On Kelly green pants, ‘True Color’ and the ‘Preppy Handbook’

Books, Words+Pixels
Kory Stamper's True Color outlines battles over descriptions of Kelly green, begonia and more
Kelly green makes a few appearances in Stamper’s book.

Kelly green trousers were all the rage in my Connecticut high school, and I was among the many students who wore them, along with bone white and khaki versions. As was the fashion, I selected a grosgrain ribbon watch band1 and other accessories to complement each day’s outfit, delighting in subtle color interplay between my choices.

When we moved to a Philadelphia burb straight out of “The Official Preppy Handbook” midway through high school, I was surprised to discover that my new classmates favored less vibrant garb in late disco-era beiges and burgundies, but the dye was already cast for me: Decades later, I still favor pops of color in my outfits, and have long been attuned to amusing wordplay clothing companies sometimes employ to entice potential purchasers of their offerings.

Hooked on hues

Do I want to buy a sweater that is peppermint ice, jade mist or smoky thistle, or would I be more likely to choose one described as light pink, pale green or dark purple? I prefer lyrical options any day, though as someone with a smattering of experience mixing paints for artistic endeavors I have been known to wonder what type of color recipe designers used.

So, what I’m saying is: I’m hooked on hues. Kory Stamper’s “True Color,” subtitled “The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color — From Azure to Zinc Pink,” promised playful lexicology about a topic near and dear to my heart and it delivered. But it also gave me a deeper understanding of the science of color and the stakes involved in standardizing them — from determining the proper shade of margarine (there used to be laws prohibiting food companies from making butter-like spreads look too much like the real deal) to the paint on battleships (guess wrong and U-boats may sink them, military leaders fretted during World War I).

Beguiled by begonia

Stamper takes us along on her journey through the dusty New England archives of Merriam-Webster, where she began working in 1998, as she untangles the rich story behind the color definitions that appear in the company’s massive unabridged dictionary. Stamper’s own love affair with color began when she stumbled upon the entry for begonia while updating the Big Book. The first two definitions for begonia were botanical, as to be expected, followed by a third: “a deep pink that is bluer, lighter, and stronger than average coral (see CORAL 3b), bluer than fiesta, and bluer and stronger than sweet william — called also gaiety.”

From there, it was off to the races for Stamper, who uncovered pitched battles over the proper approach to defining color, pleas for additional color plates and blown deadlines, plus nervous breakdowns and unheralded women who picked up the slack for men incapacitated by mental health issues. Kelly green makes its first appearance in an early description of a hummingbird’s feather on a microscopic level and pops up a couple more times, along with too many other tones and tints to name or count.

Still waiting

The problem in defining colors, the lexicographer makes clear in her book, is their very mutability depending on light and shade. What’s more, we see colors reflected in objects around us, be they an orange or yellow banana, and form our own associations with them. Brutal production schedules — and Merriam-Webster’s reliance on outside experts who squeezed in dictionary work on the side — created their own challenges for editorial teams trying to keep the massive undertakings on track. The third edition of the unabridged international dictionary, dubbed W3 internally, was published two years late in 1961, Stamper notes, “a million dollars over budget, scads of editors crushed under its heavy, churning wheels.”

It was such a massive — and fraught — experience that Merriam-Webster would not begin work on a comprehensive new edition until nearly half a century later in 2010. It has yet to arrive.2

The Official Preppy Handbook cover
This copy of the “Preppy Handbook” has traveled with me back and forth across the country.

Prep talk

Because I was able to find my original copy of “The Official Preppy Handbook,” please allow me to circle back to it for a minute. Late in the book edited by Lisa Birnbach3, there’s a description of “go-to-hell-pants” that I don’t remember from my initial read. It’s a callback to a Tom Wolfe riff about vibrant trousers favored by Bostonians summering on Martha’s Vineyard: In a 1975 story for Esquire, Wolfe describes the “go-to-hell air” of pants in “checks and plaids of the loudest possible sort” or implausibly bright solid colors, further expounding on the types of checks and plaids in his signature style.4

Five years later, the “Preppy Handbook” picked up the satirical thread. “In casual wear, it is considered very spirited, very fun-loving, to wear one offbeat, loud item — usually the pants,” its authors state, tongues firmly in cheek. “The favored color is lime green,” the blurb continues, “but go-to-hell-pants come in other similar shocking colors.”

