(It might have helped that The Puppy Diaries was published by Times Books.)

To avoid an editor-has-no-clothes scenario, the Arts and Book Review sections assigned their reviews to two writers whose job security does not depend on Ms. Abramson’s esteem, John Grogan and Alexandra Styron, respectively.

Outside reviewers aren’t always kind to Times writers. Earlier this year, pinch hitter Michael Kinsley was asked to review the documentary Page One. “See His Girl Friday” again, he told readers.

Mr. Grogan, author of the dog owner’s tear-jerker–turned–major motion picture Marley & Me, seemed a safer bet, and he raved about Ms. Abramson’s book. His only complaint was that it was a little too serious.

“Ms. Abramson writes with intelligence and grace and never descends into the saccharine,” he wrote, adding that part of him “wishes she had forgotten about her serious-journalist credentials and had more fun.”

On Sunday, Ms. Styron (son of William Styron and a celebrated “dadoirist”) wrote appreciatively of Ms. Abramson’s ability to “vanquish the writer’s self-regarding pose” and to emerge with an “unaffected, unironic, and lovingly goofy [...] golden retriever of a memoir.”

But The Puppy Diaries is not merely a poorly timed,  half-endearing and half-embarrassing assemblage of personal anecdotes from the executive editor’s less high-profile past. The book is based on a Times blog of the same name, which taught Ms. Abramson a lot about digital journalism, she told Sam Tanenhaus on the Times’s Arts Beat books podcast. The blog was her first experience with interactive journalism, and helped shape her thinking about the ongoing transformation of the Times’s newsroom.

“Readers want it all, and they want it as soon as you can give it to them,” she said. “They want to combine pictures and video, they want to comment, they want to talk to other dog owners.” Recalling that her invitation to readers to send in pictures of their own pets had crashed the website, she pointed out, “Journalism is no longer simply the authority of a reporter or editor telling an audience what the facts are and what to think of them. It’s more of a vigorous back and forth.”

The best part of The Puppy Diaries, Mr. Grogan noted in his review, is the “insight into the private sensibilities of the Times’s top editor, the final arbiter of what ends up on the page.”

Unless it has to do with puppies, that is. In the book, she writes that Mr. Keller noticed an increase in dog stories being pitched for page one after her blog debuted. “To curb the trend,” she added, “he urged me to recuse myself from any discussion about a proposed dog story.”

The book also offers a glimpse of her managerial style.

“In one’s relationship with dogs and with a newsroom, a generous amount of praise and encouragement goes much better than criticism,” she told The New Yorker.

Roberta Flack. (Getty Images)

Wednesday, July 27

Clay Date

Summer’s caught up with us—and we know, we complain about it every week, but the aggregate effect of sweating this much packs a more crippling punch than Wendi Murdoch! We find ourselves regressing to childhood: leaning hard on the chocolate-frozen yogurt handle at 16 Handles, wearing shoes made of flimsy rubber and schoolboyish shorts, experiencing a surfeit of emotional lability (glee when we find shade or a seat on the subway, suicidal rage at all other times). Summer makes kids of us all! We may as well drop in on RH Gallery’s no-kids-allowed Clay Party, an arts-and-crafts shindig in celebration of the gallery’s more serious concurrent shows, “Pure Clay,” featuring Korean minimalist Lee Ufan (whose work is also in the Guggenheim right now—what a summer for this guy!), and “Contemporary Clay,” a group show featuring Kathy Butterly’s so-called “sexy cups.” They’re misshapen and intriguing and reminiscent of sex organs—and feel free to make your own at tonight’s party, at which wine and delectibles will be served. Bring a toothbrush or some dental floss—no, we’re not kidding!—to carve out your own masterpiece and pretend you’re at summer camp. (If the heat hasn’t rendered your intellect childlike already, try another glass of wine!)

Clay Party at RH Gallery, 137 Duane Street, RSVP for tickets at gallery@rhgallery.com or call (646) 490-6355.

Thursday, July 28

Visiting the Goon Squad

We didn’t establish ourselves as great artists at the Clay Party last night—our sculpture was more “conceptual” than “formal.” But after a day spent driving out East, we’re more eager to indulge our childish sides than to think about artistic endeavors. What a relief that the artist John Codling—formerly a big-deal Wall Street type who now makes celebrity-inspired multimedia work—is hosting a movie night at the Waasteria Gallery. His multimedia art show there, inspired by Jay-Z, won’t distract our attention from The Goonies (a kids’ movie, for adult attendees, to raise money for Solving Kids Cancer). It’s a collision of artsy pretension and Hollywood cheese even weirder than the paintings of Christopher Walken that launched Mr. Codling to fame. The Goonies! Really, it’s as though he knew precisely the mood we were in—to think about nothing! A few more weeks of regression and we’ll either be cured and ready to take on Proust—or playing with coloring books.

