We got a press release trumpeting the official reopening of The Plaza's Grand Ballroom. It's been "meticulously restored to its 1929 opulence," and had a soft opening last week as the site of a party for Chanel Fine Jewelry.

I got a sneak peak at the Ballroom last month, when it was still undergoing the renovations. Elizabeth Stribling, whose firm markets The Plaza condos, told me that the ceiling, in particular, would be restored. Apparently, that hadn't been done since Conrad Hilton owned the place in the middle of the last century.  read more »

Pseudofriend is a professional category. It's hard for writers to get along that well in N.Y. cause N.Y. is the writers' olympic village. As it's the olympic village for investment analysts, TV people, legal turks, advertising people, etc. I bet they have pseudofriends, too.

I've thought quite a lot about the New York setting of "Seize the Day" and I'm inclined to agree that the loneliness, shabbiness, and depression of the book find a singular match in the uptown Broadway surroundings. I think that for old-time Chicagoans the New Yorkers of "Seize the Day" are emotionally thinner, or one-dimensional. We had fuller or, if you prefer, richer emotions in the Middle West. I think I congratulated myself on having been able to deal with New York, but I never won any of my struggles there, and I never responded with full human warmth to anything that happened there.

Wow. Note that: Bellow never won any of his struggles in New York. (No wonder Roth lives in CT).

Writers should work alone. They should see each other only after their work is done, and not too often then. Otherwise they become like writers in New York. All angleworms in a bottle, trying to derive knowledge and nourishment from their own contact and from the bottle. Sometimes the bottle is shaped art, sometimes economics, sometimes economic-religion. But once they are in the bottle they stay there. They are lonesome outside of the bottle...

Yes, I'm collecting string on this subject...

Pseudofriend is a professional category. It's hard for writers to get along that well in N.Y. Because N.Y. is the writers' olympic site. As it's the olympic site for investment analysts, TV people, legal turks, advertising people, etc. I bet they have pseudofriends, too.

I've thought quite a lot about the New York setting of "Seize the Day" and I'm inclined to agree that the loneliness, shabbiness, and depression of the book find a singular match in the uptown Broadway surroundings. I think that for old-time Chicagoans the New Yorkers of "Seize the Day" are emotionally thinner, or one-dimensional. We had fuller or, if you prefer, richer emotions in the Middle West. I think I congratulated myself on having been able to deal with New York, but I never won any of my struggles there, and I never responded with full human warmth to anything that happened there.

Wow. Note that: Bellow never won any of his struggles in New York. (No wonder Roth lives in CT).

Writers should work alone. They should see each other only after their work is done, and not too often then. Otherwise they become like writers in New York. All angleworms in a bottle, trying to derive knowledge and nourishment from their own contact and from the bottle. Sometimes the bottle is shaped art, sometimes economics, sometimes economic-religion. But once they are in the bottle they stay there. They are lonesome outside of the bottle...