation and wanton criminality.

During the original incarnation of Oprah’s Book Club, there was grumbling in publishing circles that Ms. Winfrey’s treatment of contemporary fiction was too mushy—that she concentrated on issues of personal growth, abuse and racism, dissecting novels as if they were nonfiction.

In 2001, Jonathan Franzen complained that Oprah’s selection of his book The Corrections would tarnish his reputation as a serious literary figure. Ms. Winfrey promptly dis-invited him, a move that reminded the tweedy editors that most people who buy books tend to do so at places like Wal-Mart—and that they often get their buying advice from people such as Ms. Winfrey herself.

But Mr. Frey was more than willing to promote his memoir on Ms. Winfrey’s terms, going on her show to inspire the viewers by discussing his own demons. His book shot back to the top of the Times best-seller list—with his follow-up memoir, My Friend Leonard, hot on its heels.

“There is something hopeful and interesting about the Oprah Book Club again,” said one New York editor. “No one really got excited about Grapes of Wrath when Oprah picked it. With this one—I saw two people on the subway this morning reading it. It kind of gets people excited and talking about a contemporary book. It’s a good thing, even if it’s Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone.”

Broader popularity has a price. Mr. Frey was already a literary celebrity; winning the sensitive hearts of the memoir-reading set, he had put himself on a Prozac Nation/Girl, Interrupted trajectory, with crowded readings, a fortune in the bank and a film deal in the works.

But it wasn’t until he reached Oprah levels of fame that the Smoking Gun decided, as recounted in its report, to include his picture in the site’s file of celebrity mug shots. And that led to the discovery that Mr. Frey’s career as a self-described drug-addled desperado—a “Criminal” with a capital C, in his usage—had no paper trail to back it up. In lieu of a crack-fueled car accident and brawl with cops, for instance, there was a lone open-container citation.

The publishing industry took it all with a resounding lack of outrage, especially as the news arrived in tandem with The New York Times’ declaration that emotionally fragile, semi-autobiographical feral-child novelist JT Leroy was a hoax.

“The entire memoir genre is rife with this,” one editor said.

“We live in a media culture in which the line between strict reporting of facts and invention is very blurry,” Mr. Kirsh said. “We’ve been in that media culture since In Cold Blood.”

Publishing figures seemed less than eager to discuss the potential impact of the Frey incident on their industry; in any standard book contract, it was repeatedly pointed out, the author warrants that what they’ve written is true. Publishers have never fact-checked, and only routinely look at material for cases of libel or invasion of privacy.

In a statement released on Jan. 10, Doubleday declared: “In publishing Mr. Frey, we decided A Million Little Pieces was his story, told in his own way, and he represented to us that his version of events was true to his recollections. Recent accusations against him notwithstanding, the power of the overall reading experience is such that the book remains a deeply inspiring and redemptive story for millions of readers.”

But it wasn’t just the overall reading experience that drew Ms. Winfrey back into contemporary publishing. It was the belief that Mr. Frey was describing real life.

And if Ms. Winfrey were to turn against Mr. Frey, A Million Little Pieces could well become the Enron of the memoir boom.

In a letter to the Smoking Gun, posted on the Web site with the rest of the Frey report, Mr. Frey’s attorney warned the online reporters, “my client has lucrative book and movie deals in place, as well as having an expectation of prospective economic benefits. It is certainly foreseeable that your publication of a false Story about Mr. Frey—particularly one falsely attacking his credibility—would imperil both existing and anticipated economic benefits, resulting in substantial damages to my client.”

Last week it was announced that Mr. Frey’s editor, Sean McDonald at Riverhead, had signed the author to deliver two more books, one of which will be a novel.

“I’m looking forward to showing people that I can write fiction,” Mr. Frey told Publishers Weekly in October, “that I’m not just a guy who can write about himself.”

And Mr. Frey was preparing to take his case to the talk-show world. According to his Web site, the author was scheduled to go on Larry King for a full hour on Jan. 11.

—additional reporting by Gabriel Sherman

So it was something of a surprise last week when two scandals burst beyond the carefully guarded walls of Dalton and Spence into the very public realm of New York's court system.

On Thursday, April 21, lawyers for 16-year-old Christopher Spaide and his parents, Drs. Richard and Chang Spaide, filed suit against the Dalton School for "arbitrarily and capriciously" suspending the high-school sophomore after he wrote a series of controversial "minutes" for a February student-government meeting. The suit alleges that the minutes-which the young Mr. Spaide wrote in his capacity as secretary of the student government-were intended as nothing more than playful "attempts at wit and satire." And it accuses the school of "irreparably" harming Mr. Spaide, demanding that Dalton expunge any reference to the scandal from his record.

As described in court documents, the young Mr. Spaide is a lifelong Daltonian and A-student with "exceptional intellectual abilities." But according to sources at the school, Mr. Spaide's minutes consisted of plenty of homophobic, anti-Semitic and racist commentary and included fabricated accounts of student-teacher affairs.

"It became a really big deal," said one source of the frenzy that gripped the school after Mr. Spaide's commentaries hit the Dalton Web site.

"I think we see this thing as a very unfortunate occurrence; nobody wants this thing played out in a courtroom," said Daniel Kurtz, an attorney with Holland and Knight, who is defending Dalton against the Spaides' lawsuit. "I think we very much regret that the family chose to pursue this in court, but we are prepared to say our piece in the courtroom and defend the school's course of action, which I think was absolutely correct here."

But Mr. Spaide's lawyer kicked the blame back to Dalton. "We are deeply disappointed in Dalton's response to a relatively minor incident involving a student publication, particularly when the school had an affirmative duty to monitor the writings before they were published," said Matthew Delforte. "He is an excellent student; they know he's not a bully."