John Codling’s show “Me I Play” closes tomorrow at the Waasteria Gallery, 77 Industrial Road (Wainscott), and the screening takes place at 8pm with pizza, tacos, ice cream, beer, wine, and popcorn, 8pm, visit http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1848957281 for tickets.

Friday, July 29

Photo, Synthesis

Okay, we’ve recovered—and we’re ready to take intellectual matters a teensy bit seriously. Of course, we’re also still in the Hamptons, so art’s best served with cocktails and canapés—as at tonight’s opening reception for Terri Gold and Steve Miller’s exhibition, “Planet.” Ms. Gold photographs shamanistic, spiritual elements of disappearing cultures, while Mr. Miller himself is showing X-rays of exotic flora and fauna (we’re sure he tried to find a life form in the Hamptons to X-ray, but a picture of our rosé-swollen insides wouldn’t sell many prints). “You’ve got an educated audience interested in these issues … and you’ve got people who can afford art out there!” says Mr. Miller, who shows around the world but lives part-time out East. Catch them while you can—this show’s running through July 31, and Mr. Miller’s jetting off later this year to present a print of a python’s X-ray to a zoo director in Brazil.

4 North Main Gallery, 4 North Main Street (Southampton), 5pm-8pm, visit 4northmaingallery for information.

Saturday, July 30

Save Some for the Fishes

Newly-minted CSI star Ted Danson is to attend a party in honor of Oceana, the save-the-fish charity that reminds you that just because you love ahi doesn’t mean you can feel good about eating it … We’re dragging our heels about attending, but only since we know that all the consciousness-raising going on will give us pause about dining on our favorite summer repasts: shrimp cocktail and oysters. Speaking of those aquatic treats, visitors to midtown’s egregiously casino-themed eatery Lavo may partake in both at the “bikini brunch,” ginned up for those who can’t quite make it out East. Men must wear shirts, while women are quite encouraged to wear bikinis. It’s just like you’re at the beach! Actually, wait, it’s more like you’re waiting tables at Hooters, but paying instead of getting paid.

Oceana Hamptons Splash Party, a private home in Southampton, 7:30pm, for tickets visit oceanasplashparty.org; Lavo, 39 East 58th Street, bikini brunch begins at 2pm, call (212) 750-5588 for reservations. Sunday, July 31

Lord Styron

Though in life William Styron was known to prefer the relative isolation of Martha’s Vineyard (we said, “relative”!), his work remains the perfect beach read for the Hamptons as well: nothing’s quite so bracing a corrective to an afternoon of sitting by the pool and an evening of parties as reading something grim and knowing like Lie Down in Darkness. Anyway, Georgica Beach at midday can be crushingly depressing. Styron had a difficult time negotiating literary fame, though his daughter seems perhaps less conflicted: Alexandra Styron mined her childhood for intriguing and enlightening anecdotes and insights, which she crafted into the memoir Reading My Father. Tonight she’s reading at the Quogue Public Library. (And boy, does she know how to do a summer reading schedule—she was in Vineyard Haven a few weeks ago and East Hampton last night.) There’s no choice in the matter—we’re going to check it out.

Quogue Public Library, 90 Quogue Street (Quogue), 5pm

Monday, August 1

Flack Attack

Were you wondering what’s going on with Roberta Flack? Question answered: per her website, she’s currently at work on an album of Beatles covers. If you’d like to see her in the flesh and maybe try to get her to sing a few bars of “Killing Me Softly With His Song” (or perhaps “Octopus’s Garden”), drop in on the enthusiastically named Bright Lights! Shining Stars! gala, an event in support of the NYC Dance Alliance Foundation and its college scholarships. Ms. Flack is to accept the Ambassador for the Arts Award, a fitting prize for someone bringing new attention to little-known British pop music. The guests include wee Tade Biesinger—a preteen NYC Dance alum who’s now known for Billy Elliot, and Tony-winning choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler, who’ll be reunited with his In the Heights writer Lin-Manuel Miranda, one of the guests of honor. All these months later, we can finally feel good about supporting youth dance without fearing we’re sending youths into a future of Black Swan psychosis!

Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, 566 LaGuardia Place, cocktails at 6pm, awards and performances at 7:30pm with dessert and Champagne to follow, call (855) 692-5678 or visit nycdance.com for tickets.

Tuesday, August 2

Today’s Special

Some causes—like youth dance or the career rehabilitation of Roberta Flack—are simply unimpeachable. That may help explain why the host committee for tonight’s fund-raiser to benefit the Special Olympics, the Special Olympics Junior Committee Summer Social, is so gloriously lengthy: 28 do-gooders, as well as 47 on the junior committee. The host committee includes well-connected model Lauren Bush, her sister Ashley Bush, someone else’s sister Dabney Mercer, and roman á cleffer Anisha Lakhani. The evening of drinks goes down on the Hudson Terrace, on the far West Side—we’ll see you there, along with all of our nearest and dearest social friends!

Hudson Terrace, 621 West 46th Street, 7:30pm, visit http://summersocial.kintera.org/ for tickets and more information.

Wednesday, August 3

Kids Stay in the Picture

Remember how we could bring ourselves to support youth dance only  grudgingly? (Those Black Swan emotional scars, embedded with feathers, run deep.) Well, we’re yet more willing to support the artistic endeavours of youth when it comes to the performing-arts camp that produced Natalie Portman (her characters may be crazy, but boy, does she seem sane!) and Mariah Carey (well, Ms. Portman’s sane enough for both). The Oscar winner and the rainbow enthusiast both attended day camp at Long Island’s Usdan Center, which buses in artsy kids from the city. Tonight it holds a fund-raising gala. Current campers take the stage to perform with the Met soprano Monica Yunus—boy, are we jealous! Back when we were kids, all we did was make sloppy pottery and watch The Goonies. In fact, that’s all we’ve done this week!

185 Colonial Springs Road (Wheatley Heights), dinner at 5pm and concert at 7pm, for tickets write to gala@usdan.com or call (631) 643-7900.

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

William Styron: Yes. ("The author of Sophie's Choice and Lie Down in Darkness has been tweeting [and re-tweeting] for more than a week.... Styron has been dead since 2006.")

Teens: No. ("It's something for adults who feel like it makes them hip or something.")

Mr. Carlisle, one of the founding partners of InkWell and a close childhood friend of Styron's kids, said the collection, like the rest of Styron's work, will be published by Random House and overseen by the legendary editor Bob Loomis.  

Mr. Carlisle said the stories in the new collection-three of which have been previously published, but only in literary magazines-are all in some way about soldiers returning home from war. The never-before-seen novel fragment, he said, entitled "My Father's House," concerns an unnamed narrator who has just come back from World War II to live with his stepmother. The story-which was found in Styron's papers, currently housed at Duke-runs about 30,000 words, and was prepared for publication by Styron's  biographer, James West of the University of Pittsburgh.

"Because of James West's participation and guidance there is not a word that Styron didn't write in this," Mr. Carlisle said. "It happened that there was a stopping point... that was absolutely clear and that's where we stopped it. There was more - it was obviously going to be another chapter."

The other stories in the as-yet-unnamed collection are "The Suicide Run," "Marriot, The Marine," and "Blankenship," Mr. Carlisle said.

No pub date has been set, but foreign rights have already been sold in the UK, Spain, France, and Russia.

When the Hollywood trade press reported in April that Mr. Spielberg would next tackle a film adaptation of Arthur Golden's best-selling novel Memoirs of a Geisha , the articles noted that the project had been acquired by Columbia Pictures for producer Douglas Wick, but that the film would be co-financed by Columbia and Dreamworks.

A month later, however, Dreamworks had cut itself loose from the project. At the time, Daily Variety reported that Memoirs of a Geisha , "with no major stars attached, was simply too modest to necessitate a co-production arrangement."

But that may have been Hollywood spin for the Dreamworks partners' realization that the odds of making money on Geisha were not great because Mr. Spielberg was charging full freight to work on the picture. Columbia spokesman Barbara Dixon confirmed to The Transom that the studio is happily paying Mr. Spielberg "full salary" on this picture. That salary is actually more like the gross national product of a small country.

