That feels like a long time ago, doesn’t it? Friends of each brand and two pairs of female acrobats (contortionists?) wore pieces from the collaboration, demonstrating how well it works in both regular and impossible positions. Rumor had it that the performers were lesbian couples, but the more people I asked to confirm this, the more it spread, unconfirmed.

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Should I name this column? Is Lit Tips taken? Does it sound like an alley of cigarette-smokers outside a club? That feels right.

If you are an editor, critic, bookseller, author, publisher, marketer, agent, or literary publicist and have some insights you’d like to share with the group, please message me on the Substack app or reply to this newsletter’s email.

And: Emily Sundberg made a summer novel reading list, to which I contributed. My novel Grand Rapids, by they way, is set in the summertime.

Advance to Go

“The people I know who received between $450k or $750k book advances wouldn’t have turned down $250k.”

“Being in a position to offer enormous advances is more appealing to many editors than actually publishing books that sell well.”

“The cultural capital of being a writer makes more money than being a writer itself.”

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Doors were originally meant to open at 6:30pm, with curtains at 8. The start time was officially pushed back an hour, with an email alert that morning. And yet once we were seated, our main modes of time-telling and communication off limits, 9 rolled around and the lights were still on. Later, we were told that the planned host of the evening, Jimmy Fallon, couldn’t make it, and the last-minute scramble for someone suitable (in the end, Cooper) was what delayed the premiere.

No one in my row was surprised, and had assumed any tardiness was simply due to a superstar’s typical disregard of deadlines. Alexis, who invited me, is a pro at events like this, having known some of the people who are now on “M’s” team since they were all teens, essentially. “Madonna must be close,” she clued me in. “The room got warmer. She hates air conditioning.”

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At the Ear Inn this week, I met someone who said his girlfriend did cultural criticism on YouTube. His confident demeanor tipped me off, and sure enough, when I looked her up the next day, her subscriber count read 511k. Every day, some new layer of content presents itself as too close for comfort—I’m not supposed to know these people, even if they apparently speak for the everyperson.

Earlier, I’d watched a Clavicular clip someone sent me because during this stream, he visits a familiar nightclub and meets up with a writer/editor I know, who inadvertently announces, into his lapel mic, that she has put in her 2 weeks notice.

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I even went in and bolded some names, which everyone seems to love, but as with so many press releases I’ve written for brands and artists, I

• refused to

• bulletpoint.

No one told me that If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (2025) makes a great companion piece to Ben Lerner’s Transcription (2026). Both are half “about” parenting a little girl with on-the-rise psychiatric diagnosis ARFID, or avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (not named as such in the former), and neither make this child their protagonist. Both are also “about” what it means that this issue is one for this particular age, failings of technology and therapy, disconnectedness in hyper-connectivity, nobody ever even trying to understand—but funny.

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The new issue of Buffalo Zine is out, and I contributed a little something to it as well.

For the Pittsburgh Review of Books, Sarah Pazur wrote so very astutely about Grand Rapids and about Grand Rapids. I’m touched. (For the record, I know that the Detroit/Windsor bridge doesn’t go to Grosse Pointe, but added it as part of a scenic montage in the fictional Grosse Income because reality shows always skew locations like that. Good eye, though.)

And because it was behind the paywall of another post, here’s Katie Pruden on Grand Rapids for Public Seminar.

Below, more un-cited quotes from the literati and literate about what it’s like out there these days. For context, see this post. I’m marveling at the liberal use of the word meritocracy.

Earlier, I wasn’t quite clear about who these insights/anecdotes are from. They’re not nobodies. Every author has published at least one book in the traditional sense, and many of them teach. The others are successful agents, editors (indie and Big Five publishers, reviews), booksellers, and book publicists. By the way, I’m not talking to anyone in genres other than “literary.” That’s a whole other thing I really don’t care about. It may as well be video games.

Most responses to the first post are along the lines of: we don’t talk to each other about this stuff and wish we could, but usually, understandably, feel we can’t, because we’re a bunch of judgmental gossips in competition with one another.

Send any specific questions you have about publishing my way, and I’ll do my best at posing them to a range of in-the-know sources.

