In "Deluxe," Dana Thomas, Newsweek's culture and fashion writer in Paris, writes about how the luxury market went mass market. In this little excerpt, she looks at the swelling and obsessive handbag market—and takes a trip to an Hermes workshop. (By the way, the book is blurbed by both Fareed Zakaria and Richard Johnson! Crazy.) "Deluxe," published by The Penguin Press, arrives August 16th.
Jancee Dunn's memoir But Enough About Me is new in paperback, and we highly suggest you grab a couple if you're remotely interested in how your celeb-profile sausage gets made. Jancee worked at Rolling Stone for years and interviewed every single person you've ever wished to meet. (Or wished not to!) In our favorite part of the book, she sits down with everyone's favorite Nightbird, Stevie Nicks, to look through her "velvet-covered, poetry-filled diaries from 1979's Tusk tour." If that last sentence didn't make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, well... you're probably heterosexual. Now you know!
Last night we headed up to the Four Seasons restaurant to crash the book party of Gawker's very own book of the month, Holly Peterson's The Manny. Strangely, we weren't allowed in! Two young PR girls manning the table in the lobby said, "Sorrrrrry, no press allowed." Outside we kept company with a gruff CNBC TV crew and a 19-year-old intern from Dealbreaker. But then, as if conjured by our own desire, Candace Bushnell stepped outside, just like a lady of the lake. Soon she was joined by wealthy womyn authors going home to relieve their domestics. There was Carole Radziwill, her thrilling stuff nearly escaping a very lowcut tanktop, and Tatiana Boncompagni Hoover, and art dealing queen Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, bunched under the awning, smoking Parliaments. (The cigarette of Jackie O!) There were a couple of questions we needed answered and, happily, the open bar upstairs made the ladies eager to talk.
The end of socialite Holly Peterson's $500,000 debut novel was sight for us at last, and we were still waiting for our heroine Jamie to mount the titular Manny. So then we reached page 333 of 353 and finally! Boning! But alas. Never has a description of dirty MILF-on-hired help sex been more (forgive us) anticlimactic. The camera practically zooms in to view the fireplace. There is also the line, "He looked so happy, like he was having a really, really good time."
We're a few hundred pages further into heiress-socialite Holly Peterson's The Manny, for which she received a million-dollar 2-book deal, and you know what about this book we are currently finding the most galling? Our heroine Jamie and her Manny, "Peter" (oh ha ha ha) have not done it yet. Like, AT ALL. What? Where does Plum Sykes get off calling this book "Lady Chatterly's [sic] Lover for the beach"? If we recall our middle school masturbation fodder correctly, that book had (vaginal, not clitoral!) orgasms on like page 20. The following excerpt is from page 235 of The Manny. As we begin, Peter is touching Jamie's hand.
As discussed, billionaire heiress and banker bride Holly Peterson got a million dollar 2-book deal to send up her upper class-mates in The Manny. The book's terrible "viral" marketing scheme was chronicled by the Times on Sunday. And today, we bring you an excerpt. This is the kind of thing that already-rich people get $500,000 to write. Think on that. Anyway, in this scene our heroine is getting close to her kid's manny. Perhaps too close.
We're still deep into That Extra Half An Inch, Victoria Beckham's style guide that's only been published overseas (so far!). The insights it's giving us into the Beckhams' relationship, my god! And possibly because we skipped over the chapter about skirts (seriously, fuck skirts) on the first go-round, we'd previously overlooked the bit about the Happiest Day of Posh's Life. It turns out that she has some advice about how you can save money whilst planning your own wedding! You know, like she did.
Please don't read this as (another) a cry for help but guess what: we read the entirety of That Extra Half An Inch, Victoria Beckham's guide to style, and, well ... it's sort of good! Say what you will about the skinny, fembotty-looking bitch, she and her ghostwriter know their stuff. We're totally going to, for example, sew cool vintage buttons onto our H&M shirts to make them look more expensive from here on out. But we came here not to praise but to bury, of course, and so here is a rundown of Victoria Beckham's idiosyncratic and private grooming rituals, plus an explanation of why the Spice Girls always looked so busted.
