BACK IN THE DAY

Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney at a 1989 party.    Catherine McGann/Getty Images

It’s been a depressing party scene this year at most publishing houses. Post-pandemic, post-widespread consolidation of imprints that used to have their own team-spirit identity, the vibes just aren’t festive. We won't linger on the details, but someone at Knopf recently told me about a holiday “luncheon” that involved pizzas being delivered to a conference room. 

Twenty years ago, that function would have involved a caviar station and a formal dress code, and even a plus-one if it had been an especially good year at the house. Back in the day, by which I mean the ’80s and ’90s and even the early aughts, the year-end celebrations that publishing houses threw were somewhat legendary. I spoke to some experienced old party hands — as well as some people who, like me, are just old enough to remember the tailwinds of the really good times — about what was different about parties back then. Outfits! Hams! Indoor smoking! Interns sitting in the editor-in-chief’s chair pretending to fire people! Here are some of their best stories.

“The ’80s and ’90s were the age of glorious publishing excess. There was money to spend, and everybody was in a festive mood. Every December, Bret Easton Ellis had his holiday party at the American Felt Building. There was always an amalgam of high-gloss talent in the room. Actors, artists, musicians, editors, writers. Enough that no one person ever commanded the attention of guests. Plus, it was always a major fucking squeeze. You either had someone’s balls in your ass or tits in your chest. And it was hard to find or get to people. I mean, you did one loop, and it took an hour (and his apartment wasn’t that big. It was, like, one room.). One night, there was a moment when things went a little quiet. People were parting to make room for a guest. The Starr report had been published not too long before, as had the Herb Ritts Vanity Fair photo spread. People were surprised to see Monica Lewinsky there. I know I was. And, I gotta say, she looked great.” —a longtime publicist

“In 1996, there were a couple of offices at Knopf that got trashed, because Sonny Mehta said, ‘I smoke in my office, so I can't tell you not to do it.’ So they would designate someone's office and they would go smoke in there. The next morning, I had to have the place aired out and vacuumed and the carpet cleaned. I walked in there while they were doing it, and people were sitting on desks. It was one of those stupid little offices with just one window. And I think there were 16 people standing around that little office, all having a great time, and they just poured drinks.” —Nicholas Latimer, VP and senior director of publicity at Knopf, who accepted a buyout last October. He began planning its holiday parties in 1984. 

“The Literary Guild — a book-of-the-month subscription club — put on the most extravagant Christmas party, and it was famous for the shrimp. They were the best shrimp that anyone had ever had in their entire lives, and there were just acres of them. There was a carvery, and there was Champagne flowing, and there was a full bar. I mean, it was unbelievable. And it wasn't a company holiday party. It was a holiday party to the entire industry. Everybody was there, and they invited everybody.” —an editor-at-large

“I was a publicity assistant. Each floor had book rooms, basically mini-libraries where we kept copies of all of our books to be sent out to media. I ended up in the book room during the holiday party with my work crush. He pushed me up against the wall of books, in the back corner. We started making out, kind of like that epic scene in the movie Atonement with Keira Knightley in that epic green dress, but definitely only as hot in my mind. I was likely wearing a dress from H&M. We both started laughing while kissing because this make-out was literally both of our book-nerd fantasies. We could hear all the festivities happening throughout the halls and were kissing with my back against National Book Award winners. Cigarette smoke was wafting through the hallways and into the book room. I definitely had a better night than the girl escorted out in a wheelchair because she was so wasted!” —a publicist 

“I remember there was a holiday party at William Morrow, circa 1983. And there was a guy there who ran the mail room, and he was running drugs out of the mail room in addition to packages of books. So at the holiday party, I somehow found myself in the mail room with him doing blow. It was late at night. He ran out. We decided to go up to an SRO hotel in Harlem to buy more coke. I was just some gangly white guy. And when I walked into the room, everybody kind of gave me a look, and some guy was sitting there with a gun on his lap. I was like, ‘What am I doing?’ And then all of a sudden, the mail-room guy left and I was on my own in this room, doing blow with these guys that I've never met. I had to go out to a cash machine and get some money to pay for it. I was so fucked up that I didn't think I could get home. There was an art director who worked at William Morrow at the time, and somehow I wound up at her apartment, and she's like, ‘You're completely fucked up. You have to get out of here.’ I tried to get home to Long Island. I was on my way to Penn Station, and it was, I don't know, two o'clock in the morning. The next train wasn't until 3:30. I went to a bar. I sat down in a snowbank and I fell asleep in the snowbank. I had so much to drink, and even with the coke, I was just unconscious. The next morning, a William Morrow editor was walking to work and saw me in the snowbank. He said, ‘I won’t tell anyone.’ And then, of course, he broadcast it to the entire company.” —a longtime publicist 