Mr. Delforte and his clients are expected to meet with Dalton's attorneys in court for the first time on Friday, May 6.

Meanwhile, just two blocks north, on limestone-lined East 91st Street …

The Spence School, which is perhaps best known as the grooming ground of Gwyneth Paltrow, was hit on April 20 with a complaint by its former food-services chef, Jared Lewis. The complaint charges that the school "willfully and wrongfully" breached Mr. Lewis' employment agreement when it fired him on Dec. 16, 2004, and demands damages and benefits of nearly $42,000.

According to the complaint, Mr. Lewis is "a twenty-seven (27) year old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a background and interest in food service management and catering." He joined the school in August 2003, and earned rave reviews from faculty, parents and at least one student: In the fall of 2004, he began dating a 19-year-old former Spence girl who, apparently, had taken a keen liking to his chipped beef on rye.

On the evening of Nov. 23, Mr. Lewis joined this student and two of her 19-year-old friends at Sessions 73, an Upper East Side "jazz bar" (we're pretty sure that's an oxymoron) on First Avenue and 73rd Street. The underage gal and her two friends chatted and listened to music while Mr. Lewis had a drink, court papers said. A good time was had by all.

Ten days later, however, Spence's headmistress, Arlene Gibson-who is the wife of Good Morning America co-anchor Charles Gibson-called him into her office and questioned him. According to Mr. Lewis's complaint, she had heard "an unfounded and vicious rumor" that Mr. Lewis and his underage pals were drinking! Mr. Lewis insisted that he was the only drinker in the crowd, but in mid-December the school fired him.

Mr. Lewis's attorney, Bruce Menken, refused to comment on the case, and a spokesperson for Spence begged off, saying she was unaware of any lawsuit. But a source close to the story was able to provide this tidbit: Despite his diminished circumstances, Mr. Lewis and his Lolita are still together.

-Lizzy Ratner

London Bawling

A few former students of Hollywood acting coach Roy London got together for a good cry at the Soho Grand Hotel on Sunday night, after the Tribeca premiere of a documentary film memorializing their former teacher. It was a group-therapy session without the analyst; a good, old-fashioned smooch fest of a party honoring a great man who died too young. At certain moments throughout the night, Elizabeth Berkley wept in a corner. Hank Azaria sniffled at the bar. Arye Gross hung his head and stifled tears.

It was just the sort of evening Roy London would have loved.

According to the film, titled Special Thanks to Roy London after the final credit on The Larry Sanders Show-Mr. Sanders being another grateful student of the late coach-Mr. London was a man constantly in search of genuine emotion.

As Ms. Berkley told us: "He would hold up a mirror to you and say, 'This is who you are. Don't ever waver from that. Stand in it. As an artist, find your voice and sing it loud. Because you'll never exist in a form like yours ever again.'"

In the film, the Showgirls star describes how he would also hold up a mirror to her before every private acting lesson and force her to wipe off the makeup she used to slather on her face as an aspiring starlet. He told her to act natural, to find who she really is, to "bring her soul closer to her skin."

While talking, Ms. Berkley held The Transom's forearm. Likewise, other actors and the filmmakers themselves appeared eager for human contact all night, hugging and tapping and warmly petting each other's heads as they remembered stories about Mr. London. All through the evening, we were surprised to find ourselves part of an A-list snuggle.

"His whole modus operandi was about giving," said Karen Montgomery, one of the film's producers, while absent-mindedly rubbing our back. "His gift in life was to empower other people. It was just an incredibly generous state of consciousness to be in on this planet."

Mr. London, a man with the looks and spirit of a Keebler elf, was Ms. Montgomery's acting coach until his death at the age of 50. He also taught Sharon Stone, Jeff Goldblum, Brad Pitt, Patrick Swayze and half the rest of the Screen Actors Guild. He used to tell them that all human actions are motivated by one of two things: love and power. He knew he was a celebrity among acting coaches, but he shunned the spotlight, giving only two known tape-recorded interviews about his acting techniques in his life.

Mr. Azaria told us Mr. London is responsible for every one of his successful roles, from Apu on The Simpsons to Agadore in The Birdcage. He remembered "one class very early on. I was looking at him with some reverential look on my face. And he looked at me and said, 'What are you looking at?' I was mortified. And he said, 'Wipe that look off your face.' It was clear he was there to make you better at acting. He happened to be brilliant while he was doing it, but he never wanted that kind of attention."

Which is perhaps the one thing Mr. London wouldn't have liked about his big party-the flash of the klieg lights, the air kisses exchanged by B-listers and the red-carpet parade of at least 10 film, television and theater stars, at least nine of whom actually stayed for the film (tsk tsk, Jeff Goldblum; don't think we weren't paying attention … ).

Christopher Monger, the film's director, said the draw of this and other documentaries is that "real emotion isn't being shown in movies anymore. It's almost baroque. If you watch TV shows, people will take their glasses off and say a line. I mean, no one actually does that. But with documentaries, people are seeing real emotion, they're going, 'Oh, yeah, that's what that looks like."

Mr. Monger said no one pulls out real emotion quite like Mr. London, at least from those who knew the man personally before he succumbed to AIDS in 1993. Then he took a sip of his martini, reached for The Transom's wrist, and wiped away a tear.

-Rebecca Dana

The Blame Game

"Journalism is very much like ninth grade in the locker room on Monday morning," reflected Kurt Eichenwald, the New York Times reporter and author of Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story. "No one wants to admit that all that happened on Saturday night was nothing."