Travesty of publishing alert: Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham's book of beauty tips was only published in the UK, not in our country! We can't imagine why no one thinks her Britland-specific shopping recommendations and idiosyncratic locutions ("Jeans are the obvious place to start. They have become not just the backbone but the spinal cord, ribcage, and for some of us, the whole skeleton of a woman's wardrobe") won't make the book a bestseller here, too. Anyway, we've gotten her advice about how to look less lardy if you've the misfortune to find yourself up the stick.
It's time for another excerpt from Don't Hassel the Hoff (St. Martin's Press, May 15), the autobiography of one of the world's most loved entertainers. In this installment, a career setback (News To Me, a sitcom co-starring the Hoff about the life of Joel Fucking Stein, was cancelled before it got out of the gate) sends David spiraling back into the arms of sweet, sweet alcohol, with results that seem eerily resonant given recent developments in the author's life.
Falling Out of Fashion is a roman a clef by Jane Pratt's ex-assistant, Karen Cohen Yampolsky. But its heroine is a stand-in for Jane, not Karen! "Jill White" is a valiant soul who wants to keep Jill Magazine true to its idealistic roots, even after it gets bought by Nestrom (read: Fairchild) and Jill is forced to work with a publisher installed by evil Nestrom CEO Ellen Cutter (read: Fairchild CEO Mary Berner). Juicy stuff! And so, so, so bad!
Falling Out of Fashion is a roman a clef by Jane Pratt's ex-assistant, Karen Cohen Yampolsky. But its heroine is a stand-in for Jane, not Karen! "Jill White" is a valiant soul who wants to keep Jill Magazine true to its idealistic roots, even after it gets bought by Nestrom (read: Fairchild) and Jill is forced to work with a publisher installed by evil Nestrom CEO Ellen Cutter (read: Fairchild CEO Mary Berner). Juicy stuff! And so, so, so bad!
Does the name Karen Cohen Yampolsky ring a bell? Congratulations, old-skool Jane reader! She was Jane Pratt's assistant, and she's done the expected thing and written a roman a clef. But there's a twist! The heroine of the novel isn't a Yampolsky stand-in—she's a Jane Pratt stand-in, named Jill White. ("White" used to edit a teen mag called "Cheeky!" For real.) Jill is a valiant soul who wants to keep Jill true to its idealistic roots, even after it gets bought by Nestrom (read: Fairchild) and Jill is forced to work with a publisher installed by evil Nestrom CEO Ellen Cutter (read: Fairchild CEO Mary Berner). Juicy stuff! Unfortunately, the book is still incredibly, incredibly bad. Wouldn't you like to read some?
As we mentioned yesterday, this edition of our bookish little coffeeklatsch revolves around a work of literature whose villainess reminds us a bit of one of our favorite Gawker whipping gals: freshly canned publisher Judith Regan. That might be because author Bridie Clark used to work for her, but then again, it might not. Who's to say? (Well, besides lawyers). Anyway, in today's excerpt, we learn how "Vivian Grant's" employees go about guarding their lives and sanity. Our favorite part? "I'm not saying our phones are tapped. I'm just saying that it's not a bad precaution to leave the building when making a private call."
Some people like to say that living well is the best revenge. Well, living well is pretty good revenge, but the best? We think that'd have to be something along the lines of: writing a roman a clef about your evil ex-boss that's being published at around the same time that said ex-boss is getting fired and dragged through the mud in the media. Congratulations, Bridie Clark! You're one lucky bitch, and your book, Because She Can, is the next subject of our occasional Book Club. If you've sat around the coffee table with us for previous installments of the Club, you recall that the way this works is that we flip to a random page and give you a little dose. But this time, we're going to focus on the bits of the book that squeaked most narrowly through what must've been the most scrupulous legal read EVER. After the jump, our heroine's job interview with Rudith Jegan. Okay, okay, "Vivian Grant."
