Introduction

A WRITER’S JOURNEY is an epic one that brakes for “banal.” While it’s soothing to believe that you have control over your own odyssey, these wise words linger and crescendo: “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”

I am honored and intrigued that Elaine Kaufman and I are reunited in this book.

Elaine’s path rose from cosmetician to waitress and ultimately to a restaurateur of colossal fame. Playwright Jack Richardson suggested that Elaine invite writers to her uptown, out of the safe-and-surveyed New York restaurant/tavern turf. He recommended that she use round tables to encourage intimacy and conversation.

Elaine would come to mentor, mother, encourage, and feed her writers.

As I interviewed many of her regulars, the common denominator wrote itself. Many, many regulars and even occasional visitors miss Elaine and Elaine’s. They often feel lost, as if their home was uprooted and can never be rebuilt along with its mystique.

My re-entwinement with Elaine’s life began on an unassuming day.

One morning I decided to start a Facebook group. I had never ever even considered spearheading an entourage on social media, but there it was: a simple seed spurned my own frustration on what was becoming of the America I knew and deeply cherished.

Reminiscing about all the innovative and magical components that make America “America,” I founded a group and named it “Write on America.” I invited my ever-sprouting group of Facebook and three-dimensional friends to join me.

My first post was a YouTube of Arlo Guthrie singing “City of New Orleans.”

The first seed sunk in, ready to sprout on, be smoked, or blown away. The immediate response came from two “real” friends who remembered the writer of the song, Steve Goodman, strumming his version at J.P.’s, a bar they worked at in the 1970s—not too far a cry from the birth of creativity at Elaine’s.

Sasha Tcherevkoff, a Facebook friend who was working for a site named NewYorkNatives.com contacted me. He liked the name of my group and thought that the names might enhance each other or perhaps merge in some way. We made a phone date.

Sasha asked if I was a native New Yorker. I replied that “I was born in Doctor’s Hospital.”

So began my column, dubbed by NewYorkNatives.com as “Vintage Gossip.”

My first column was about Mayor Koch, who had just passed. I had been to Gracie Mansion, met the Mayor, and relished the chance to reminisce in wobbly Yiddish and New York English.

My column grew into a weekly ritual.

I wrote about Elaine’s. I told tales of my times there: first as a guest, then a publicist, and ultimately as a columnist and Elaine’s occasional lunch companion.

When I received an email from Nicole Frail, an editor at Skyhorse Publishing, my mind was already on my next column, the wild wave that the Surf Club rode. Nicole inquired if I’d be interested in writing a book about Elaine’s.

A writer’s life is packed and unpacked, the contents scattered almost everywhere but where we discard or carefully fold them. Here I was in California, with a polo pony and three rescue dogs, and I was writing a column for a New York site, and now a book on Elaine’s was on the best table that Elaine could offer.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Why was Nicole interested in a book on Elaine’s? She replied that it evolved from a discussion that she’d had with her editorial director about New York restaurants in another time. He told her about Elaine’s and when he paused, she said, “I wonder if that’s a book.” A bit of research led her my way. My answer was affirmative: I missed Elaine, and Elaine Kaufman was an intriguing, seemingly complicated, and infinitely controversial woman.

So began the process of researching my subject.

I read every article I could find, A.E. Hotchner’s book, Everyone Comes to Elaine’s, and bartender-turned-journalist Brian McDonald’s Last Call at Elaine’s. Raymond Lindie, who also bartended there, wrote a play titled Elaine’s Paradisio and a memorable story, “The Beefeater Martini.”

I read on: columns and excerpts from Gay Talese, Liz Smith, and New York Times editor Peter Khoury, who I consider a new friend in the making. David Black, a screenwriter and the subject of Jessica Burstein’s “The Kiss,” has also approached that status: potential new friends with treasured memories.

One door opens another—if it doesn’t hit you in your bifocals first.

Add on Susan Morse, who contacted Woody Allen for me. To my childlike delight, he actually replied to my questions. Jessica Burstein, Elaine’s official photographer, with whom I had worked back in our Studio 54 days, was essential to introducing me to the members of Table 4, which honors Elaine; along with detectives, actors, writers, and assorted other regulars. She has contributed her own funny, loving, vintage Elaine Kaufman diary excerpt, along with several of her excellent photographs.

So many fascinating people entered the doors of this book that I can only beam a seismically never-ending thank-you to everyone I interviewed for this technicolor, touching memory of Elaine’s.

I have always missed Elaine’s, but now I miss it even more. I wish that I had known Elaine better. The words loyal friend are continually chorused in her eulogies.

When you read this book, imagine that we are meeting at Elaine’s, in a neighborhood that once was shaky, but shook the trembling and roared into unexpected careers for many into nights that spanned from intellectually intriguing conversations to watching Elaine tossing garbage cans at the paparazzi.

Her inimitable language boisterously beckons asterisks, while her quotes are beyond quotable: who else would dub someone “half a whore”?

Come inside, and share the lore, the inspiration, the tears, and the legend that was Elaine’s.

Welcome in.

Photo credit: Susan Hathaway.