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I’m glad that there are so many articles explaining the state of stealth propaganda these days, like Lane Brown’s for Vulture. Keep them coming! My first thought, after learning about the Geese, et al fiasco was: Challengers (2024). I haven’t seen anyone bring it up as an astroturfing example, but I personally remember spiraling over the amount of obvious sock puppet accounts hyping it for a time.

Two years ago, I insisted (in person, to friends) that no self-motivated human beings post such dorky, explicitly promotional memes—especially not about seeing a dark-edged Luca Guadagnino film “for the second time, with my two besties 👀.”

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So far, surprisingly, no one has texted me asking who said what (I wouldn’t reveal that, anyway). I think we’re all in agreement that it doesn’t really matter, that the result is more like a Reddit thread of insiders using the forum as confessional.

Last week, I took a long walk across town, letting myself be enticed by anything other than the phone, and ended up at a few Chelsea openings, totally organically. I’m not an openings person, although I attend them when my friends do because I love an impromptu dinner date after (martinis and niçoise at Michael’s fishbowl table, just a block from the new Bucholz location on West 54th, after a Dianne Weist street sighting? Am I the Carrie?).

In general, I find them too brightly-lit, under-ventilated, and dehydrating, with a frenzied-ness that really detracts from the artworks. At a more recent one, I was attempting normal conversation with a friend, when an acquaintance (not crazy) stood behind us, uncontrollably laughing and repeating, “It’s just really intense.” Another person left abruptly because, as was explained to me, “her gay ex-boyfriend is here.” I always come away thinking, why does anyone bother?

A couple weeks prior, I’d seen the last days of some shows—trailed by an almost-incognito Leonardo DiCaprio and Vittoria Cerreti (note: almost never at openings), also checking out the Elizabeth Peytons and Merrill Wagners at Zwirner.

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The more I spoke and emailed with people, the less their opinions cohered. My vague hypothesis, that everyone is feeling very different ways about the literary landscape, was too easily proven. In part it’s because everything is more atomized than ever: What one writer assumes everyone is talking about turns out to be totally unfamiliar to another—even to another who has readership overlap and lives in the same borough.

Those embedded in it were exhausted by the Substack opinion factory, but just as many said they were totally disconnected from or unaware of its impact. At the time, it felt impossible not to discuss the controversies surrounding Madeline Cash’s Lost Lambs launch (if the attention it received was normal), but in weeks following, we would have moved on to the previously self-published Shy Girl being picked up by Hachette and then dropped once readers discovered it was AI slop.

Side note: Naomi Kanakia is apparently “amazed that a big corporate press would publish” Shy Girl’s “insane premise” of “a sex worker who gets hired by a man to sexually role-play as his dog,” especially “since it’s obviously the author’s sexual fantasy.” What?? Isn’t that basically everything being published right now? Like I said, we’re clearly not seeing the same stuff on here.

To anyone I conversed with on the subjects, apologies: that piece isn’t coming out. But the process was hopefully therapeutic for more than one of us. And from it, I’d like to share some anonymous quotes that may at least give others here a sense of accord. One knows that’s difficult to come by these days.

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Something about this set-up made extricating VIPs from the crowd impossible, and so one wove around guests in sequined gowns while wearing whatever one usually does to an issue launch, double-taking at Harry Hamlin attentively listening to Lisa Rinna, who is beginning to resemble Amanda Lepore, also in attendance; attempting to recognize the children of Meryl Streep, Martin Scorsese, Jack White, and Forest Whitaker; drawing an invisible line between influencers and their exes to see it shrink and stretch.

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Delia pointed out that “someone on Twitter got caught romanticizing the life of a 2015 VICE journalist and got schooled pretty hard, leading to Hamilton Nolan re-upping his definitive 2014 Gawker piece on why working at Vice Media was not as cool as it seemed, which is worth reading just to gasp at the salaries (sounds like pretty much no one made over $45K there, which in 2026 terms is about $63K…something to think about.”

Just after reading this, I noticed n+1 post a job listing for “Audience Manager” with a $60K–$64K salary. The dream is alive? I don’t know what people expect to be paid by magazines. When I worked for one in 2012, my salary was lower than these and there were far less people in that office than there were in Vice’s Williamsburg city block. I’d happened to work next door to that office the year before, so I watched the renovations up close.

