The Promised Page From My Social Diary

Just came home from Housing Works, where Kate Christensen read a hilarious scene from her new novel, The Epicure's Lament, in which our antihero, who has elected to continue smoking even though it will surely kill him, picks up the married woman who's infatuated with his brother (whom he despises) in a bar. Verses from "Seasons in the Sun" are involved. It was especially wonderful to see Kate because it gave me the opportunity to finally return the copy of The Diaries of Dawn Powell she graciously loaned me ages ago; both of us, I discovered when I interviewed her, are huge fans of Powell, and Kate's done a marvelous job of depicting Manhattan with a similarly sharp eye in her three books. If she's reading again, you'd do well to go hear her.