This year’s more than 3,000 attendees arrived in groups led by volunteers—as per tradition, the location of the dinner is kept a secret from the diners until that evening, to preserve at least an illusion of spontaneity. The rules for participants are strict: they must carry in their own table, chairs, white tablecloths, flatware and four-course dinners, and they must dress entirely in white. “This means no ivory, no cream or any other color will be permitted,” a discussion thread on the event’s website from one of the hosts stated, advising attendees to dress “elegantly.” Elizabeth Hill, an elementary school teacher, even wore her wedding dress.

“Well, it’s white, and it’s all I had!” she said, explaining that she and her husband had decided to come at the last minute when their friends offered them tickets. “Might as well,” she shrugged.

Luckily for everyone in attendance, there was no sign of rain, though a few diners showed up with white umbrellas, just in case. The dinner is held rain or shine, and no-shows who balk at a cloudy sky are not invited back. And, with last year’s waiting list topping 30,000, invitations are hard to come by.

“The best option to get invited is to know someone who is a member of Dîner en Blanc” explained Aymeric Pasquier, the son of François and one of the chief organizers of the New York event. Once diners attend one dinner, they become members, and each member can invite one guest to the next dinner. The waiting list this year was around 5,000 (“It went to a normal standard to interest,” Mr. Pasquier said, laughing), and priority went to those who didn’t make it off the waiting list for last year’s dinner, which boasted 1,200 attendees at the World Financial Center.

Mr. Pasquier said he was keen to have this year’s event at Lincoln Center because of Dîner en Blanc’s efforts at international development—the viral culinary event has spread to eight additional U.S. cities this summer, and now spans five continents and 22 cities. “The Metropolitan Opera is famous all over the world, and we wanted the best spot in New York,” he said. “And we are basically in the best location in New York for this kind of event. It fits perfectly for the Dîner en Blanc.”

Though many in attendance shared Mr. Pasquier’s sentiments regarding the surprise location, a few were less impressed. “I think they could have done better,” said Matt Hill, a software developer. “I thought it was going to be in Central Park. For a picnic, it would be nice if it were green, rather than in a square known for its fascist architecture.”

“I was hoping it would be in Brooklyn Bridge Park, since I just went there a week ago and it’s awesome,” said Colin Hoffman, a traffic designer whose general enthusiasm was fairly representative of the event’s demographic. “But this is cool too,” he conceded easily.

Indeed, the diners seemed unreservedly interested in maintaining the evening’s elegance despite the evening’s questionable soundtrack (when we headed out, The Wanted’s “Glad You Came” was blaring). Though we heard some grumbling from guests who had to wait an hour for the wine they had reserved.

When asked whether he had any concerns about controlling such a large crowd (police barricaded the plaza, ostensibly to keep those not following the dress code outside the fenced-off area), Mr. Pasquier responded very firmly that he did not. “Everyone is respectful of what Dîner en Blanc is,” he explained. “They all know the history of the event and the philosophy of the concept.”

Feeling a little foolish, we asked Ms. de Almeida whether Matilda, a 4-year-old ragdoll who is the third female cat to inhabit the lobby (or part of it anyway) of the Algonquin, enjoys dressing up.

“No!” she exclaimed, looking at us somewhat incredulously. “She doesn’t dress up. We just let the other cats dress up,” Ms. de Almeida said, showing us a rhinestone collar that she was going to attempt to get Matilda to wear for the show.

In lieu of a costume, Matilda showcased her notoriously snobby disposition and remained in her cage in a separate room from the other fashion show participants for the majority of the reception. In a second-floor hotel room, Savannahs in tuxedo shirts and studded leather jackets and sphynxes in tutus lounged on couches, while some of the younger show cats jumped on the bed.

Matilda wasn’t the only feline celebrity working the crowd of cat ladies in cocktail dresses who milled around the bed with glasses of wine, gushing and Instagramming iPhone photos. More than one owner mentioned her cat’s appearance on Animal Planet in pseudo-casual tones, and Susan Bowdin, owner of a 25-pound Savannah named Elvis (who was dressed accordingly) explained that he “has a fan club.”

“Elvis was even featured in a Japanese magazine,” Ms. Bowdin bragged, before conceding, “of course, I have no idea what it said!”