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Obviously, the press cycle for Lena’s new memoir was brought up at our table. It’s truly one for the ages: appearing on the View, getting a People profile, doing the millennial podcast circuit, and guest-posting for every fashion/health Substack you subscribe to? For someone who released an autofictional streaming series just last year (was Too Much too soon?), this book’s outsized coverage proves that the public prefers she tell the full story in first person—and name names.

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Part of her reasoning for refusal is that this type of self-promotion is, for her, like “looking death in the face.” All other details in this saga fell away when I read that. A coldness grew in my stomach as I flashed back to every horrific selfie video I’ve made for a magazine or a school or a museum that insinuated they were doing me a favor by inviting me onto their channel. Videos, I’m sure you’re aware, rise to the top of Google searches, as if the humiliation is an effervescence. Authors, it should be obvious, hate to cede control over narratives.

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I swear I didn’t encourage any of them to enter this brittle place, instead secretly wanting to gatekeep their hilarious, prescient insights to myself. These are simply too valuable to go unpaid, though, and this is where we’re all at, now. Lucky for you.

On Saturday, I went to the theater alone, last minute, to see The Drama, intent on experiencing a new film before it was tainted by public “discourse.” The theater was packed with mostly women in groups and straight couples. We gasped, laughed, even screamed. I had a great time. My first thought, about the editing and humor, was The Celebration (1998) meets The Worst Person in the World (2021), which is to say, Scandinavian—but also, it’s a rom-com, and it’s about America. Really, though, it’s a drawn out metaphor for wedding day jitters.

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This on a balmy stroll down to Anthology Film Archive for a screening of Nouvelle Vague (the original, from 1990), part of their series The Metaphysics of Pratfall: Jerry Lewis and Jean-Luc Godard (great title). I’d forgotten how good the song “Distant Fingers” by Patti Smith is. What a strange thing to forget. After, a martini, crudité, and oysters at a bar that you may already know about but I’d rather not publicize because so far it is perfect. Not that any of you drink anymore.

A few weeks ago, I saw Cat Power perform all of The Greatest and some encore hits in Brooklyn, one of two live shows that I can remember making me cry. The other one was Nine Inch Nails when they were already old. At one point, a totally sober Chan Marshall belched loudly and said “that one was for the bar.” At the end of the show, she mimed hitting-it-out-of-the-park.

“Have I told you the story Vincent Gallo told me about going on a date with her in the 90s?” I asked Ivan, at Cozy Royale over a very good wedge salad and buttery shrimp cocktail. “Many times,” he said. I’m currently listening to my high school number one and two favorites, Courtney Love and Billy Corgan, endlessly talk shit about Kim Gordon on his podcast, which rocks.

With all the $3/word discourse (that X thread by Joshua Hunt is now deleted; I wonder how his GQ colleagues felt upon learning he was paid $18K [needs citation] to write about taking Ozempic)—and hearing so many anecdotes about young people not being able to find jobs but also not accepting an entry level position for less than six figures—this Baffler symposium comes at the perfect time. From the intro of The Profession That Does Not Exist:

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You may recall that in December, Kaitlin discovered where Vaccarello found the patterns for his Resort 2026 lingerie-based collection, via an un-captioned post by his friend, the stylist Lotta Volkova. We visited this relic of a store in the midtown Manhattan Art & Antiques Center, finding it to be delightful and fairly priced, which is to say, everything is expensive because it is an original piece of silk and lace art.

Also, not exactly easy to style, since we’re not in those 20s anymore and it’s all meant to be underwear—vented and buttoned at the crotch. Plus, nothing is listed online and the hours are not ideal. Alternately, one might look for recent past YSL seasons on the Real Real and be surprised, like I am, by how much lands there. Below, and throughout, some pieces that deserve good homes.

24 shoes, 23 dress, 23 top, 23 skirt, 22 dress, 22 dress, 23 dress, 22 coat, 23 pants, 22 shoes, 22 shoes, 22 shoes, 23 dress, 23 dress, 23 dress

I love this Times profile of Nancy Lemann, on the occasion of her earlier novels being reissued:

In New York, Ms. Lemann attended a lecture given by Gordon Lish, a mythical writing teacher and an editor at Alfred A. Knopf. “When I heard him speak, I just smote my forehead and said, That’s the only guy who would take a chance on me,” Ms. Lemann recalled.

