A bookish night at the New York Public Library, the Literary Lions gala celebrates writers. Charlie Rose attended, and was ensconced in conversation as pigs in blankets were passed. Jean Doumanian confessed to hating long cocktail hours, but the gabfest went on for a while. Writers do have stories. Julie Taymor is finishing her film on Gloria Steinem, and Gay Talese, ever the dapper gadabout, said he went out to screenings and book events galore, even stepping out to a pub to watch television, if nothing else was on his social calendar.
This year honoring Elizabeth Alexander, Jamaica Kincaid, Jill Lepore, Frederick Wiseman and Philip Glass in grand style, the event attracted a celebrity crowd including Ken Auletta, David Remnick, Joyce Carol Oates, Roxana Robinson, and Jay McInerny, many of whom, past awardees, wore their medals proudly as they filed into a festively decorated reading room for dinner. Except for Philip Glass, who could not attend, the honorees stuck around to sign books for the 500 guests on the library’s first floor. Nevertheless, guests went home with his memoir, Words Without Music, an account of this composer’s collaborations with a who’s who of American culture: writers among them.
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