Does Tavern on the Green not want its own book?

Tavern on the Green, the Central Park restaurant and lounge, is the subject of the 310-plus page book "Tavern on the Green," which came out in January. At the time, its publisher, Workman Publishing, breathlessly touted the book as "a glorious celebration of the legendary eating spot in Manhattan's Central Park."

Nestled in Central Park, one of the most fabulous settings imaginable, Tavern on the Green has been dazzling generations of New Yorkers and visitors with its inventive, eclectic menu and playful decor. Some 700,000 guests dine every year at this one-of-a-kind restaurant, which has also played host to countless weddings and birthday parties, Broadway opening nights and glamorous afterparties, and many other memorable events.

This enchanting souvenir volume captures all of Tavern on the Green's rich history — from its origins in the 1870s as a shelter for the sheep that grazed in the nearby Sheep Meadow to its reincarnation as a restaurant in the 1930s and rebirth in the 1970s as the glistening jewel of the great restaurateur/showman Warner LeRoy.

Well, the shine is off the jewel; Wednesday the New York Post reported that Workman has sued Tavern on the Green for more than $200,000 for "allegedly going back on a deal to buy 10,000 copies of their own book, 'Tavern on the Green,' the suit claims."

But the book lawsuit is just one of the restaurant's challenges. Its 20-year contract for the property is up on Dec. 31 of this year, and this week at least two other restaurateurs joined the LeRoy family in submitting proposals -- and $50,000 checks -- to compete for an operating license for the next two decades.

If the LeRoy's tenure at Tavern on the Green does by chance come to an end in December, then maybe they'll have wanted those books after all -- they'll be collectors items.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo of Tavern on the Green by phenominam via Flickr

Publishers Weekly's editorial staff takes another hit

 

Today is the last day for three editors at Publishers Weekly, the book industry trade magazine; their layoffs follow January cuts that sent five editorial staffers packing, including respected Editor in Chief Sara Nelson. The firings are part of a 7% across-the-board cut by parent company Reed Business Information, which also owns Variety. The movie industry trade magazine, which moved 20-year veteran Peter Bart out of the top editorial position earlier this month, fired 15 staffers this week.

The publishing industry may be smaller, but it's facing challenges that are even more complex than Hollywood's, what with questions of electronic publishing, e-readers, declining readership and inefficient models of distribution.

"The publishing industry needs an on- and offline forum where it can confer about strategy and direction," said Richard Nash, former publisher of Soft Skull Press. "But it doesn't appear as if [Publishers Weekly] is going to supply those needs."

With these layoffs, Publishers Weekly has lost some very Web-savvy staff, particularly associate editor Craig Teicher. He was a go-to guy for electronic publishing and the Web; as a bonus, he also covered poetry. Firing him, Nash says, "does seem like a counterproductive development." The staff cuts throw the company's commitment to new media into question.

Also departing are managing editor Robin Lenz, who has been at the magazine for more than two decades, and Dermot McEvoy, who managed the e-mail newsletter PW Daily.

In a Tuesday morning e-mail obtained by the Wrap, Reed Business Information Chief Executive Tad Smith wrote that the company "may need to make additional reductions to fit the business conditions,” and that remaining staff will be required “to take mandatory unpaid days off.”

-- Carolyn Kellogg

A Different Light going dark

After almost 30 years as the preeminent gay, lesbian and transgendered bookstore in Los Angeles, A Different Light in West Hollywood will be closing its doors. As far back as 2000, manager Brad Craft, above, warned the L.A. Times that the bookstore, which he called "the intellectual focus of our community," was struggling. This week owner Bill Barker, who has no intentions of shuttering the San Francisco store, says there were two circumstances that made things increasingly difficult for the WeHo location.

The first, he told Instinct Magazine yesterday, was a massive construction project on Santa Monica Boulevard that began in 2001. "[The city] came in and ripped all the sidewalks out, and foot traffic and parking disappeared from West Hollywood for a year or 18 months," he said, "and it never came back."

Then in 2007, Mickey's, a bar next door, had a terrible fire. "They closed it down, barricaded the front, and again I saw a dropoff in sales. The bars attract people," Barker said. "They [Mickey’s] were supposed to open last June, and that didn’t happen, and then it went to October before Christmas and that didn’t happen. And now the economy is very, very serious."

