James Frey's Blog, page 3
July 16, 2025
Bring Back Tree Forts!
It could actually make them safer.
By Henry Abbott
Hulton Archive / GettyA bunny, small enough to nestle in a cereal bowl, has recently started hanging out in my backyard. Now and again, it nibbles a plant or lies in the sun. Mostly, it explores the limits of movement, zooming, darting, feinting, and trundling through bushes. Once, I saw it corner so hard that it sprayed mulch in a giant, messy arc. A human kid who did that would almost certainly be called inside to clean up. But I haven’t seen the adults in this bunny’s life in weeks; the baby has carte blanche. If only more of the kids I know could be so lucky.
Wild animals are the best movers on the planet, and little ones spend much of their time frolicking, fighting, leaping, and climbing. From birth, human children share animals’ potential for wild movement; left to their own devices, they would presumably tumble about like puppies. But more and more, they do nothing of the sort.
July 15, 2025
Dialogo de Cecco di Ronchitti da Bruzene in perpuosito de la stella Nuova
The Italian polymath’s first publication reveals his bravery in challenging established doctrines with radical scientific ideas.
[image error]Justus Sustermans, Portrait of Galileo Galilei (1636). Photo: DeAgostini / Getty Images.Even in the league of genius polymaths, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei enjoys legendary status. He was the first to systematically study space with a telescope and his inventions include the pendulum clock and the geometric compass. It is no surprise that his works are a hot commodity on the few occasions they come to market.
The celebrated scientist set a new auction record yesterday with an exceedingly rare first edition of his early 17th-century publication Dialogo de Cecco di Ronchitti da Bruzene in perpuosito de la stella Nuova. The landmark achievement of early modern science sold for an impressive £1.1 million ($1.5 million) at Christie’s London’s Valuable Books and Manuscripts sale on July 9. This figure roughly doubled the presale estimate of £500,000–£700,000 ($680,000–$950,000) (final prices include buyer’s fees, estimates do not).
July 14, 2025
Glass House Summer 2025
Honoring the late Gaetano Pesce, the annual event in New Canaan brought together a cadre of guests across art, design, and literature for a celebration featuring new exhibitions and a lively dance performance.
by Sam Falb
The Pilobolus dancers during a hypnotic, site-specific performance at the Glass House.The Glass House welcomed a design-forward crowd to New Canaan for its annual Summer Party—a vibrant afternoon of art, architecture, and tribute. Honoring the late Gaetano Pesce, the gathering debuted Big Surprise 2, a limited-edition resin vase created with Italian furniture design firm Meritalia and inspired by two Feltri chairs from the host’s own collection.
DJ Pete Brockman set the tone, while Max Mara’s Whitney Bag activation and gelato cart gathered curious eyes across the lawn. As attendees including James Frey and Paul Goldberger; designers Sophie Lou Jacobsen and Maximilian Eicke; artists Deborah Brown and Naudline Pierre; Aldrich Museum Director Cybele Maylone, creative director and curator Abby Bangser, and Phaidon’s Editor-at-Large Spencer Bailey took in the scene, the overarching mood of the afternoon couldn’t be missed—spirited, sculptural, and unmistakably Pesce.
July 13, 2025
Cloning Ponies
A polo legend and a businessman joined forces to copy the player’s greatest horse. But with a single clone worth $800,000, some technologies are a breeding ground for betrayal.
THE HORSES ARE slick with sweat, veins bulging, feet dancing through a maelstrom of legs and mallets and flying clods of earth, 6,000 pounds of flesh tumbling after a tiny white ball. The riders are all furious angles, jabbing their mallets blindly beneath their saddles. But Adolfo Cambiaso appears calm. He lifts a gloved hand and swings the head of his mallet in a perfect arc through the tangle of horse and human to thwack the ball and send it clear toward the goal. It’s the final game of the 2016 Argentine Open—the most important polo match of the year in the most polo-obsessed country in the world—and there are some 30,000 spectators in the stands, all watching Cambiaso’s every move.
Depending on who you ask, Cambiaso might be described as a horse whisperer, a sex symbol, or a marvel of longevity. And it’s all true: At 41 he’s easily the oldest player on this field, his handsome face and cleft chin sun-beaten and stubbled, his dark hair matted with sweat. But the more universally accepted fact is that Cambiaso is the greatest polo player alive—top ranked for some two decades—if not the greatest who has ever lived. As if that weren’t enough, he’s also a horse breeding tycoon who is, on this very field, in this very game, transforming polo from the sport of kings into a frontier laboratory of applied biotechnology.
July 12, 2025
Days Gone By
Opulent days are over at Vogue, Vanity Fair and other once-powerful glossies. Anna Wintour is giving up (some) control. Now that everyone’s a gatekeeper, why do we keep recreating their status-obsessed world?
Illustration by Chantal Jahchan; Photos: Getty ImagesAs the longtime editor in chief of Vanity Fair, Graydon Carter was accustomed to big expenses: chauffeured town cars, five-star hotel stays, writer salaries that stretched into the mid six-figures. But in early 2001, he wondered if he had gone too far.