Mr. Eichenwald, whose book is the most recent in a long list of Enron autopsies, was on the phone discussing business reporters who heaped praise on the now-bankrupt company in the late 90's without noticing that it was a house of cards. But he might as well have been describing the petty rivalries between fellow journalists, some of whom have accused Mr. Eichenwald of going easy on Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, Enron's chairman and president, respectively.

"In Conspiracy of Fools, Lay and Skilling aren't really aware of what's going on and [Enron C.F.O.] Andy Fastow is the bad guy," summarized Peter Elkind, the co-author of The Smartest Guys in the Room, another Enron book, which came out in 2003. The mild-mannered journalist was standing in the dining room of the Hotel Plaza Athénée on April 13 at a reception to celebrate Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, the new documentary based on his book (co-written with Bethany McLean), answering questions from a crowd that included Norman Pearlstine, Tina Brown and Harry Evans, Eamonn Bowles, Marcia Gay Harden, Steve Kroft and Terry McDonell. "They're all scumbags!" shouted one guest.

Several days later, Mr. Elkind described over the phone how some Ken Lay defenders showed up at a recent screening of the movie in Houston to complain about the film's damning portrayal of the fallen executive, holding up Mr. Eichenwald's book as an example of someone who had done the story differently. "They were asking, 'Well, how can you blame these guys? It's not their fault.' We said that's nonsense. It's not just Lay running the company and making $300 million, but specifically authorizing Fastow to set up these partnerships." Mr. Elkind added that Conspiracy "ignores the direct role that Ken Lay and Stilling played in a whole lot of events."

Needless to say, Mr. Eichenwald sees things differently. "Has anyone argued with any of my facts? Not once. No one wants to engage the facts," he said, explaining that he has not yet seen the documentary, though he is familiar with Mr. Elkind's book. "Do I present some caricature that these are the most evil people to walk the face of the earth? No, it doesn't do that …. The reason that Fastow looks so bad is that he was constructing most of the deals. Was he doing this by himself? No, it's clear that others were involved …. The real question is: Does my book exonerate Ken Lay criminally for the charges he actually faces, not the charges dreamed up by some Congressmen or in the minds of some journalists who don't understand the rules? No."

-Marcus Baram

We all know the names: Enron, Hollinger, the New York Stock Exchange and so on. Hanky-panky, thy name is legion. Well, I have another name to add to the roll of disgrace: the New York Public Library.

Little can I think of that in recent years better demonstrates the degraded state of elite culture in this city, or more sweetly proves a proposition dear to my heart-which is that, taken all in all, the fat cats of Manhattan are not worth their net worth-than the announcement by the NYPL that economic privation is forcing it to sell off its art collection. In particular, to divest itself of Kindred Spirits, Asher B. Durand's 1849 painting that depicts the painter Thomas Cole and the writer William Cullen Bryant standing on a Catskills outcrop, conversing in a lively way about-doubtless-the beauty of Nature (and, quite possibly, the vileness of man).

In last Monday's New York Sun, the architectural critic and historian Francis Morrone, writing with his customary elegance and acuity, closed a lovely piece on the Durand painting by observing that its sale by the library "will mean not just the removal of a beloved painting from a beloved setting, but also a diminishment of New York City itself."

According to the library, the sale of its art will raise between $50 million and $75 million, the income from which (let's say between $3 million and $5 million annually) will be available for purchases of scholarly and other research materials-library needs that have been woefully underserved in recent years. While it's hard for any reasonably cultivated person to turn the pages, say, of The New York Review of Books, and to study the offerings of university and other scholarly presses advertised therein, and then to imagine that in all the wide world, there is $3 million to $5 million worth of stuff like this deserving of serious shelf space, let us grant the point.

What troubles me is that $3 million to $5 million is really not very much money if you look at the NYPL board and how rich its money members (as opposed to its cultural-figurehead members) are. Or are pleased to let us know they are-as well as how exquisitely they live, and what fine company they keep (as, for example, in the splendidly risible portrait of NYPL board member Steve Schwarzman that appeared in The Times a few months back, complete with photos of him partying in what he happily calls "the Rockefeller apartment," but which others of us will always think of as "the old Sol Steinberg place"). A tony crowd like this should easily be able to come up with whatever it takes to keep the Durand, at a minimum, hanging where it is.

I'm wholly opposed to the idea of throwing money at nostalgia. It's why I won't give a dime to Yale. But this is different. There's a whole lot of history here, history of the kind we need to fight to preserve and protect. One wonders how many of the NYPL board realize that the Bryant in Durand's painting is the same Bryant whose name is borne by the park behind the library, which they probably think of mainly as a place to see what Prada's up to this season.

These are bad times for high culture at the cash register. Seats aren't being filled, turnstiles aren't whirling. Cultural institutions are having to scramble. That this is happening at a moment when there's more wealth around than at any time, in any one single place, in history suggests that a tipping point has been reached, that the dumbing-down epitomized by the Styles section of The Times, or the failure of our great universities to educate, or what works and what doesn't on Broadway or at your local multiplex, has finally achieved implosive velocity. It suggests that there's more to what's happening than a simple post-9/11 fall-off in tourism, that some kind of sea change is in the works.

A lot of these NYPL big-hitters got rich by buying at the bottom. The same is true of culture. Now's the time to step up. Kindred Spirits belongs here; it's part of this city, part of us. It doesn't belong in Seattle. Keep it in New York-where it is.