Earlier this month, the nation's oldest gay bookstore, the Oscar Wilde Bookshop in New York's Greenwich Village, announced it will close in late March. The closures are bad news for independent bookstores in general and gay bookstores in particular.

But one thing that A Different Light has going for it, in addition to its storefront in the Castro in San Francisco, is a robust online marketplace, where it sells books, DVDs and "adult selections." And you know how the Internet loves "adult selections."

The West Hollywood store will close sometime this spring.

— Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times

Will Obama's hope lead us to new riches?

Magazine reporter Ryan D'Agostino wanted to know what it was like to live in the toniest neighborhoods in America — so he walked around, knocked on doors in the wealthiest ZIP codes and asked the people who answered how they got there. The result is "Rich Like Them: My Door-to-Door Search for the Secrets of Wealth in America's Richest Neighborhoods." In this new period of economic uncertainty, finding out how to get rich sounds like a great idea.

D'Agostino's book might present a slightly skewed perspective — he didn't get to talk to the people who were at an office instead of at home, who let their household help answer the door, or who were disinclined to talk to a reporter. Most people who talked to him had earned their wealth, rather than inherited it; they wanted to tell their stories.

One of these is, improbably, a bookstore owner. Harvey Jason — who, technically, lives not in but adjacent to Beverly Hills (90210 is the 64th-most-wealthy ZIP code in the U.S.) — is the proprietor of Mystery Pier Books on Sunset in West Hollywood. A longtime character actor, Jason's ties to the movie industry have helped foster a trade in first editions and movie-oriented collectibles, like Harvey Cobb's "Paths to Glory" signed by Kirk Douglas, who starred in the film version. Harvey Jason told D'Agostino:

If I made a list of all the things in life I thought were coincidences and then looked back at them, I would see they weren't coincidences at all.

If we're happy, we make other people happy. If we're miserable — well, you know how contagious misery is.

Gratitude is the single emotion that propels me through life. It's the only emotion, I believe, that is thoroughly incompatible with negativity. And without negativity, you can have optimism — and optimism creates more optimism. I look over my shoulder and say 'This happened because of this and this and this.' Today I'm an optimist, but I'm an optimist based on my own experience.

As Obama said in his inauguration speech, "we gather because we have chosen hope over fear." If under the new Obama administration we all — even booksellers — can have hope and optimism, things might be looking up. 

— Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Cher's Malibu Mansion, courtesy of Sotheby's

Glenn Goldman, RIP

Here's some absolutely dreadful news to start the new year: Glenn Goldman, founder and owner of the West Hollywood independent bookstore Book Soup, died today of complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 58.

I knew Glenn for a long time ... 18 years, to be exact. He was a charming gentleman: shy, smart, exceedingly well-read and committed to reading and bookselling and the literary life. He founded Book Soup in 1975, on the Sunset Strip, across the street from the old Tower Records, down the block from the Whiskey and Duke's Coffee Shop.

Over the years, Book Soup has become known for the celebrities who shopped there; its motto is "Bookseller to the Great & Infamous." For me, though, it is and always has been a neighborhood bookstore. Maybe that's because the first time I ever saw the place, in 1986, I was visiting the neighborhood, staying with a friend who lived a few blocks away. One Saturday morning, we spent an hour or so looking through the floor-to-ceiling shelves, ordering hard to find titles from England and having them shipped to my apartment in New York.

Five years later, when I moved to Los Angeles, Book Soup was one of the first places I came back to, and ever since, it's been a regular stop. When my son Noah was little, I used to take him there so he could play on the library ladders. I can't count the number of readings I've attended at the store, the books and magazines I've bought, the conversations I've had.

In every way that matters, you can chalk that up to Glenn. He set the tone, both intellectually -- the store reflected his tastes and interests, in art and film and fiction -- and in terms of personality. The staff is among the nicest I've encountered: smart and a little bit shy also, enthusiastic about the books. And writers love to read there, even though the space can be a bit unwieldy, because they know that this is a place where they'll be treasured, where their work will be treated not as commodity but as art.