Annie Leibovitz, the magazine’s chief photographer, had run up a $475,000 bill on a cover shoot involving 10 world-famous actresses — Nicole Kidman, Penélope Cruz, Sophia Loren — and an elaborate stage set, complete with a mantelpiece and a genuine John Singer Sargent painting, which was flown from Los Angeles to New York to London. (“It was like Vietnam, the expenses,” Mr. Carter recalled.) Now, he needed to tell his boss, S.I. Newhouse Jr., the billionaire owner and patron of Condé Nast, about the latest line item on his tab.
“I do have to talk to you about something,” Mr. Carter said as the men sat down for lunch. “It’s a good-news-bad-news situation.”
“What’s the bad news?” Mr. Newhouse asked.
“Well, I think we just shot the most expensive cover in magazine history.”
A pause. “What’s the good news?”
“It looks like a $475,000 cover.”
It was the equivalent of roughly $850,000 today. Mr. Newhouse was fine with it.
July 11, 2025
Conversation at Bedford Playhouse
Bedford Playhouse recently welcomed bestselling author James Frey for a riveting conversation about his latest novel, Next to Heaven—a dark, satirical thriller that delves into the underbelly of America’s wealthiest communities. Dubbed “America’s Most Notorious Author” by TIME and the “Bad Boy of American Literature” by The New York Times, Frey captivated the audience with his insights into the twisted world of privilege, scandal, and betrayal that drives his newest work.
Moderated by author and media executive Fran Hauser, the event offered a lively and thought-provoking discussion on the themes of moral decay, voyeurism, and the extremes of human behavior that Frey masterfully explores in his novel. Guests had the opportunity to purchase signed copies of Next to Heavenand connect with the author in person.
It was a thrilling evening of literature, conversation, and candid storytelling—true to form for one of the most provocative voices in contemporary fiction.
July 10, 2025
Death Valley Driver
Cars, not heat, are the biggest problem in the deadly park
By Farley Elliott, SoCal Bureau Chief
Panamint Valley looking west along Highway 190, Death Valley, Calif.David Toussaint/Getty ImagesSomewhere around Towne Pass, elevation 4,956 feet, the tractor trailer’s brakes started to squeal and sputter. Descending through Death Valley National Park in the predawn hours, the big rig — with cargo in tow from somewhere deep in Nevada — struggled to slow down. Then, the cab began to heat up.
By first light on June 19, the 18-wheeler was toast, having succumbed to the heat and inevitable flames from overheated brakes while trying to maneuver through the hottest place on Earth. The tractor portion of the rolling beast was burned beyond recognition, its engine block seemingly melted solid. The white cargo trailer had, smartly, been disconnected by then. It sat on the rocky desert shoulder, waiting for a ride. Hopefully this one wouldn’t burn to a crisp, too.
July 9, 2025
“Listen, kid, we’re all in it together.”
Veteran filmmaker Terry Gilliam is headed to the Umbria Film Festival in Italy, where a screening next weekend of his iconic 1985 dystopian black comedy Brazil will celebrate the film’s 40th anniversary. Nominated for two Oscars and winning a pair of BAFTAs, the movie centers on Jonathan Pryce’s Sam Lowry, who works in the sprawling archives of a megalopolis ruled by faceless bureaucracy and an all-seeing Information Department. When a band of terrorists begins sowing chaos, Sam escapes the gray monotony of his desk job through vivid, dreamlike visions — until reality and fantasy collide with explosive consequences.
July 8, 2025
Terrible.
Generations of Texans gather at the river’s stunning headwaters, which have been carved by cycles of catastrophic floods.
The Guadalupe River at Gruene. David Wolters/Getty“When the river takes you, don’t fight it,” my parents told me when I was about nine years old. “If it takes you under, focus your effort on holding your breath—it will push you back up.” We would practice floating on our backs, feet downstream, like tiny giggling canoes moving diagonally across the Comal, Medina, San Marcos, and other lesser currents that made up the landscape of our gorgeous, dangerous childhoods, until we were ready for something bigger.
One of those bigger rivers was the Guadalupe, which runs from the Texas Hill County to the Gulf of Mexico, crossing aquifers and collecting tributaries as it plows southeast with a depth millions of years in the making. Before there were roads or fences, the Guadalupe was already cutting its way through limestone in a slow choreography of water and stone. It’s that clever pathway that makes the river so beautiful. It’s that perseverance through rugged terrain that makes it so deadly.
July 7, 2025
Villeneuve’s Bond
The “Dune” filmmaker brings both commercial and critical acclaim to the long-running series
Denis Villeneuve is directing the next James Bond film (Getty Images/MGM/Eon)After buying the keys to the James Bond franchise, Amazon MGM Studios signaled this week that it plans to create a high-prestige version of the series by setting Oscar-nominated “Dune” filmmaker Denis Villeneuve to direct the first new installment of the franchise since Daniel Craig’s tenure.
Plans for the new Bond movies are under lock and key, but newly installed producers Amy Pascal and David Heyman made a statement with Villeneuve’s hiring: This new Bond will be stylish. It will be big. And it could even make an awards splash.
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