Preface

A little more than ten years ago, I first met the man to whom this book is dedicated in the office of the late and justly celebrated literary agent, Carl Brandt. I was a young writer who had published a few short stories, a bit of verse (a secret vice), and was at the time working on my first novel, or First Novel. I had been led, by the best of Eastern-college creative-writing courses, and by the newest of the New Critics, to believe that fiction was somehow holier than nonfiction (though most modern fiction wasn’t very good), and that factual reportage was a somewhat spurious endeavor. There was a world of difference, I had been taught, between an author (of novels) and a mere “journalist.” The purpose of the meeting in Carl Brandt’s office was to discuss whether I might also “turn my hand”—my phrase—to nonfiction.

The first article I wrote for Harry Sions was returned to me rather promptly for repairs. Let us say they were extensive. Indeed, they were total. Grimly, I attacked the piece again, and once more it was returned for repairs only slightly less extensive than before. I don’t remember how many times this sequence of events repeated itself after this, but I do know that by the time the article was finally accepted I hated Harry Sions. It was several days before my equanimity returned and I realized that I was grateful.

For a number of years Harry Sions edited, scolded, stimulated, badgered, inspired, charmed, and browbeat Holiday writers. He is not a hand-holding sort of editor. Great is his glee when he can find a reason for requiring this or that Great Name in American literature to revise, repair, rewrite, or when he can reject altogether a piece of writing that does not meet his stiff and spiky standards. Harry Sions taught me two things. He taught me how to write nonfiction. And he taught me that the American upper-class surroundings and training (including The Right School) and institutions (including the “junior dances”) which I had grown up with, and had merely endured, were both interesting and exceptionally worth writing about.

Over the years, I wrote a number of pieces for Harry Sions which dealt with Society and the institutions it supports (and which, in turn, support it and help keep High Society aloft), and these pieces, along with quite a bit of new material, the result of further researches and reflections, are at the heart—if that is not too strong a word—of this book.

S. B.