And yes, as travelers through certain quarters of New England know, such pants may have embroidered figures on them, be they ducks, whales or lobsters. But, as the book cautions: “Being fun-loving should never be confused with being nonconformist.”

“True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color — From Azure to Zinc Pink,” Knopf, $32

Footnotes

1 The Country Store of Concord outpost we patronized is long gone but Cable Car Clothiers still carries grosgrain ribbon watch bands similar to ones we wore, and belts as well.

2 In the meantime, a copy of the third edition boasting more than 460,000 entries can be yours for $129.

3 Birnbach revisited the territory with 2010’s “True Prep,” co-authored with Chip Kidd.

4 Wolfe’s full description, reprinted in the 1976 essay collection “Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine”: “…the pants had a go-to-hell air: checks and plaids of the loudest possible sort, madras plaids, yellow-on-orange windowpane checks, crazy-quilt plaids, giant houndstooth checks, or else they were a solid airmail red or taxi yellow or some other implausible go-to-hell color.”

First published on my Lititude Substack.

Hello, old friends: Reconnecting with Jay McInerney and other literary faves

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I can’t remember where I was when I first read “Bright Lights, Big City.” It may have been Denver, where I was desperately plotting a return to the East Coast, or soon after I unpacked my bags in greater NYC and landed a publishing gig there. In any case, I will forever associate Jay McInerney’s breakthrough novel with my early post-collegiate years and my own brief flirtation with a literary life in Manhattan.

Like many, I was captivated by McInerney’s literary picaresque through Manhattan’s demimonde and the halls of a storied magazine. I even liked that the book was released under the groovy Vintage Contemporaries paperback line created by his editor pal Gary Fisketjon, though the “Bright Lights” movie adaptation starring Michael J. Fox was of no interest whatsoever when it arrived on the big screen a few years later. My own adventures in Manhattan’s publishing world were tame and brief: I very quickly decamped for Philadelphia, where, as the fates would have it, I became a fact-checker just like the narrator of “Bright Lights, Big City” except it was for TV Guide rather than a stand-in for the New Yorker and there were no decadent nights on the town fueled by Bolivian Marching Powder for me.

Circling back

Over time, I stopped following the work of my favorite authors from that period, tabloid fixture McInerney included, and my connections to the publishing world faded. That all changed when I began editing book coverage for L.A. Times last year. First, a press release about an Isabel Allende novel beckoned in an email, then one heralding the upcoming arrival of “See You on the Other Side,” the fourth novel in McInerney’s Calloway tetralogy.

I immediately wanted to read “See You” but hesitated: Would I still like McInerney’s work? Should I dive into it without having read the previous three novels? I took a flier and am happy to report that the answer to both queries was yes: I quickly slipped into the rhythm of McInerney’s prose again, decades later.

Still tempted after all these years

“See You on the Other Side” revisits Russell and Corrinne Calloway, now in their 60s, at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Their children are young adults and Russell a boutique publisher; Corrinne serves as director of Nourish New York, a non-profit that relies on restaurant food donations. They are moneyed bourgeoisie of an artier sort, at the novel’s outset unpacking boxes in a freshly purchased Greenwich Village penthouse after a decade in gentrifying Harlem. They socialize with even richer folk that keep them relatively humble.

Over the course of the novel, the Calloways and pals weather various crises, emotional and corporeal. Russell, an alter ego of the author, faces temptation much like the narrator of “Bright Lights”; in an echo of that seminal book, the aging publisher narrowly avoids disaster during a dubious cocaine-laced rendezvous with a promising young writer late in the novel. McInerney weaves in enough backstory from earlier book installments to make it easy for the uninitiated to follow along. Does the prose seem overly baggy with characters verging on self-satisfied? Yes again, though to the latter point one could argue that might be McInerney’s intent as a gentle satirist with a fondness for the good life himself. (He was a wine columnist for the Wall Street Journal so he knows his way around a good vintage.)