“So then I literally went to Knopf in person with my manuscript,” she continued. “I went to reception and I said, ‘Is Gordon Lish here?’ And he said, ‘I’m racing, babe, what is it?’” She extended her draft of Lives of the Saints. “I said, ‘Well, this is my heart’s blood,’” she recalled. “And I gave it to him.”

As Ms. Lemann tells it, that encounter took place on a Friday. Mr. Lish called her on Monday with an offer to publish Lives of the Saints at Knopf [in 1985].

Now 92, Mr. Lish noted that some of his recollections had been lost to age. “But I do feel my feet are on firm enough ground when I dredge from the very considerable past that Nancy easily outscored her rivals in charm,” he wrote in an email. “Charm, charm, charm—or, to put the matter at its best, charmant, Nancy had it in spades. Doubtless, she still does.”

On Thursday, I went to the Paris Review office in Chelsea for the relaunches. Nancy and editor Emily Stokes were hilarious in-conversation, hopefully a recorded event. In response a question about the perceived cavalier attitude toward fictionally portraying family members, Nancy said something like, My husband, the tycoon, doesn’t read…or, he reads plenty of autobiographies. Let’s just say, he’s not literary. He’s a tycoon.

Her husband, of course, was in attendance, as was their daughter, the writer Emmeline Clein, who, although a resident of New York, had to fly in from Mexico for the day. She was participating in a friend’s week-long wedding, she explained, to which she’d return. The signature cocktail for the evening was named after Nancy’s 1987 nonfiction book, Ritz of the Bayou and was made with whiskey and mint but tasted like cough syrup. The spread, on the other hand, was delectable.

Audrey and I spoke with editors Jackson Howard and Naomi Huffman about the books they’re next publishing, to reviewer Christian Lorentzen about the book he’s next reviewing, to writers Krithika Varagur and Rob Franklin about longevity and denial. After, we walked a few blocks down to Shukette and had some small plates, a glass of the Vermentino, and the desert: a swirl of tahini soft serve and pomegranate sorbet, with lime, dark chocolate, halva floss, and hazelnut.

23 shoes, 23 shoes, 22 dress, 23 coat, 2? dress, 17 top, 22 dress, 2? dress, 2? dress, 23 jacket, 23 shoes, 23 shoes

On Friday, Joey and I went to a dinner launching the sixth issue of Zeitung, a German magazine made by lovely and smart people. It was at Food, the Lucien Smith venture that has gotten so much bad press, it has to be good to have stayed in business. The food at Food really is. We had bites, family style, of a drenched radicchio salad, asparagus in lemon sauce, beef and broccoli, steak au poivre, mixed ceviche, white rice, potato chips, another salad, I think, and cheesecake.

Another meal I remember from the week is the simple rotisserie chicken bowl at Don Ceviche, after a shopping event at Café Forgot for Anna Sui’s latest collection, which served rosette-adorned purple taro cake and single-serving bottles of tequila with purple straws, or fizzy peach margaritas. I was chatting with Delia, each of us wearing borrowed Anna Sui outfits, when a customer assumed we worked there. Valid!

“What is this? Where are the clothes?” she kept asking, and we were confronted by the reality of us, the press/influence, versus them, the people who actually pay full price for products, in stores. This VIC had on a logo-marked sweatshirt, I noticed, and her huge purse was heavy with AS keychains. She was on the hunt for a particular denim skirt. It wasn’t part of the store’s revolving rack. Delia asked what she did for work. “Business development,” the woman demurred. “I make money now.”

But, the cake, the drinks? Anna was actually here, in person, as were many of the models from her latest runway show! This woman could care less. It was cool. Why do I care? I wondered. If I worked in business development (?) would I see free desserts as a distraction, an affront, even? “This took up my whole afternoon,” she sighed. It reminded me of when I worked at a magazine and always said yes to taking press trips, no matter where. “You want to go to Ukraine?” my fellow editors asked. “One day, you’ll have your own money and decide for yourself where you want to go,” one of them said, many years ago.