Sunny D! Sunshine has given our city a tongue bath, transforming the gray, sodden streets into a blossomy (and pollen-infused) Brigadoon … but we say: Stand up for your right to be depressed anyway and lie on the couch watching celebrity poker! If you do venture out (or " oot," as our Canadian neighbors say), look for plucky al fresco diners ignoring the chill and fumes, trying to throw themselves in the spirit of springtime in New York ( dee-dee, da-da) before summer announces itself with a mélange of odors. O.K.! The Tribeca Film Festival is still whoopin' it up downtown, where people pretend they like short films and "art flicks," when we know these are the very same people downloading the new Star Wars trailer and have "Darth Tater" as their instant-message icon. Regardless, the so-called cerebralists-writers and readers of the P.E.N. literary festival-are in town with a flurry of crazy smart events, and tonight is no exception with the black-tie literary gala up with the stuffed sea birds at the Museum of Natural History. "It's the largest gathering of international writers in New York since the 1986 P.E.N. Congress," said executive director Michael Roberts. We think most of the city was watching the Mets that year, but whatever. "There's almost an allergy in the United States against writing from abroad." Ha-choo! Tonight, glittery literary loonies gather beneath that giant whale (which is rumored to have a brand-new navel), including P.E.N. president Salman Rushdie (so we guess he's just out of hiding now for real, right?) and his lovely bride Padma Lakshmi Rushdie, as well as Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, Bernard-Henri Lévy (nickname: Les Nipples) and gala chair Tina Brown, who used to edit Radar magazine, we think. Your host is NBC maniac Brian Williams. If you Rick Moody stalkers are interested, he's going to be at the cooler (and freer) event downtown. "Yes, we actually programmed against ourselves," laughed Mr. Roberts. "We're co-sponsoring an event with the Believer crew. I wish I could be at both places." Superman could do it, bub. Meanwhile, Organic Style magazine (that fresh-faced and freckly publication) honors its picks for "Women with Organic Style" at a Lincoln Center ceremony. Among the honorees are the recently missing Helen Hunt, Mrs. Jerry Seinfeld and Stella McCartney, who seems to be just about everywhere these days. These women apparently have been chosen because their work "to transform the lives of children and preserve the planet benefits us all." All we're saying is that it's a lot easier to be organic when you're rich! Meanwhile, the Ethan Hawke–Parker Posey drug 'n' love fest, Hurlyburly, gets new life and a new theater as they christen 37 Arts, a new performing-arts complex, on 37th Street. We still liked her best in Waiting for Guffman.

[P.E.N. Montblanc Literary Gala, American Museum of Natural History, 7 p.m., www.penn.org; Organic Style honors "Women with Organic Style," Jazz at Lincoln Center, 33 West 60th Street, 6:30 p.m., by invitation only; Hurlyburly, 37 Arts, 450 West 37th Street between Ninth and 10th avenues, 8 p.m., www.ticketmaster.com.]

Thursday 21st

Sweet charity: The socialite types spread themselves thin tonight, as there are more charitable events than recent Lindsay Lohan sightings! First up, the New York Public Library transforms itself into a Havana-themed soirée (we think they're going for the glamorous Hemingway Havana-not the poverty-stricken current Havana) to benefit the library's Young Lions (these people care about the library, really they do, even if the last book they read to the end was Bergdorf Blondes!). "It's like if Vanity Fair were a charity-hip, but still intellectual," claimed co-chair Melissa Gellman (we said a silent prayer she was referring to Thackeray). Ms. Gellman is one of many young social movers and shakers involved in the event, including Vanity Fair's (a- ha) Punch Hutton, Moby arm-candy Stacey Bendet and a couple of filthy rich Observer staffers to boot. Honorary co-chair duties fall to Mr. Hurlyburly, Ethan Hawke, and we know he loves books almost as much as scooping ice cream! Expected to show: Moby (just try to keep him away), pretty girl Ivanka Trump, hip-hop-dancing actress Julia Stiles and almost First Daughter Karenna Gore Schiff. "There will be dinner and dancing, plus a 12-piece samba band," said Ms. Gellman. Next! Holding the dubious distinction of being the last black-tie gala in the Plaza before it closes its doors is the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals' Bergh Ball, to support their mission of stopping cruelty to Berghs, errr, animals. You can bid on dog houses designed by Oscar de la Renta, Betsey Johnson, Lilly Pulitzer, Zac Posen and Isaac Mizrahi. See how these nuts interpret "doggy style" ( bling!). Be on the lookout for Chuck Scarborough in his big ladies' glasses and Today's frisky Jill Rappaport, among others. Completing the beneficial trifecta is "Heroes and Legends … a Night at the Fights" to benefit Tuesday's Children, a foundation committed to assisting children who lost a parent on 9/11. The NYPD boxing team will spar against boxers from the Garda, the police of the Republic of Ireland …. Should be burley good times! And speaking of boxing, how come no one is watching NBC's The Contender besides us and Kelly Ripa? Bang! Pow!

[Young Lions Benefit, New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, 7 p.m., 212-930-0730; the ASPCA Eighth Annual Bergh Ball, Plaza Hotel, Fifth Avenue and Central Park South, 7 p.m., 212-876-7700, ext. 4654.]

Friday 22nd

Go, Shorty, it's your Earth Day: Yes, it's Earth Day-and your earth needs you more than ever, as the Bushies leave the environment in their dust …. Well, just as a tree grows in Brooklyn, so does an Earth Day celebration get thrown in Morningside Heights, for breakfast, at the Synod House at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine at 110th Street. Being honored for those who "build healthy and sustainable communities" are people whose names most won't recognize, but who are doing good green deeds. Later today, Rudy Giuliani will be honored at the V Foundation for Cancer Research's "Spirit of Jimmy V," which pays tribute to late basketball coach and sports commentator Jim Valvano at Pier 60. The theme is Valvano's "never give up" attitude, and that noise you hear is Judy Nathan measuring drapes for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue!  Or, if you're feeling like being horrified (again) over big business, the much-lauded Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room opens today, detailing the unraveling of the Enron scandal. Or continue to fill your mind with romantic-comedy fluff with Ashton Kutcher's latest, A Lot Like Love (which looks a lot like 100 other movies we've seen … and loved!), which hits the theaters today ( thud).