How it all began

To make sure I wasn’t missing out on previously established details central to a rich appreciation of “See You,” I downloaded “Brightness Falls,” the 1992 novel that introduces us to Russell and Corrinne, a young married couple whose world is rocked by the AIDS epidemic and the brutal 1987 stock market crash. This gave me additional insight into Russell and Corrinne’s formative friendship with writer-to-be Jeff Pierce at Brown and the tetralogy itself, but didn’t answer my nagging question: How does the writing of these books really compare to “Bright Lights, Big City”? Was I misremembering my introduction to McInerney’s prose after so much time?

‘Bright Lights’ revisited

Dear reader, I was not. “Bright Lights, Big City,” a slim 182 pages to 304 for “See You on the Other Side” and 415 for “Brightness Falls,” is much tauter than its baggier successors; tellingly, it started as a short story for the Paris Review before McInerney turned it into a novel. Rereading it four decades later, I found myself less interested in the narrator’s misadventures in the Department of Factual Verification (maybe because I have worked in a magazine research department) and Gotham nightclubs (generally avoid such things) than the poignant revelations later in the book. That part I hadn’t remembered.

“Less Than Zero” arrived shortly after “Bright Lights, Big City,” and critics immediately lumped the two novels together, but Bret Easton Elllis’s novel never grabbed me the same way; I found it a chillier, name-dropping affair. In my view, McInerney’s distinctive second-person narration is key to the book’s enduring appeal: reproachful self-talk is hugely relatable even to those of us unlikely to ever unleash a ferret in a former boss’s office after hours. Russell’s first-person narration in “See You on the Other Side” can be similarly rueful; there’s grace to that humanity.

McInerney has always been open about considering Russell an alter ego from a counter life: His character has stayed married to his college sweetheart, unlike McInerney, whose fourth wife is Patty Hearst’s sister, and is an editor rather than a writer. Similarly, reading “See You on the Other Side” gives me a fictional glimpse of the New York publishing world I left behind so long ago. It’s a nice place to re-visit.

Now, excuse me while I listen to the Clapton song this missive is named for and go find a copy of “House of Spirits.”

Endnotes

  • Some critics have a much harsher view of “See You on the Other Side” than I do: NYT critic Dwight Garner hated it, while Erin Somers dubbed it a compulsory finish lesser to both “Bright Lights, Big City” and “Brightness Falls” in her critique for the Nation. Mark Athitakis, a critic I had the pleasure of editing for LAT, takes a more complimentary view toward “See You on the Other Side” and McInerney’s work in his Bloomburg review, calling his Manhattan-centric novels underrated while comparing Russell to protagonists in novels by John Updike and Philip Roth. Perhaps the key to enjoyment is not to have read the quartet in publication order.
  • For more about Vintage Contemporaries, read this New Yorker story and note the mention of the World Trade Center towers on the cover of “Bright Lights” in this story from 2012. Last, NYT’s Gina Bellafante revisited “Bright Lights” for its 40th anniversary in 2024.

This first appeared on my Lititude Substack.

Two new novels get real about Hollywood work woes for women

Books, Words+Pixels
book covers for The Midnight Show and The Take

“Just don’t make it about how hard it is for women in Hollywood,” a wonderfully bitchy editor advised me years ago when assigning a story tied to an organization whose very mission was improving showbiz opportunities for that gender. Then he repeated that guideline twice more for good measure.

I laughed to myself at the time — his directive was so unprompted! — but got the message loud and clear. In any case, it was easy to lead my story with a positive development, as Kathryn Bigelow had become the first woman to receive a directing Oscar a couple months earlier. I interviewed a bunch of women about their upcoming film projects and showcased those while briskly acknowledging challenges getting some of them funded.