That hasn’t really happened; I’m still showing up to things I’m invited to, eating the gratis meals and wearing the lent out clothes. Part of the pleasure of living in a city is letting go of some agency, allowing for the tides of publicity to guide one’s free time and aesthetics. That’s what I keep telling myself. That day, though, after meeting a customer who was not in the mood (she’s buying the skirt online, she said), I didn’t get swept up. I opted, upon reflection, to miss an eyewear launch at the Shed, some eBay thing, whatever else might have come from staying out. All the gift bags were gone, and I already had what was in them, anyway. The weather was nice enough, so I walked all the way home.

23 top, 20 bodysuit, 22 bodysuit, 23 dress, 24 dress, 21 dress, 21 top, 21 skirt, 22 dress, 2? shoes, 2? shoes, 2? shoes, 2? shoes, 2? shoes, 2? shoes

On Saturday afternoon, I took the 1 up to West 157th Street and walked two blocks to the American Academy of Arts and Letters for the openings of gallery takeovers by Jessi Reaves, Josiane M.H. Pozi, and Lucy Sante, as well as an exhibit called Articles of Distinction, which, as a century-old tradition, invites current AAAL members to choose an artifact from their archive of gifts and memorabilia to display in a sort of potluck wunderkammer.

I was glad the event was held from 4–7pm, when the sun was still out and glistening on the surface of the Hudson, which can be seen from the galleries’ floor-to-ceiling windows just beyond a picturesque little graveyard. The Uptown Manhattan Trinity Cemetery & Mausoleum, in case you are wondering, is a former Revolutionary War battleground and the final resting place for Ralph Ellison and John James Audubon. It’s also where the burial scene in The Royal Tenenbaums was shot.

Speaking of Birds of America, I spotted some special ducks on the East River last week, apparently a male red-breasted merganser and a pair of hooded mergansers. I love that when you look up bird types, you can hear their calls, and then you realize these are the sounds that texture your everyday, based on season. I’m not a birder but understand the way recognizing this may instill a sense of serenity and order in the stupid chaos we’re ever-inflicting on the nervous system.

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I like to write for other publications because I like to be edited. The validation of wider reach is something, too, but the idea of a too-broad readership scares me. The debilitating hindrance of a non sequitur comments section has been confirmed by friends whose books are on bigger publishers and whose personal anecdotes are in the Times. When I get emails from editors at real newspapers asking for opinion pitches, I panic. Do I have opinions? Who exactly wants to know?

If it was paid, I’d prefer writing for no one—or, like, one person. (Does one person want to pay me to write to them every day?) Which is to say I’ve never been too discerning about magazine size or circulation because “audience” isn’t what excites me. Writing under my own name is not my main source of income, and neither is it, at this point in my life, publicity for my other work/availability—what we used to call “exposure.” If anything, I might be overexposed. Still, there are reasons to write for magazines other than money, like the chance to work with an editor or to be involved with something artfully designed. Recently, though, a series of emails just about pushed me over the edge, ruining it for the rest of them.

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John Early, a star and a genius, texted me today about the birthday party of tweens in the front row, who kept turning to each other and giggling at references to incest and pedophilia. I’d assumed they were someone’s daughter and her friends. Nope! Just a gaggle of 12-year-olds interested in experimental theater on the last day of previews.

I was admittedly distracted by the thought that I’d seen each of the other actors in a repeat-watched indie movie that I couldn’t quite place. Come to find I was right, for each of them: Hope Davis starred in The Daytrippers (1996), Maria Dizzia has a memorable part in While We’re Young (2014), and Josh Hamilton is a corner of the quintet in The House of Yes (1996).

A week ago, I saw the Daniel Fish-directed Kramer/Fauci, another super stripped-down play, but in one, 90-minute act using all real dialogue, with some surprise flourishes. It’s moving.

Last week, for a guest post on Akosua T. Adasi’s Consumption Report, I took the blog’s title extremely literally and kind of went crazy listing/linking literally every single thing I used, bought, or otherwise absorbed. It was the week of that snowstorm in New York, so I barely left my apartment and only ordered a couple things online, but because I’d given myself such a rigid brief, the list was ridiculously long anyway.