It's almost impossible to know what Mr. Spielberg's deal is on a particular picture, but it's safe to say that on each his successful films, he's made tens of millions of dollars. Back when he was directing two of those pictures– Jurassic Park , which had $913 billion in domestic and international box-office gross, and Schindler's List , which his Amblin Entertainment Inc. production company also produced–Mr. Spielberg's deal was this: To direct the film, he got 17.5 percent of a film's gross. On top of that, as a producer, Mr. Spielberg also got 50 percent of a film's profits. (And as one knowledgeable industry source explained, Mr. Spielberg's contractual definition of break-even is not the same as the one initially given to Art Buchwald.)

According to those familiar with the situation, Mr. Spielberg, having given Dreamworks a professional discount on his last two films, Amistad and Ryan , decided that this time around he wanted his full fee. (Mr. Spielberg's spokesman, Marvin Levy, confirmed that Amblin will produce Geisha .) That would have put Dreamworks in a doubly unlucrative position: paying half the huge fee, and splitting half of any profits with Columbia. (That's not accounting for Mr. Wick's particular deal and screenwriter Ron Bass, who usually gets a producing fee for his troubles.) So, according to one source, Mr. Geffen, Mr. Katzenberg and Mr. Spielberg decided amicably that Dreamworks could not afford Mr. Spielberg this time around.

Mr. Spielberg apparently still wants to be seen as a director for hire, not just a company man. The reasoning goes that, Mr. Spielberg, feeling properly compensated by Sony Corporation-owned Columbia, won't feel so bad about coming back to Dreamworks to work for bargain-basement prices.

Meanwhile, he won't be working with strangers at Columbia. It was Mr. Wick's wife, Lucy Fisher, vice chairman of Columbia Tri-Star Motion Picture Group, who brought the book to Mr. Spielberg's attention. According to Ms. Dixon, Ms. Fisher and the director "have made 14 films together," one of them The Color Purple . Ms. Fisher was not available to comment, but when The Transom tried to run the figures of Mr. Spielberg's deal by Ms. Dixon, she replied: "Could be, who knows? All we know is we're delighted to pay it. If that's what it takes to get Steven Spielberg, we're thrilled."

Backing Up Betsy: How Much Is Wilbur Ross Really Worth?

When Lieut. Gov. Betsy McCaughey Ross changed her party affiliation from Republican to Democrat last October and announced her intention to run for Governor, pundits made her the instant front-runner for her new party's nomination. That calculation was based somewhat on her name recognition, but mostly on the financial strength of her husband, investment banker Wilbur Ross Jr.

As the gubernatorial race gathers late-summer heat, Ms. McCaughey Ross' campaign has underwhelmed those same pundits. And financial disclosures made by Mr. Ross during his 1995 divorce from his first wife suggest that he may not have the war chest that Ms. McCaughey Ross needs to run her dream campaign.

At a meeting of Democratic Party leaders late last year, Ms. McCaughey Ross confidently predicted she would spend as much as $15 million on her campaign. Yet, as of Aug. 10, she had barely spent a tenth of that. (Kevin Davitt, a spokesman for the McCaughey Ross campaign, said that her statements were made "in the excitement of the moment. It's part of the innocence of your first campaign.") The much anticipated onslaught of Ms. McCaughey Ross' television and radio commercial campaign also has yet to materialize. In May, she told The Observer that she expected to go on the air with a major ad run before the state convention at the end of the month, but did not. In June, her spokesman told reporters that the campaign expected to place a major advertising buy by mid-July. The Ross campaign did purchase commercials that month, but it was a tiny buy. Mr. Davitt said the campaign has changed strategy a number of times, based on "who we [expect] to be our main opponent."

Ms. McCaughey Ross certainly wouldn't accuse her husband, a partner at Rothschild Inc., of being a skinflint. Over the last eight months, Mr. Ross has written checks to her campaign for $3.5 million.

The size of Mr. Ross' contribution is interesting in light of what he claimed to be worth at the time of his divorce. A tally of assets he listed in an affidavit of net worth, submitted in documents related to his divorce and obtained by The Transom, put his total worth just shy of $11.5 million in October 1995, just two months before he married the Lieutenant Governor.

According to court documents, Mr. Ross and his wife, Judith Ross, were to split their combined assets. Ms. Ross' attorney, Bernard Clair, did not provide his client's affidavit of net worth, but said that her assets at the time of the divorce amounted to "less than $250,000."

Because most of Mr. Ross' and Ms. McCaughey Ross' holdings are private and state disclosure requirements are hardly rigorous, it is difficult to determine their current worth.