YEAR IN REVIEW

Photo-illustration: by the Cut; Photos: Getty Images

First, I have to admit that I spent a lot of 2024 reading books that weren’t published in 2024. Nearly all of them were recommendations from my magazine colleagues, like Gwendoline Riley’s spare and haunting recounting of her relationship with her mother, My Phantoms. I also spent several months reading the complete works of Naomi Novik based on Kathryn VanArendonk’s recommendation, including the entire Temeraire series, which asks, “What if the Napoleonic Wars were fought alongside dragons?” And we won’t even get into the 30-plus romance novels I read in service of writing my minotaur-sex story. But don’t worry, I still found time to read new books! Here are the ones I loved the most, in no particular order.

Health and Safety, by Emily Witt

This short and graceful book is absolutely packed with action, covering the first Trump administration, COVID, mental illness, the underground rave scene of late-2010s Bushwick, and a meticulously rendered accounting of what it feels like to do a heroic amount of drugs. Read my interview with Witt here. 

Rejection, by Tony Tulathimutte

The deftly sketched protagonists of these linked short stories have one thing in common: They’ve all been rejected. Their reactions vary with different degrees of spine-tingling cringe. The final chapter is an imagined publisher’s extensive rejection of the book itself, which in less skilled hands could have come off as self-indulgent. Tulathimutte has a unique gift for making the reader feel complicit, grossed out, and, in the end, amused by his sheer audacity. Read Cat Zhang’s review of Rejection here, and read what 4chan and Reddit users had to say about the book here. 

A Reason to See You Again, by Jami Attenberg

After their father’s untimely death, two daughters and a mother are left to reckon with their relationships over the course of half a century. Attenberg’s characters always feel convincing and one of a kind, and she’s a master of evoking the ways their always-strong personalities shape their destinies. 

The Winner, by Teddy Wayne

This summertime thriller is narrated by a struggling tennis pro in a wealthy seaside community that’s further cut off from the outside world by the onset of the pandemic. In the book’s first half, he clumsily attempts to reconcile simultaneous love affairs with an older woman and a younger woman, but its second half turns delightfully darker after the women’s relationship to each other is revealed. 

All Fours, by Miranda July

Look, you already know I loved this book. If you haven’t read it yet, I just don’t know what to do with you. Read my review here. 

Margo’s Got Money Troubles, by Rufi Thorpe

A delightful and formally inventive novel about a woman who gets knocked up by her community-college English professor, decides to keep the baby, then makes a lot of money on OnlyFans with the help of her former pro-wrestler dad, a charismatic recovering addict named Jinx. Soon to be a TV show, development gods willing. 

A Sunny Place for Shady People, by Mariana Enriquez (translated by Megan McDowell)

This scary collection of short stories was our Halloween pick, because it will literally haunt your nightmares. Set in Argentina and reflective of that country’s tormented history, it features ghosts, demonically haunted small towns, children trapped in old refrigerators, and beautiful couture gowns cursed to eviscerate anyone who tries them on. Enriquez has perfected the art of the freak-out so casual it sneaks up on you. 

Our Evenings, by Alan Hollinghurst

Fans of Hollinghurst who have been wishing he’d return to first-person narration after two books with large casts of multiple close-third characters will be as satisfied as I was with Our Evenings, which takes the form of a moving unfinished memoir by a half-Burmese actor named David who spent his life floating between social classes in late 20th- and early 21st-century England.

Help Wanted, by Adelle Waldman

When the Movement (read: truck-unloading) team at a Target-like big-box store in upstate New York learns that their annoying boss is up for a promotion, they hatch a conspiracy to get her out of their hair. You’d think the stakes would feel low, but Waldman keeps things thoroughly immersive and propulsive. Read my profile of Waldman here. 