I have become obsessed with America’s obsession with products—a word that has morphed, for some, to mean strictly the type of substance that one ingests externally (via the skin or hair): a non-thing in an exciting package; stuff that gets absorbed, and then we get to buy more.

A product isn’t timeless and it never said it was. It is a fancily-wrapped present to be opened every day. It is meant to be consumed and then replenished, because consumerism, a disease from which everyone I know suffers, means the false sense of taking steps in a direction, no matter which. We want to assign value to actions by spending money. We want to feel productive by buying.

Highsnobiety announced today via email that their next report will be a three-part series called The Status Economy. It will purportedly cover “how consumers have shifted their focus from fashion to everyday lifestyle categories as primary markers of status.” The categories are: “Groceries, Health & Wellness, and Travel.”

Not only did we approach this in the report I co-wrote for Highsnobiety last year (which has been assigned to Yale students, I’m told), but I’ve been saying that for Gen Z and below, every item visible in a front-facing camera video is a marketing encounter. As the stats suggested in 2025,

Luxury consumers are spending as much as ever, especially younger ones…The younger set are even investing almost as much in non-fashion purchases, such as homeware and beauty products, as they are in clothing, shoes, bags, and sunglasses. In fact, our survey shows that Gen Z and millennials are more likely to buy jewelry and watches than their Gen X and boomer counterparts.

I would be surprised if the spend on consumables such as startup olive oil didn’t skew younger year by year, especially with non-luxury consumers. Anyway, after I sent that guest post, I kept noticing things I forgot to list/link: the tiny diamond-flecked silver signet ring etched with a letter S I wear every day; the cotton pads and swabs I use to wipe away makeup and apply toner; the handmade velvet scrunchy I bought in an antique mall upstate. It’s endless!

Something I read: “The Grand Dame of the Epstein Files”—New York magazine’s perfectly unhinged profile of Peggy Siegal—and then, because I hadn’t, Vanity Fair’s “Peggy Siegal Sends Her Regrets” from 2020. She really is interview gold.

Something I watched: (a while ago, but I was just reminded of it by the Oscar nom) The Perfect Neighbor (2025), made of mostly security and police body camera footage. This documentary made me sob uncontrollably. It’s shockingly sad.

Something I acquired: A new pair of prescription glasses from Gentle Monster that Audrey says are very Eyes Wide Shut. The internet tells me that those are Oliver Peoples.

What I used up: The last of my Perfumer H Icons collection, which is no longer on their site (a second drop is, though).

This post is free, but I want to say thank you for everyone who pays for my posts, and also…if you don’t, this is probably not a great newsletter! The vast majority of what I write and I’d venture to say 98% of anything worthwhile is behind a paywall. Consider it!

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As with many of the women who directly worked for Jeffrey Epstein, some recently-villainized or at least semi-cancelled individuals may have started out as his victims, drawn into his circle with the promise of access to moneyed and cultured men who are otherwise worlds away. Groomed and maybe abused, they saw a way out by turning his hustle into their opportunity—arguably pushing the Epstein agenda, but epitomizing an American dream nonetheless.

And what was that agenda? We’re getting used to being thrown off the scent, and anyway, we’ve forgotten what we’re in search of, if not a global cabal of elites running a child sex-trafficking ring. Is it not…? With each new hearing and analysis of a particular thread, I’m more curious, because no one involved will ever honestly articulate: What it was it like, being his friend?

Was it, as with any transactional relationship, always weighed by its worths? Was sitting through his dime-store philosophies and temper tantrums, for example, worth whatever invitation might follow? Is having your friend get you laid really that great, when you’re a thought leader and/or titan of business?

On May 14, 2009, Epstein asked Tom Pritzker via email, “now where are you?” to which Pritzker replied, “Standing on the bridge with Renzo Piano talking of kings and cabbages.” Epstein did not respond until the next day, with, “Cool.”

When these Files are served to a government portal, they come in multiples, on pages that often time out, making for an experience of seemingly arbitrary discovery, such as the above sample of simplistic power moves between billionaires: a lofty namedrop, a tired Lewis Carroll line, a one-word response.

(In 2016, Pritzker was accused by Viginia Giuffre of participating in Epstein’s sex trafficking, at least while she was part of it—between 2000 and 2002, when Giuffre was 17 to 19 years old. He has denied it.)