[Earth Day in Harlem, Synod House at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Amsterdam Avenue and 110th Street, 8 to 10 a.m., 212-465-7468; "Spirit of Jimmy V" Gala, Pier 60, Chelsea Piers, 6 p.m., www.jimmyv.org; Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and A Lot Like Love, for showtimes and theaters, www.moviefone.com.]

Saturday 23rd

Baby, you can drive my car: One of the most genius parts of the Tribeca Film Festival whoop-de-do: the Tribeca Drive-In Theater. We wonder every summer why the drive-in business is no more. Hasn't anyone taken a look at Bryant Park on a Monday night and realized there is money to be made? Come on, people, let's get with it! Well, Robert De Niro gets it, and the Tribeca Drive-In Theater is free and open tonight and tomorrow with an "uplifting" ( uh-oh) documentary, Mad Hot Ballroom, which follows New York City students who take up ballroom dancing. Whatever, it's outside! Meanwhile, for all you hipsters who shun the faux vintage currently seen at J. Crew and Marc Jacobs, the Manhattan Vintage Fashion Show will be at the Metropolitan Pavilion till tomorrow. Find that perfect black 50's cocktail dress for your next function! Meanwhile, what's with all the Domino editors attempting "secretary chic"-ruffled satin blouses, frumpy skirts and dank hair? C'mon, ladies, we know you didn't just get off the PATH train … !

[Tribeca Film Festival Drive-In, North Cove, World Financial Center, 8 p.m., 212-941-2400; the Manhattan Vintage Clothing Show, Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street, www.manhattanvintage.com.]

Sunday 24th

Guinness good for you? Lulu Guinness is back, at her own Bleecker Street store (which, by the way, we're beginning to blame for all the overpriced boutiques and tottering fashion sticks who now clog the pretty street and stand in line at Magnolia Bakery) to sign copies of Put On Your Pearls, Girls! The event, "Tea with Lulu Guinness," is sponsored by Hearst publication Shop, Etc. (which we still think is one of the worst names for a magazine, ever). We wonder when people became so busy that they need all these magazines to do their shopping for them? Regardless, even we fell prey to the "Most Flattering Swimsuits" in the May issue. Sigh.

["Tea with Lulu Guinness," Lulu Guinness Boutique, 394 Bleecker Street, 2 to 5 p.m., by invitation only.]

Monday 25th

"There has got to be some way I can just stay in my room until I'm eighteen and have to leave for college." So starts the new young-adult book, Fresh Off the Boat, by Melissa de la Cruz, author of The Au Pairs. " The Au Pairs was a sort of sexy scandalous O.C. in the Hamptons," said Ms. de la Cruz. " Fresh Off the Boat is more realistic and based on my own life." The book follows a family's migration to the U.S. from Manila. "It was pretty traumatic," said Ms. de la Cruz, whose family had to adjust from their former luxurious life to the life of working immigrants. "I felt like an outsider, and it was shocking. But I didn't want to write a memoir; I wanted to fictionalize it, because that was more fun. And this way I can tell my parents, 'It's fiction!'" Tonight, Ms. de la Cruz celebrates at the chic French-Filipino restaurant Cendrillon in Soho. Or if you feel you still need to do something benefit-y, there's a gala for Symphony Space being thrown at the Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers: dinner, a silent auction and performances by songstress Suzanne Vega and funny man Jon Stewart, no doubt beating off his many fans (go, Central Jersey!). Being honored is hilarious Daily Show correspondent Stephen Colbert, plus the kid-friendly Dan Zanes and wild card Alec Baldwin. Finally, if you want to be one of those people who actually know something about Long Island wines, head to Capitale for a boozy event called "Windows on Long Island Wine."

[Fresh Off the Boat book party, Cendrillon, 45 Mercer Street, 7 to 10 p.m., by invitation only; "Celebrating Symphony Space in Story and Song," the Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers, 7 to 10 p.m., 212-864-1414; 15th annual "Windows on Long Island Wine," Capitale, 130 Bowery, 7 p.m., www.earthpledge.org.]

Tuesday 26th

Bryan? No, Ryan! See the rumored-to-be-Parker-Poseyless Ryan Adams at the Garden tonight for the Fifth Annual Jammys Awards. Yes, the Jammys-real name-founded as an alternative to mainstream award shows. Joining Mr. Adams tonight will be an eclectic group, including Primus front man Les Claypool, piano man Bruce Hornsby, some bluegrass artist you shouldn't have heard of and "Southern-boogie torchbearers North Mississippi All-Stars." The whole freak show will be presided over by Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, who will, of course, also perform. Meanwhile, Balthazar Getty is back ( finally), and his movie Slingshot (not to be confused with Slingblade or Slap Shot) premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival. Nightcrawlers, beware!

[Fifth Annual Jammys Awards, Madison Square Garden, 33rd Street at Seventh Avenue, 8 p.m., www.jammys.com; Slingshot, Stuyvesant High School, 345 Chambers Street, 9:15 p.m., www.tribecafilmfestival.org]

Wednesday 27th

O.K., America's Next Top Model …. We owe you an apology-you promised and you certainly delivered. Tyra lost her ever-loving mind last week. We are back and we are hooked.

[America's Next Top Model, 8 p.m., UPN.]

