Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Nice racket. Great town, New York.


From The New York Times:

In 2006, when Ms. Wall Spitzer showed a reporter around their apartment on Fifth Avenue, she proudly declared that as a rule, only artwork made by members of the immediate family was allowed to hang on the walls.

One multicolored drip painting, in a den that the family calls the Adirondack Room, had been signed “Spitzer Wall,” because the two of them had painted it together early in their courtship.

“Eliot and I had been to the Whitney and were looking at a Jackson Pollock, and he said, ‘I could do that,’ ” Ms. Wall Spitzer said, imitating her husband with a braggadocious tone. “So I said, ‘Let’s see you try,’ and then I helped him.”

That's how the article ends. It reminded me of this passage from Woody Allen's short story, "The Whore of Mensa":
A wall of books opened, and I walked like a lamb into that bustling pleasure palace known as Flossie's. Red flocked wallpaper and a Victorian decor set the tone. Pale, nervous girls with black-rimmed glasses and blunt-cut hair lolled around on sofas, riffling Penguin Classics provocatively. A blonde with a big smile winked at me, nodded toward a room upstairs, and said, "Wallace Stevens, eh?" But it wasn't just intellectual experiences. They were peddling emotional ones, too. For fifty bucks, I learned, you could "relate without getting close." For a hundred, a girl would lend you her Bartok records, have dinner, and then let you watch while she had an anxiety attack. For one-fifty, you could listen to FM radio with twins. For three bills, you got the works: A thin Jewish brunette would pretend to pick you up at the Museum of Modern Art, let you read her master's, get you involved in a screaming quarrel at Elaine's over Freud's conception of women, and then fake a suicide of your choosing - the perfect evening, for some guys. Nice racket. Great town, New York.



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