The Stacks Reader

By Chris Heath Us Weekly December, 1997 In the past year, Winona Ryder has given two eulogies. “I’ve dealt with loss for the first time,” she says, “and it’s so… strange.” One morning, sitting over breakfast in her San Francisco house, wearing her blue-and-white striped pajamas, drinking the hazelnut tea her mother has made us and brought to the table with SAVE THE PLANET napkins, Ryder mentions the first. It was for Timothy Leary. There’s a copy of the text upstairs.

By Frank Rich New Times July 11, 1975 When I was in California last summer, hanging around the old Selznick studio in Culver City where Mike Nichols was making The Fortune, I heard the word “wonderful” more times in ten days than I had heard it in my entire life.

By Wendy Wasserstein New York Woman March 1988 Teri Garr shows up for lunch wearing a plaid flannel shirt, a blue Benettonish sweater and a pair of slacks. It’s the very same ensemble I once saw on Mariel Hemingway in the Russian Tea Room. I remember thinking at that time that only an actress could get away with such a look. Any mother, psychiatrist or career counselor would tell you, Honey, this is not dressing for success. But on Mariel and Teri it is. They can wear flannel and look successful.

By Charles P. Pierce The National Sports Daily December 21, 1990 The summer people go home before the sky grows all muscular with the clouds that will bring the first snow down upon Chisago County in Minnesota. They are all gone by then—all the happy children, and the men in battered hats as thickly stuck with fishing lures as Moby Dick’s hide was with harpoons.

By Stephen Fried Philadelphia Magazine September 1998 When the subject of how he got control of his father’s multibillion-dollar business finally comes up, Martin Grass tugs at his contrasting collar and averts his eyes. For a 44-year-old, his eyes are prematurely tragic. “People saw this article in Forbes where it makes it sound like my dad was an incompetent or something,” he explains with a nervous chuckle.

By Brad Darrach People December 4, 1974 A prissy, old-fashioned maiden wakes from a swoon to see a corpse-colored giant with a large zipper in down at her prostrate form. Frankenstein’s monster! And, what’s even scarier, the monster is unzipping a zipper that is not in his neck. “What do you think you’re doing?” the maiden demands indignantly. “Take me home this minute!” The monster continues to unzip. The maiden’s eyes widen. “Woof!” she growls.

By W.C. Heinz From What a Time It Was 2001 We were sitting in the living room of a hotel suite in Chicago, and it was about nine o’clock at night. Rocky Graziano was sitting in an easy chair, with his legs over one of the arms. He had on slacks and a T-shirt, and he was sucking on a dry pipe and trying to spit small, almost-dry spit into a wastebasket over by the near wall.

By David Hirshey The Daily News Sunday Magazine March 15, 1981 In his new Oscar-baiting film, Marty Supreme, Timothée Chalamet plays a ping pong prodigy who, much like the actor’s 2024 Oscar-nominated performance as young Bob Dylan, is a complete unknown. Well, unknown, that is, to anyone outside the famously insular table tennis community and even then, you’d have to be in your late 50s to be passingly familiar with the legend of Marty Reisman, whose life loosely inspired the movie.

By Tony Kornheiser New Times November 27, 1978 Because my car is a 1972 Pinto it may also be a final tribute to me. Film at 11. My Pinto—“Charro”—gets 22 miles per gallon highway, 17 miles per gallon city. It gets 0 miles per gallon sitting in my driveway, where I kept it most of the time. I keep it there because self-immolation is not my idea of a good time. A reported 32 persons have been incinerated and 25 more have suffered near-fatal burns in a rear-end collision involving Pintos.

By Ron Rosenbaum Vanity Fair June 1992 New York is a city famous for its talkers, its riffers, rappers, and raconteurs. But let’s face it, a lot of them are seriously overrated—depend on canned routines and canned Attitude, self-congratulatory cynicism and stale camp snobbery. Ever since I came to Manhattan I kept hoping to partake of the promised feast of wit, but found, more often than not, name-droppers, know-it-ails, wise guys posing as wise men. You know who I mean.