One might imagine that naming the contentious family "Winters" is at least vaguely allegorical. The gloomily underlit cinematography of Harlan Bosmajian contributes to making the unprepossessing New Jersey suburb in which the film was shot look like a place from which a young man might yearn to escape. Some reviewers have complained that Mr. Sternfeld's script is so skimpy with early exposition that the source of the family's tensions remains a mystery for too long a time. Something has obviously happened to the mother, but what? And when? It's a matter of taste, of course, but I simply didn't mind waiting to receive the back-story information that Jim's wife had been killed in a car accident while she was driving Pete to basketball practice. He survived and she didn't-and her still-grieving husband has never gotten over the loss. This information doesn't come to us through the family, but through Jim's detailed retelling of the tragedy to a comparative stranger, Molly Ripkin (Allison Janney), an unmarried middle-aged woman who has just moved into the neighborhood temporarily as a house-sitter for a friend. And Jim only tells his story after the outspoken Molly confides the circumstances of an unsatisfactory courtship that has left her an unmarried woman.

It's not clear what will eventually happen to Jim and Molly, but one immediate result of this exchange of confidences is a perceptible weight being lifted from Jim's shoulders. Thus, he's relieved of the arduous task of being both a father and a mother to his two sons.

In the end, Gabe chooses to abandon his father and younger brother for a new start on the boat of a rich friend's father in Tampa, Fla. In the process, he also breaks up with his very appealing and clearly beloved girlfriend, Stacey (Michelle Monaghan), but with a curiously unexpected stoicism on both their parts. One of the reviewers complained that each of the characters is seen at one time or another riding a bicycle. This, too, may be an allegorical expression of sorts-perhaps the sign of an underlying restlessness pervading the entire community. Or maybe not. One can never be sure with a minimalist enterprise like Winter Solstice.

What isn't minimalist is the forceful and nuanced acting of a surprisingly blue-ribbon cast in this low-budget directorial debut. Mr. LaPaglia, in particular, anchors the film with the authority and conviction we've come to expect from him over the past 15 years in movies, plays and on television, most memorably for me in Ray Lawrence's Lantana (2001) and in his long-running dramatic series Without a Trace, in which he plays an F.B.I. detective trying to locate missing persons. (I never miss it.) Mr. Stanford, Mr. Webber and Ms. Monaghan are endowed with enough expertise to sustain the seamlessness of the ensemble. As for Ms. Janney, she is pure gold in the much-too-small role of Molly.

Ron Livingston's perceptively compassionate stint as Pete's history teacher has also stayed in my mind-not simply for the skill of the actor, but also for his character's summer-school lectures on the conquests of Genghis Khan. I don't know much about this almost mythic figure, and I can't recall his name coming up in my own history classes at John Adams High School, but I do remember Dick Powell's very bad 1956 movie, The Conqueror, in which a slant-eyed John Wayne played Khan opposite Susan Hayward. The gruesome aftermath of this production, shot on location in Utah near a nuclear test site, was that Wayne, Hayward, Powell and most of the rest of the cast and crew all eventually died of cancer. So when some pundits argue that we need nuclear power to ease the world's impending shortage of energy, I just think of those lost lives and shudder a bit.

Hockney's World

Maryte Kavalianskas and Seth Schneidman's David Hockney: The Colors of Music is surprisingly successful as a feature-length nonfiction film. It creates absorbing marriages of such seemingly irreconcilable abstractions as space and time, painting and music, opera and cinema, all bound together by the sensibility and personality of David Hockney, a controversially eclectic visual artist with an unabashedly gay and narcissistic reputation. Indeed, when I met Ms. Kavalianskas at a cocktail party, all I could think of to say when she mentioned the title and subject of her film was: "Are there any swimming pools in it?" She replied with what, in retrospect, I now consider a touch of justified exasperation: "Only one or two brief shots." This is to say that before I saw her film, I knew next to nothing about Mr. Hockney beyond his famous, allegedly decadent painting of a swimming pool and a seemingly self-adoring young man in a bathing suit.

But then, for a supposed authority on a largely visual art form, I am shamefully lacking in confidence and judgment when I make my mandatory pilgrimages to the art galleries. I can talk the talk and gawk the gawk, but my heart isn't in it with the same emotional certitude I experience with the movies. Indeed, I have often confessed that if cinema were to abandon dramatic narrative, then I would abandon cinema and return to my first love, narrative fiction-a love that I have never really abandoned. As for music, I share with Mr. Hockney the mantra of not knowing much about it, but knowing what I like-and loving that ecstatically.

The point is that Mr. Hockney turns out to be a far more complex and substantial human being than I would have suspected from my casual, homophobia-tinged appraisal of the only painting I knew by him. Indeed, his awareness of his gradual hearing loss during almost 20 years of producing set designs for the opera introduces layers of pathos, poignancy and mortality to his otherwise buoyant journeys across the borders between the arts. To put it bluntly, Mr. Hockney turned out to be not at all what I expected, as I came to appreciate him as the immensely likable and articulate heart and soul of the film.

The footage was shot starting in 1991 and continuing through 1993, concurrent with Mr. Hockney's creating the set design for Richard Strauss' Die Frau Ohne Schatten, the seventh and last opera production with which he was involved. This side of his multi-faceted career began in 1975 with his stage design for Igor Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress at Glyndebourne, East Sussex, which John Cox directed. Mr. Hockney then worked on Mozart's The Magic Flute in 1978. (In the film, he flatly declares The Magic Flute to be the best opera ever written.)

In 1981, Mr. Hockney went to New York to provide the set design for Parade, an evening of one-acts set to music by Satie, Poulenc and Ravel, at the Metropolitan Opera, with John Dexter directing, followed that year at the same venue with an Igor Stravinsky triple-header: Le Sacre Du Printemps, Le Rossignol and Oedipus Rex. In 1987, Mr. Hockney moved westward to the Civic Opera in Los Angeles for Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, with Jonathan Miller as director, and then back eastward in 1992 for Puccini's Turandot at Chicago's Lyric Theatre, with Bill Farlow as director.