You Are the Snake, by Juliet Escoria

I loved a lot of story collections this year. Escoria’s mostly concerns characters who inhabit a milieu of addiction and self-destruction and manage to be thoroughly relatable even in their worst moments. A final story about a murdered young nun hints at new vistas opening in Escoria’s already impressive skill and range. Read my interview with Escoria here. 

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THE DRAGON'S DEN

Welcome to The Dragon’s Den, a section of this newsletter where we absolutely refuse to talk about realism, and instead consider books that have dragons in them. (Wizards, spaceships, distant planets, time travel, vampires, gods trapped in the body of a human and sent down to Earth to carry out a task they can only distantly recall but are driven to perform, werewolves, and elves also acceptable.) 

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that a book that feels so precisely designed to your specific set of interests can also have enormous, widespread appeal. This was what I felt on first reading Freya Marske’s A Marvellous Light. Who would not want such an absorbing, fun, spicy fantasy romance? And at the same time, are there truly that many other readers who want a trilogy about queer Edwardian wizards who uncover a wide-scale plot to seize control of an entire arcane system of British magic? 

To my mind, Freya Marske’s work is one of the best-case scenarios for what can also get published amid the current indistinguishable onslaught of A Noun of Noun and Noun novels that have taken over so much fantasy-shelf space. It hits many of the beats that will make her work appealing for audiences who may not immediately scramble for a purchase button at the words “William Morris wallpaper”; it’s fizzy and propulsive without feeling too derivative or empty-brained, and the trilogy has a well-balanced interlocking set of protagonists that give each book a separate flavor while also pulling the reader through to the final momentous conclusion. Book one is sweet gay wizards at a country house, book two is lesbian magicians solving a mystery on a transatlantic cruise, book three is the misanthropic older wizard finding a saucy younger partner while the whole gang tries to save the world. There are big exciting action-y set pieces. There’s sex. There’s power and destiny. You get it — it’s a romantasy. And at the same time, Marske’s work is chockablock with all the fiddly little details and obsessive historical textures that reveal a writer who is writing mostly for themselves and whoever else just happens to be along for the ride. It’s me. I’m the target audience. Maybe it’s also you. —Kathryn VanArendonk, features writer, Vulture

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TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT

Have you been hoping someone would write a long essay comparing the work and fame of Sylvia Plath and Taylor Swift? Then Maggie Nelson has just the thing for you. Last month, the MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and author of The Argonauts released a 56-page zine through Michelle Tea’s Dopamine Books about the lust for fame and the fear of losing it, personal narratives by women, and the deeper meanings of The Tortured Poets Department. 

Here’s a representative sentence: “I celebrate Swift’s genius for pop, her apparent sanity and joy-giving capacity, her ability to feel and express a wide range of positive and negative emotions without circling the drain, and her transmutation of her emotional life into epic, public journey; I also celebrate Plath’s darkness, her outrageous jostling with extremity — an extremity I respect even if I wish that she had gotten better care, lived more life, and had the chance to write more things.”

The limited-edition run of 300 sold out, but if you want more where that came from, the publisher is working on a reprint for January 2025.

COMING SOON

After taking on the complex literary and psychosexual rivalry between rock-and-roll hedonist Eve Babitz and cool-as-ice Joan Didion in ’70s L.A., author Lili Anolik had to cleanse her palate with a completely different pairing. She’s planning a podcast about rock star Courtney Love, whose mother was adopted at birth, and the author Paula Fox, best known for her 1970 novel of Brooklyn real estate and crumbling marriage, Desperate Characters. Love was a source in Didion & Babitz (she claimed to be the 5-year-old on acid in Didion’s essay “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” but when pressed admitted she probably wasn’t that girl, though she could have been). Anolik says, “I'm working on a podcast. I can't say much about it except that it involves Courtney Love and Courtney's grandmother, the dense, opaque, ultra-fine Brooklyn novelist Paula Fox. (They're not the only key figures in it, but they're two of them.) Oh, and it also involves Hollywood, both as geographical location and state of mind." Fox fans, prepare yourselves.

 Do you have gossip or things you want to see here? Let me know at bookgossip@nymag.com.