Responding to Details editor Dan Peres’s new recovery memoir, Katherine Rosman casts a jaundiced eye upon the lax culture and unquestioned expense accounts at Conde Nast Publications that allowed Peres (and several of his colleagues, who also have tell-alls in the works) to get away with gross acts of self-indulgence and mistreatment of their employees.
Sari Botton
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Secret History of Page Six
One-time New York Post reporter Kate Storey takes a deep dive into the history of the paper’s powerful gossip column, examining how it’s adapted since its founding in 1977, into the age of social media and #MeToo.
Posted inEditor's Pick
No One Knows Amy Sedaris Better Than Her Brother David
Humorist David Sedaris lovingly — and hilariously — profiles his sister Amy, recalling their playwriting days in the ’90s as “The Talent Family,” and other adventures.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Adventures in Publishing Outside the Gates
When Latinx author Wendy C. Ortiz shopped her memoir, Excavation, about the inappropriate sexual relationship her eighth grade English teacher initiated with her, mainstream publishers wouldn’t give her the time of day. She published it with tiny Future Tense Books, and the book gained a strong following. Among her readers was white author Kate Elizabeth […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Baron of Botox Is Gone, But His Face Lives On
A profile of late celebrity face master Dr. Fredric Brandt, who revolutionized cosmetic dermatology with the use of Botox and fillers, before dying by suicide in 2015.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Highlight, Nonfiction, Quotes
Elizabeth Wurtzel Made it Okay to Write ‘Ouch’
Today’s memoirists and personal essay writers owe a debt of gratitude to the Prozac Nation author for rewriting an inhibiting rule.
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘I Believe in Love’: Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Final Year, In Her Own Words
Memoirist Elizabeth Wurtzel was working on this, her final personal essay, when she passed away on January 7th, 2020 from metastatic breast cancer. In the piece she reveals that as her health was declining, her marriage was unraveling, and that she was still wrestling with new information her mother finally revealed a couple of years […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
My Semester With the Snowflakes
A 52-year-old former Naval officer enrolls as an undergraduate at Yale, alongside a primarily 18- to 22-year-old student body. Contrary to what his contemporaries expect, in the midst of tackling complicated ideas with his classmates, despite their differences, he finds he has great respect for his them — and they have great respect for him.
Posted inCuration, Essays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Quotes
A Beloved Art Critic Sings His Swan Song
“Drink was destroying my life. Tobacco only shortens it, with the best parts over anyway.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Art of Dying
In this long, kitchen-sink essay, long-time New Yorker writer and art critic Peter Schjeldahl reveals that he is dying of lung cancer. He poignantly looks back at his life and career, and his history as a smoker.