One can see in Mr. Hockney's choice of musical projects a wide range of affinities, from the Viennese classicism of Mozart to the proto-modernism of Wagner to the Italianate lyricism of Puccini, all the way to the varied modernist dissonances of Strauss, Stravinsky and Poulenc. Unfortunately, the absence of any onstage performance footage in front of a live audience makes it difficult to imagine how expressively effective Mr. Hockney's design contributions appeared to the various opera audiences involved. But even if we had transcriptions of the operas as they were sung, we would still have the barriers of cinema to overcome before we could reproduce the immediacy of singer and listener-viewer in the privileged spaces of both.

Indeed, the perennial problem faced by opera on film is the impression that it gives of generally overweight performers floundering in an essentially static setting while their voices send the melodious music speeding along inexorably on its time-machine-like course. Mr. Hockney seems aware of the problem, inasmuch as he makes valiant efforts to energize the décor with the bursts of chromatically charged lighting effects that he prepares in his technologically innovative studio. Despite the film's not providing much evidence one way or the other, it would seem that Mr. Hockney's tastes and methods would be more appropriate for the modernist operas on which he's worked than the old standbys with their encrusted traditions. (One of the funniest exchanges between Mr. Hockney and one of his collaborators invokes the image of "Lufthansa Gray" as a hackneyed leftover from old-fashioned Wagnerian set design.)

Mr. Hockney is a revelation as a conversationalist-not one of the egocentric, stand-up variety, but rather as a genuinely witty man who knows how to listen to other people. And when he reminisces about a father who was tone-deaf but still enjoyed taking his little boy to musical-variety shows, I was both charmed and moved.

David Hockney: The Colors of Music is a ravishing feast for the eyes, with a steady stream of operatic excerpts to appease more impatient ears. Meanwhile, Mr. Hockney and his friends keep the proceedings on an exhilaratingly human level. Don't miss this in any form you can see it.

Den of Thieves

Alex Gibney's Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room was written by Mr. Gibney and based on the best-selling book The Smartest Guys in the Room by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind. This is the best movie, fiction or nonfiction, I have ever seen on Gordon Gekko–like greed in action, and that includes Oliver Stone's Wall Street (1987), which ended up glorifying the lizard. Mr. Gibney and his associates do not glorify Jeffrey Skilling, Ken Lay and Andrew Fastow, the chief culprits in one of the most massive frauds in the financial history of the United States. But they do humanize these miscreants without in any way whitewashing them. This is not to say that the film made me identify with them. Truth to tell, I have never had enough business acumen to sell my mother a lock of my hair. By contrast, Messrs. Skilling, Lay and Fastow were all financial wizards who eventually degenerated into self-deluding charlatans.

In any event, this very entertaining piece of muckraking, narrated by Peter Coyote, should be required viewing for anyone who voted for George W. Bush, or who thinks private accounts are a great idea for Social Security, or who still believes in the eternal beneficence of capitalism and the free market in general and the stock market in particular. But these are precisely the people who are not likely to see Mr. Gibney's incisive autopsy on the corporate corpse of Enron, once hailed as America's most innovative (and seventh-largest) company. Thus, Mr. Gibney-like Michael Moore-seems destined to wind up preaching to the converted.

Still, at the very least every Californian should see this film, if only to speculate on the possibility that Arnold Schwarzenegger came to power in their state through a coup d'état planned by Mr. Lay, Mr. Bush and Dick Cheney. The facts are these: In the midst of the California energy crisis engineered by traders at an Enron subsidiary to boost profits (thereby resulting in several "rolling blackouts"), Mr. Lay visited Mr. Schwarzenegger in the Peninsula Hotel in Los Angeles. What did they talk about? No one is telling, but shortly thereafter the recall procedure for removing Governor Gray Davis was set into motion. Meanwhile, television talk-show hosts made jokes about California's plight. Not to be outdone, Mr. Skilling, on June 12, 2000, made a joke at a Las Vegas conference comparing California to the Titanic.

Indeed, what is most remarkable about the Enron story is how long it took for the media even to speculate out loud on what had gone so terribly wrong with the company. A mere handful of people began blowing their whistles over what turned out to be a gigantic updated Ponzi scheme that invented profits out of imaginary companies set up by Enron itself to hide its debts. A resignation here, a mysterious firing of a top executive there, and still no one seemed to deduce that Enron had become a den of thieves, with the employees and shareholders set to become the ultimate victims.

On August 23, 2000, Enron stock hit an all-time high of $90 a share, with a market valuation of $70 billion. On Nov. 28, 2001, Enron shares plunged below a dollar. In a little more than 15 months, thousands of people lost their life's savings. Meanwhile, several Enron executives had cashed in millions of dollars in stock options.

How was all this done? Bits and pieces of the story have surfaced in various newspapers and magazines. But even in this one marvelously lucid film, it is a little difficult to keep track of all the skullduggery. Here, up to a point, the medium is the message. You can read in cold print in a newspaper or magazine that on Oct. 23, 2001, in a massive shredding operation, Arthur Andersen destroyed one ton of Enron documents. One ton of paper is hard to visualize, and the eye drifts to other news of the day with more sex and shock appeal. But onscreen, the sight of oodles and oodles of paper being shredded is nothing short of mesmerizing. Wow! The rats are deserting the sinking ship. In the process, the good name and reputation of one of the oldest and most respected accounting firms in America had been shredded as well.