There is plenty by way of evidence here that Epstein coerced young, financially dependent women into enacting the fantasies of his powerful friends, but because the victims’ names are somewhat redacted (not altogether, which is another gripe), this evidence doesn’t come in a searchable set. Anyway, that’s the part we already knew about.

For a week or two, the files kept our attention for other reasons, one being that this number of personal exchanges from any individual is a good character study, the likes of which being publicly released is unprecedented. Then, literal bombs were dropped, and our attention was diverted once again.

I’m still wondering how much we can know a man by his emails, iMessages, and BBM chats, how accurately Epstein’s insatiability is mapped in these tranches of correspondence: a life devoted to proving if money can, perhaps, buy satisfaction.

(It can’t, according to the wealthiest person in the world Elon Musk, exposed in these emails as a solicitor of invites to Epstein’s debauched private island. On February 4, 2026, Musk tweeted—to the social media platform he purchased in 2022 for $44 billion and renamed X—“Whoever said ‘money can’t buy happiness’ really knew what they were talking about 😔”.)

Beyond luxury purchases, big trades, political sway, and a massive underground ring of women, Epstein sought close relationships with linguists, gurus, scientists, political advisors, movie directors—the people considered, at the time, responsible for shaping our culture. He had a yen, it seems, for finding out what was missing from their lives so that he could offer it to them, using that exposed vulnerability to place them on his big ugly chess board. There is more speculation than ever about to what end this game was being played; the Files we can see have provided more dead ends than answers.

Sifting through the neutered notes, judging the tacky art and furniture in flash photography taken of Epstein’s homes by detectives, matching the names on sycophantic appeals to emeritus professor titles, fashion model agency heads, government officials, the co-founder of Microsoft for crying out loud, that grinding circus ballad “Is That All There Is?” plays in my head.

The version sung by Peggy Lee was famously named by Donald Trump as “a great song” in a 2014 interview conducted by biographer Michael D’Antonio, on the subject of how unfulfilling fame is. The lyrics, on the other hand, describe someone experiencing what she understood to be the height of intensity—a childhood home burning to the ground, the Greatest Show on Earth, falling in love, heartbreak—and coming up empty.

Looking at the glitchy justice.gov site requires partaking in a sick game of search terms (what’s the worst word you’d want to find?), wandering dark corridors of abbreviated Amazon orders, broken image links, and blacked-out identities. Because the correspondences with women in Epstein’s cohort are less traceable (for good reason), descriptions of sex acts are jump scares, to be found by chance.

While reading, for example, through breathtakingly revealing texts between Epstein and Soon-Yi Previn, we’re also faced with endless dinner requests fielded by his staff, and happen upon this pattern:

August 7, 2016: “Please remember all food has to be served hot & not lukewarm.” December 12, 2016: “Woody suggested Chinese food for tomorrow. Please make sure that it’s served hot and not lukewarm.” November 13, 2017: “Thank you for dinner last night. Just so you know, in the future, food should always be served very hot; never lukewarm.;)” January 9, 2018: “One other request. Would it be possible to make sure that all the food is very hot and not lukewarm?”

The November entry was a text sent directly to Epstein by Previn, followed by a plan to get him a Christmas tree. Epstein sarcastically replied, “Should the water be hot?”

This years-long grumbling between old Upper East Side neighbors is almost endearing, a distraction from whatever it is we’re attempting to find. Hoping for something as personal, perhaps, I search the word “lukewarm.” That, however, returns some less wholesome messages between Epstein and a redacted German address.

On December 10, 2011, they wrote, “Yes, now I actually start liking talking while fucking just can’t without yet. He loved in particular the ‘ I wanna be your fucking bitch’. spanking worked so well. Lubricant is great, much better. He loves the choking. That part was just really better. Thank you. But the lukewarm cloth didn’t work at all. He didn’t like it. How come?”

The partial lives of egomaniacs and sycophants are laid out in this way: nothing explicit without the banal, nothing banal without the explicit. In basically the same breath, Previn asks Epstein to get involved in her teenage daughter Bechet’s life and complains that the 15-year-old girl with whom Anthony Weiner was infamously caught sexting in 2016 “should be ashamed of herself.” Previn, September 22, 2016: “I hate women who take advantage of guys and she is definitely one of them.”