In the 1980's, Mr. Ross made a name for himself representing creditors trying to recover assets from bankrupt companies. "I mostly work with troubled situations," Mr. Ross told The Transom. He went head to head with the likes of Donald Trump and Texaco Inc. More recently, he has been focusing his energies in South Korea. On Dec. 23, 1997, his Rothschild "vulture fund," which invests in distressed financial institutions, poured millions into Korean assets. A day later, the International Monetary Fund bailed out the South Korean economy, causing the vulture fund's holdings to soar.

Mr. Ross has had much less good luck in an ongoing financial dispute between him and Ms. Ross. According to the terms of their divorce, Mr. Ross was to turn over shares in Mego Financial Corporation to her within 15 days of the divorce. But court papers note that Mr. Ross was six weeks late doing so; by the time he did, on Dec. 13, 1995, the stocks had allegedly lost more than half a million dollars in value. Ms. Ross has since sued, and her ex has failed to show up for his deposition three times.

"I want to know where the stock was," Ms. Ross' lawyer, Mr. Clair, told The Transom. "I want to ask him whether or not he knew in his position as a director [of Mego] anything that would presage this very drastic drop in value."

In court papers, Mr. Ross has responded that Ms. Ross had in fact received an unexpected windfall because, once transferred to her, his restricted stock became unrestricted, and therefore, more valuable. His lawyer cited "business emergencies" as reasons for Mr. Ross not showing up to give his deposition. Asked about the legal brouhaha, Mr. Ross said, "I'm not going to try a lawsuit in the newspapers." Mr. Clair, exasperated, has moved for default, and the judge has ordered both parties to show up in court Aug. 21.

Whatever Mr. Ross' financial status, someone in his wife's camp seems to be doing some creative thinking when it comes to his funding of her campaign. On Jan. 9, he wrote a check for $2.25 million for her campaign committee. The amount of that check may not have been an incidental: When the Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls announced their fund-raising totals on Jan. 15, the Lieutenant Governor had a $200,000 edge over her chief rival, Mr. Vallone, allowing her to claim front-runner status in the fund-raising race. Such victories are viewed as proof of a candidate's credibility and can spur future fund-raising. Mr. Davitt, however, claimed his campaign had no way of knowing Mr. Vallone's totals in advance and that, therefore, nothing about the $2.25 million was calculated.

In an unusual move, the day after the campaign filed its financial statement with the State Board of Elections, $2.25 million was invested in an interest-earning promissory note that came due in June and July. As news of this transaction began to leak, Ms. McCaughey Ross refused to discuss it, saying only that it would be fully disclosed on July 15, when another round of statements was due. The investment was listed in disclosures made to the Board of Elections, but omitted from copies of those records the campaign sent to The Transom.

"If it was my money, I would have done the same thing," said campaign spokesman Courtney Carlson. "The money was put back [into the campaign] with the interest that was collected. That just boosted the amount of money."

If the $2.25 million was intended to impress potential donors, it did not. As of Aug. 10, Ms. McCaughey Ross had raised only $500,000 from outside sources.

–Andrea Bernstein

The Transom Also Hears

William Styron was trapped. Trapped! Not by the usual piggish bores, sniveling sycophants or other time-monopolizers that pepper these kinds of Hamptons parties. No, Mr. Styron, the author of Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness , found himself hemmed in by a particularly pesky tangle of empty bamboo chairs at the Aug. 15 premiere party for A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries at the Sagpond Vineyards.

Mr. Styron had been attempting to join the crowd, which included authors Salman Rushdie and Norman Mailer, when he ran into the impenetrable waist-high wall that stood between him and the rest of the party. Hunching his frame, Mr. Styron pushed. He pulled. He lifted and tilted the suckers in an attempt to clear a path for himself. But the chairs had become lashed together by the straps of purses and abandoned goodie bags left among their legs.

"What the hell is going on?" Mr. Styron said to The Transom as we attempted to help him.

Eventually, he managed to wrench two of the cane bastards apart. As Mr. Styron made a break for it, The Transom, betting that he would feel kindly disposed to us, asked if Kris Kristofferson had appropriately played the character in the film that was based on his friend, the late author James Jones. A puzzled look crossed Mr. Styron's face. Perhaps still annoyed by his struggle with the chairs, Mr. Styron replied, "It's just too complicated," and strolled off.

–Julie Lipper