Here, one picture is worth a thousand words. On Aug. 31, 2002, Arthur Andersen surrendered its license to practice accounting in the United States. Eighty-five thousand people lost their jobs. Nine billion dollars in annual earnings disappeared. These are the cold facts and figures, but it is the shredding of paper that puts the facts and figures in a vividly visual context.

Of course, there are certain questions that this film is in no position to answer. Why were the federal prosecutors so zealous in prosecuting Martha Stewart for a comparatively trivial offense (with the help of perjured testimony from a government witness), whereas the fraud and conspiracy trials of Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling have been put off till Jan. 17, 2006? Could it be that "Kenny Boy" has friends in high places to put pressure on the Justice Department? Are movies like Mr. Gibney's turning me into a conspiracy theorist? Yes!

Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story, by Kurt Eichenwald. Broadway Books, 742 pages, $26.

The spectacular disintegration of Enron in 2001 left many shattered lives in its wake, both low-level workers whose pensions became worthless, and-at the other end of the culpability spectrum-executives, bankers and accountants who are now awaiting trial, sentencing or release. In between is a vast gray area filled with employees, advisors, regulators and politicians who have spent many of the intervening years providing depositions, justifying their choices and trying to reclaim their reputations.

One of the silent victims of Enron has been the book-publishing industry. Each year after 2001 brought forth a new batch of books on the subject, and these tomes all had one thing in common: They didn't sell well. The injury to the publishers, however, was largely self-inflicted. Most of the books were just plain bad or at least misguided. Many of the authors suffered from a disorder not dissimilar to that which animated the Enron scandal in the first place-a delusional sense both of their own importance and their ability to produce superior results simply by virtue of who they were. This is certainly true of Power Failure by Mimi Swartz and Sherron Watkins, a marginal player in the overall story who won 15 minutes of fame after Congressional staffers turned her into a highly unlikely Joan of Arc. The same goes for 24 Days by two Wall Street Journal staffers who seemed to believe that the details of their intrepid reporting in the days leading up to the bankruptcy was the most thrilling aspect of the whole episode.

Yet even the best of the books produced during this period have failed to generate any excitement among bookstore customers. The Smartest Guys in the Room (2003), by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, is still the definitive book on the subject. Ms. McLean and Mr. Elkind effectively detail the culture, characters and context that created Enron. The book's failure to capture the public imagination could reflect our apparent preference for morality tales with a single villain who's vanquished at the last moment so that we can all go back to what we were doing before. In The Smartest Guys, however, everyone and every institution is guilty of something, and there's enough ethical and legal ambiguity to ensure that no one has to take any responsibility.

Just when it looked like the publishing industry had finally given up on the subject, here comes New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald with Conspiracy of Fools. Weighing in at 742 pages, it's almost as big as any two of the previous major contributions to this genre put together. Mr. Eichenwald appears to have talked to everyone more extensively and scoured the documents more exhaustively than anyone else. The book is organized chronologically in a sequence of short but powerfully vivid scenes, complete with dramatic dialogue and detailed descriptions covering everything from what people were wearing or eating to the décor. And the book even has a clear villain: Enron's chief financial officer, Andy Fastow, whose crimes-engineered for personal financial gain-ultimately caused the company's collapse. The result is that Conspiracy of Fools, despite its length, is an irresistible read and will no doubt one day make a highly entertaining film.

Yet there are aspects of Conspiracy of Fools that make one pause before declaring it an unqualified success. Some of it feels almost too good to be true. Although the extensive notes and sources look solid, there are moments when the quotes and descriptions of what a character is thinking at a given moment seem, well, a little too pat, even puzzling. For instance, why would Dick Cheney describe himself as from Texas when he's famously from Wyoming?

The entire subtext relating to Enron's broader political and business connections never has the payoff that the internal corporate intrigue does. A number of brief vignettes involving everyone fromRupertMurdochtoArnold Schwarzenegger come across as gratuitous name-dropping. There are multiple scenes at fund-raisers and Washington parties at which small talk is exchanged, but it never seems to go anywhere. Mr. Eichenwald makes much of the fact that President George W. Bush unsurprisingly tried to distance himself from Enron chairman and C.E.O. Ken Lay after the scandal broke, but he never convincingly makes the case that the two were particularly close. Mr. Lay was clearly on intimate terms with Bush père, but Mr. Eichenwald is reduced to citing Ann Richards' comments on Larry King Live as evidence that he was close to the son as well.

Finally, for all of the new texture provided, when I finished Conspiracy of Fools, I didn't feel as though I'd gained any fundamentally new perspective on the Enron fiasco-nothing I couldn't have gathered almost two years ago from The Smartest Guys. Some of the detail in the new book, particularly with respect to Jeff Skilling-who's remained something of an enigma until now-is genuinely riveting. But I don't know that it adds much to our understanding of the big picture.

By casting Mr. Fastow as the unambiguous old-fashioned scoundrel at the center of the disaster, Conspiracy of Fools may unintentionally give readers a false sense of security about the likelihood of so spectacular a meltdown ever occurring again. I'm not suggesting, by the way, that Mr. Eichenwald whitewashes the behavior of Messrs. Skilling and Lay, or indeed of others. But the extraordinary access to them enjoyed by the author allowed him to paint a more nuanced picture of their behavior and motivation. As the stock market and merger activity begin to approach pre-meltdown levels, we can take some comfort in the structural protections that have been put in place since Enron. But it would be a mistake to presume that these are enough to combat the underlying hubris, greed and ambition that still lurk in the financial, corporate and governmental sectors. Continued vigilance is needed to ensure that this combustible mixture doesn't explode again and precipitate the next market meltdown.

In the meantime, enjoy the book-the movie will be coming soon to a theater near you.

Jonathan A. Knee is a senior managing director at Evercore Partners and director of the media program at Columbia Business School.