Less happily, I ran into major resistance when I hatched a story about Hollywood’s progress toward gender equality five years after the starry formation of the Time’s Up organization dedicated to that goal. The idea was to run the story as part of a magazine package celebrating female entertainment industry accomplishments, and while I had developed newsy companion stories like this before without an issue, a top editor didn’t want this one anywhere near his glossy Power of Women feature stories. The fact that Anita Hill and other high-profile industry leaders spoke with me on the record did not sway him. My story mutated a few times to incorporate a colleague’s reporting on #MeToo survivors. It ended up online before that year’s Women’s History Month concluded.

A producer that wants her blood

I thought of both incidents when reading “The Take” and “The Midnight Show,” two new novels that engage with women’s workplace struggles in the entertainment industry rather than glossing over them. In “The Take,” author Kelly Yang sets up a blood-transfusion scenario similar to “The Substance,” except the two main protagonists are an aging Hollywood producer and an aspiring Asian American writer short on cash, while a fictional Rolling Stone culture writer hopes to make a splash with her investigation into the mysterious disappearance of a young female late-night star four decades earlier in “The Midnight Show.” Lee Kelly and Jennifer Thorne tale is bicoastal; characters move between New York and L.A.’s creative scenes as opportunities arise, just like real life.

Don’t forget about ageism

As disparate as the book setups are, they both enable the authors to channel generation spanning attitudes about and experiences in showbiz: We feel freshly minted MFA Maggie Wang’s desperation to gain a toehold in the industry as well as 53-year-old Ingrid Parker’s simultaneous entitlement and frustration with Hollywood ageism in Yang’s novel. Notably, it’s Yang’s first for an adult audience after a series of books geared toward kids.

Madeline Cohen, meanwhile, stands in for younger equality-minded women as she interrogates principals from “The Midnight Show” about breakthrough sketch comedy talent Lilian Martin and the pressures on her as a quirky female performer in the early 1980s. As the books unfold, more complex portraits of the main characters emerge, with Maggie’s immigrant background adding texture to “The Take.”

I could quibble with some of the writing choices — the supposedly compiled interviews for “The Midnight Show” read more scripted than spoken to this longtime entertainment journo while “The Take” skews a bit young in perspective for my taste — but the workplace interactions rang truthful enough for their fictional settings.

Their struggles are real

Mostly, I appreciate the authors’ desire to depict three-dimensional women navigating challenging showbiz careers along with romantic misadventures. The protagonists all contain multitudes: Their struggles are real. And so are their foibles.

This was first published on my Lititude Substack.

I like serial killer books and romantasy novels now?

Books, Words+Pixels, Writing

You think you know your taste by now but you, by which I mean me, would be wrong. A year ago, I would have told you no, I’m not really into cozy murder mysteries, and I would have also reflexively stated that I am not a fantasy book fan or particularly interested in romantasy, a magic-drenched genre that also exploded in popularity when I wasn’t paying attention. But, you know, each to their own.

Books like “The Antiquarian’s Object of Desire” and “I’m Not the Only Murderer in My Retirement Home” made me realize how blinkered I was. The signs were all there, from my galloping read of the first Harry Potter book decades ago to more recent binge watches of Netflix’s “A Man on the Inside” and “Miss Scarlet and the Duke” via PBS’s streaming platform. I just wasn’t paying attention. Yes, I can enjoy serial killer and romantasy novels, especially if they are well crafted.

And “Antiquarian’s” and “I’m Not the Only Murderer” are that. Each is playfully written and unfolds at a brisk pace.

A cozy murder mystery about a killer?

“I’m Not the Only Murderer in My Retirement Home” starts with a premise that doesn’t sound very cozy: its chief protagonist is a serial killer freshly released from prison to a luxurious North London retirement community called Sheldon Oaks. Carol matter-of-factly cops to her murderous impulses, past and present, even as she befriends a small group of fellow retirees. When a fellow resident drops dead in a suspicious manner, naturally all eyes turn to her. She races to clear her name with the help of her elderly pals.