According to a post this afternoon on LA Observed, Book Soup is looking for a buyer; I hope they find one soon. After all, in a very real sense, Book Soup is Glenn's reflection -- a place of decency and intelligence, iconoclasm and aesthetic vision. In a cookie-cutter world, there are far too few such establishments, the bookstore as neighborhood salon. This was Glenn's great talent and his legacy, his lasting gift to us all.

-- David L. Ulin

Photo by Carolyn Kellogg

2008's best food writing will make you hungry

If you can read a recipe by Chez Panisse's Alice Waters without a twinge of hunger, you have a stronger stomach than me. Like a trip to the grocery store, the recipe section of "The Best Food Writing 2008" should not be undertaken on an empty stomach. The 400-page anthology, now on shelves, includes plenty of other writing: on cloned cows, food in post-Katrina New Orleans, local restaurateurs, sublime burgers and other food trends.

The best of the trend pieces is "Miles to Go Before I Eat" by Mark C. Anderson. He tried to stick to a strict "localvore" regimen, eating only foods from a 150-mile radius of his Monterey County home. Despite the buzz "eating local" has gotten, it's monumentally impractical; even with Northern California's agricultural bounty, it meant going without any flour-based products, paying $60 for local olive oil, handing over persimmons that grew just out of range, and, most painfully, not using Tapatio. Really, how could we live in a world like that? I'd have to move.

Anderson's piece appeared in the Monterey County Weekly, and that's just the beginning of the diversity of sources. There are stories from all over, from local papers and websites, as well as the places you'd expect -- Gourmet, Food & Wine, The New York Times, The New Yorker.

Some of these stories can make you burn with a need to taste what they're writing about. Calvin Trillin's "Three Chopsticks" from The New Yorker convinced me I must get to Singapore and stay until I eat everything, and that I have to leave right now. Writing for Food & Wine, Thomas O. Ryder put several Louisiana restaurants on the roster for my next roadtrip in "Cajun Country by Car."

Others are simply glorious exercises in vicarious eating. Do I want to watch a whole pig be barbecued, sliced and served? Maybe not, but I'm glad Elaine T. Cicora did for Cleveland Scene ("Shakin' the Bacon Tree"). I might never go to Alinea and eat one of its inventive, multi-course meals, but Jess Thompson did, and she took notes ("Waiterly Conduct") for her blog Hogwash.

Momofuku Ssäm Bar makes two appearances, in an endearing profile of its chef, David Chang, by Larissa MacFarquahr ("Chef on the Edge" for The New Yorker) and for its notorious pork butt in Frank Bruni's "Fat, Glorious Fat, Moves to the Center of the Plate," in the New York Times. The restaurant has certainly made an impression since opening in 2006; only one other appears twice -- New Orleans' Mandina, which has been owned by the Mandina family for more than a century.

Wired may have a future as a food magazine. Ben Paynter's "The Other Other White Meat," about cloned cows and pigs and their role in our food chain, is not just intelligent and measured, but also good investigative journalism. He eats a steak from a clone and gets a farmer to reveal that you might have eaten one too.

Foodies will no doubt be familiar with some of the pieces here, but because editor Holly Hughes has tapped such a broad range of sources, there will be some new, appetizing discoveries. And that's what good food writing is all about. 

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo of ramen at Momofuku in New York by misocrazy via Flickr

Out of date before it's published

I wouldn't want to be a financial writer with a book coming out later this year -- every pre-plunge-written text about the U.S. economy and its health is going to sound hopelessly dated (unless the author attaches an afterword which, in the end, may only underscore the book's weakness).

Arriving in our offices this week was one such unlucky candidate: "Panic! The Story of Modern Financial Insanity" edited by Michael Lewis (W.W. Norton). Lewis has collected briefs and articles by a variety of economic critics that range over economic crises of the last 20 years. The book is scheduled to be published in December.

Yes, as you might expect, the book suffers from the fact that something is definitely missing. On the other hand, the long view of Lewis' selections provides some helpful context about how we got here (the subprime mess, the tulip-bulb speculation frenzy of the past several years, a lack of regulatory oversight). And it also presents some interesting, sometimes unflattering portraits of the various people involved.

More on these personalities after the jump.