In separate texts to Bechet herself, Epstein coaches the teen about high school summer plans and college. So much of these exchanges are bluntly manipulative, prompting uncomfortable responses from accomplices and survivors alike (and it becomes hard to distinguish the two—Previn’s own orphaned childhood and college-age affair with her adopted mother’s rich and famous boyfriend 35 years her senior looms over her adult relationships and parenting).

In milder emails and text messages, Epstein is that obnoxious person everyone uses for their nice stuff. In the more terrible ones, he’s a monster demanding subservience. The submissive-dominant relationship between himself and impressionable, unknown young women is easier to understand than the competitive teasing among celebrities we maybe once admired. All that kowtowing and chest puffing makes them disgustingly human, not above debasing themselves for access to whatever dream world he promised—or worse: simply an expensive, store-bought present with a big logo on it.

Between plans to meet at steakhouses in Long Beach, Delray Beach, and Palm Beach; lunch orders from Barney Greengrass and Kappo Masa; first class travel itineraries; and upkeep receipts for Little Saint James Island (I paused at a discounted $16,200 bougainvillea purchase from Green Good Product in San Juan), conversations between moguls and academics asserting Epstein did nothing wrong feel buttressed by light bribery:

Noam Chomsky, February 23, 2019: “(how do you prove that you are not a neo-Nazi who wants to kill the Jews, or a rapist, or whatever charge comes along?). That’s particularly true now with the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women, which has reached the point that even questioning a charge is a crime worse than murder”—this, after a few “here is your confirmed suite at The Mark Hotel....compliments of Jeffrey!” emails and sushi queries addressed to Chomsky’s wife, Valeria.

Previn, January 11, 2017: “I can’t thank you enough for getting Bechet into Bard.”

Previn, October 12, 2016: “Yes, I do feel guilty about my extravagant Apple Watch considering the orphans. However, not guilty enough to return it. I love that the face says Hermes Paris.”

Previn, June 13, 2015: “I love living the high life and having friends who are in the 1%. (You’re included in this).”

Richard Branson, September 11, 2013: “Anytime you’re in the area would love to see you. As long as you bring your harem! 1. I think that if Bill Gates is willing to say that you’ve been a brilliant advisor to him, that you slipped up many years ago for sleeping with a 17 ½ year old woman and were punished for it, that you’ve more than learnt your lesson and have done nothing that’s against the law since and, yes, as a single man you seem to have a penchant for women. But there’s nothing wrong with that. Anyway something along those lines.”

[Redacted], March 21, 2013: “Woody Allen’s daughter wants to bring a friend along with her...her friend is 14 yrs old. Would it be ok for Bechet to bring her friend on your plane?”

Emails between Epstein and his assistants—search: Lesley Groff, Bella Klein, and Karyna Shuliak—show arrangements to gift a “Prada bag” (Faith Kates thanked Epstein directly for hers on December 16, 2011), a “Loro Piana sweater” (Melanie Spinella said hers was “way too big” on December 19, 2014), Glam Squad appointments (Kathy Reummler received a reminder for hers on March 5, 2018), items from Ralph Lauren, trips to Dangene Med Spa, La Compagnie flights, stays at the Mark and Le Parker Meridien…

With every forwarded receipt, I find more brand names to search, and with those, more emails from redacted names: swooning over a Valentine’s Day delivery, a surprise in one’s hotel room, dark chocolate, roses, basketball game tickets, a camera, bracelets, money transfers, a haircut, eyebrow serum—putting a fine point on the “grooming” allegations.

We tell ourselves we’re seeking clues as to how this man got away with so much, for so long, but also, perhaps, if he came away with some greater understanding of the world because of it. What is the topmost experience that life can offer a man without any morals?

Disappointingly for us, and presumably for him, that—as in meetings about cashmere upholstery samples, noticing that the “chillax chandelier” lightbulbs were dead, thank you notes for cornflower blue Prada purses, “I love you” emails from people on the payroll, the wife of an idol complaining about lukewarm Chinese delivery—is, actually, all there is (?).