If you’ve seen “Man on the Inside,” led by Ted Danson as a charming widower, or White House mystery “The Residence,” starring Uzo Aduba as a bird-loving eccentric who is far more effective as a detective than might first appear, you’ll be familiar with the lightly comedic tone of Fergus Craig’s novel. The author, an actor-comedian and TV writer, credits his publisher with the book’s premise but deserves praise for executing it well. Amusingly, characters reference the popularity of the cozy murder mystery genre as the story heads toward its denouement.

Classic rom-com, yet steamy

India Holton’s “Antiquarian’s Object of Desire” romantasy, meanwhile, starts in classic rom-com style as a tale of bickering Victorian era academics that can’t be in the same room without sparks flying, and it gets progressively steamy over the course of the novel. Amelia Tarrant has known Caleb Sterling since boarding school, but they must disguise their bond lest she lose her job and reputation as an Oxford professor of antiquities. So they mock bicker and set fires while handling objects with magical properties; things really get screwy when they are dispatched to an old manor house filled with ghosts and items to catalog for the British Museum.

Like Eliza in similarly Victorian England-set “Miss Scarlet,” Amelia is constantly fighting slights based on her gender but is determined to pursue her passion; Caleb is a Byron-loving dandy with a hardscrabble past. This book is the third installment in Holton’s Love’s Academic series so clearly I have some catching up to do.

Would I have gravitated toward either of these novels in less turbulent times? Hard to say, but “I’m Not the Only Murderer” certainly made me think of the Agatha Christie mysteries filling my England-born grandmother’s bookcase. I do know that reading this pair of books was a pleasant diversion from political turmoil roiling the country — and it’s always nice to find new types of books to enjoy. There are so many worthy offerings yet to be perused.

“I’m Not the Only Murderer in My Retirement Home” by Fergus Craig, 272 pages, $30

“The Antiquarian’s Object of Desire” by India Holton, 368 pages, $19

Originally posted on my Lititude Substack, which you can visit here.

Hooked on hues: ‘True Color’ by Kory Stamper

book reviews, Books, Writing

I began reading “True Color” for the its promise of wordplay and ended up learning more about the science behind about all the hues, tints and shades around us than I ever expected to know, plus interesting factoids about margarine marketing restrictions of the past and the massive amount of work that went into creating Webster’s gargantuan unabridged dictionary in the pre-Internet age. Truth be told, I would have been happier with even more wordplay from Kory Stamper, who began working for Merriam-Webster in 1998, but she animates her research with playful prose. Reading her recently published book, subtitled “The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color — From Azure to Zinc Pink,” made me think of my own love affair with color and the Kelly green trousers from my Connecticut youth. For more about that, read this over at Lititude — and be sure to stay for peek at my vintage copy of the “Preppy Handbook” and its description of go-to-hell-pants.

Reviewing Jay McInerney’s latest out of order

Books, Words+Pixels, Writing

I have a friend that refuses to watch any movies or TV shows based on books until she has read the books first. This has never really been a ruled I have followed — sure, sometimes I make a point of reading the pertinent books first, but I have more frequently not done so — and I have been known to dip into movie franchises and TV shows midstream rather than the proper order. So I wasn’t too concerned about reading the supposedly last installment Jay McInerney’s Calloway book series first.

“See You on the Other Side” checks in with Russell and Corrinne Calloway in their 60s at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic. They’ve just moved into a Greenwich Village penthouse after a decade in gentrifying Harlem, and are living comfortably when the pandemic upends their lives and those of the people around them. Over the course of the novel, McInerney deftly weaves in backstory from the previous three installments into the narrative to serve as both a reminder to readers of those books — published in 1992 (“Brightness Falls”), 2006 (“The Good Life”) and 2016 (“Bright, Precious Days”) — as well as newcomers. In my view, it’s not necessarily to have read the earlier books first, but you may want to circle back to them if you start with the last first, as I did.

I wrote more about “See You on the Other Side,” and reconnecting with McInerney’s breakthrough novel, “Bright Lights, Big City,” at Lititude.