Ernie the friendly ghost

Got into New York yesterday noon, and hit the ground running. Right now I'm
at the little café across Seventh Avenue from our hotel, the Affinia. It's
starting to get light, not yet seven. I'm eating a concoction, or confection,
that's two crumbly cookies with a layer of raspberry jam between, optimistically
yclept a Lindser Tort. But it really tastes like two cookies with jam, enough
carbs to fuel a novel. I wish.

Yesterday we met Phil and Judith Anderson at the Museum of Modern Art, and wandered
the halls for a couple of hours, mostly an impressively large collection of
Magritte – such a volume of work! Did he never sleep or eat?

They had two tables displaying his working notebooks, fascinating. Pretty cerebral
guy.

I was impressed with the way he handled darks, and darkness. I don't think
that reproduces well. Blackness with a touch of mauve, or green. I bought
a collection of reproductions anyhow to study, admire.

For dinner we went to the venerable Algonquin, where I used to stay in the seventies,
whenever I was in town. It has magical connections with American writers of
the Hemingway/Fitzgerald age, and when I started out it was still the hotel
for writers. In the eighties, it priced itself out of that market. Still one
of the best midtown restaurants, and a famous watering hole. Big living room
full of overstuffed furniture full of hopeful writers trying to be noticed.
(I didn't recognize anybody, but I'm no good at that sort of thing.) Good
food and wine for only a hundred bucks apiece.

It did make me nostalgic for the seventies, when the Algonquin was the meeting
place for my generation of sf writers. The desk clerk would welcome me by name.
I'd sit downstairs in the living room and drink martinis with the writers as
they came in. Negronis, a straight-up gin martini with Campari. With a strip
of lemon rind. Ah, the good old bad old days.

I should go down there at cocktail hour and have a glass of wine, and see whether
anybody shows up. Real people or friendly ghosts.


joe