One elaborately decked Persian wore what appeared to be an especially frilly, colorful clown suit, paired with a headpiece made of fake fruit. Yet Carla Z. Reiss, the founder of Meow Wear and designer of all the cat costumes at the show, told us it was more of a flamenco dress, inspired by Carmen Miranda. “She was well known for wearing a basket of fruit on her head, and I just thought it was so ridiculous that an animal should wear something like it,” Ms. Reiss said.

Ms. Reiss, herself the owner of six cats, assured us that her cats “don’t wear costumes at home,” aside from the T-shirts her sphynxes often wear to keep warm. “The costumes are really meant for a moment or a photography opportunity. I don’t sell them to be worn all the time,” she explained. Her decadent creations, many of which are commissioned for weddings and holiday cards, typically sell for between $100 and $150, but she assured us that she isn’t “making a living off it.”

“I just charge what I think people will bear, and in this [economic] climate it’s particularly an issue,” she said.

Following the viewing of the “mew-dels,” attendees returned to the Algonquin lobby for more wine and hors d’oeuvres, and Ms. de Almeida informed us that Matilda “had to retire for the evening.” It would seem the pampered cat is better reached by email. We asked Ms. de Almeida whether she responds to the numerous emails the cat receives each day.

“No, Matilda does,” she said matter-of-factly. We must have looked skeptical, because Ms. de Almeida conceded: “Cats don’t have thumbs, so I have to hit the space bar for her.”

Rabies chat, with Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy.

The first slide of Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy’s informational presentation on rabies last night at The Strand read: “Be Afraid.”

Though their tone was for the most part sweet and mild, their subject was not. The husband and wife are the authors of Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus, out last month from Penguin, which chronicles the cultural evolution of what remains the world’s deadliest virus.

Though rabies only kills about five people in North America each year, it claims 55,000 lives worldwide annually. Once infected, the chance that a victim will die is almost 100%—the highest fatality rate of any disease.  Though victims can be cured of rabies if they receive a vaccination before symptoms appear, the virus often remains undetected—especially in young children, who are less apt to report animal bites—throughout its long latency period. As Alice Gregory described in her review of Rabid for n+1, “the literalness of the disease’s course is revolting: its ‘time of onset depends on the distance of the wound from the head.’”

But, of course, the symptoms of the disease itself are most terrifying. The virus manifests itself in hyper-excitability, hallucinations, and hydrophobia—a literal fear of drinking, in which the diaphragm involuntarily contracts, the throat spasms, and the patient cannot bring himself to ingest liquids.

That the disease not only results in increased anger and aggression on the part of the victim, but a simultaneous fear is part of what makes it ripe material for horror genres, Mr. Wasik explained. As detailed in the cultural history components of Rabid, legends like vampires, werewolves and zombies all have inspirations that can be traced back to rabies.

Early vampires in Eastern European literature were associated with dogs and gradually bats came to figure more prominently, as is the case by the time of Bram Stoker’s archetypal masterpiece. “I think that’s so interesting because our consciousness that bats are important rabies vectors was evolving along a similar timeline,” Ms. Murphy told The Observer after the presentation, explaining that now in North America nearly all rabies deaths are the result of bat infection.

“I think the possibility that these unknowable biological things somehow feed into our subconscious and are expressed in our literature is really cool,” Ms. Murphy said.

Rabies can also have a number of sexual manifestations, including frequent arousal and involuntary orgasm. In his review for the Times, James Gorman couldn't get over a section of the book that analyzes case reports describing victims suffering from “up to thirty ejaculations in a single day.”

Mr. Wasik spoke to another dimension of the disease’s sexual connotations, describing a popular theory that emerged in the nineteenth century, purporting that rabies in dogs was the result of sexual deprivation.

“It wound up being a big impediment to people who correctly understood rabies as being a contagion, because you had some people saying that when there’s a rabies outbreak you have to keep your pets inside, and then there are these other people saying, to hell with that, they’ve got to be out on the streets doing it!” he explained.

Following the presentation, Mr. Wasik and Ms. Murphy took questions from audience members.  One woman inquired about the possibility of humans giving other humans rabies.

“I think it’s been a concern,” said Ms. Murphy, “though humans have never been terrifically effective vectors for rabies. Our teeth aren’t bite-y enough, even if the passion is there.”

Another audience member inquired, somewhat facetiously, “If you had to pick a celebrity to die of rabies, to promote your book sales, which celebrity would you pick?”

The couple considered this. “I wouldn’t wish death by rabies on anyone,” Mr. Wasik began, though Ms. Murphy interjected, noting that there are a lot of older celebrities who “really love the little pets.”

“Is Bob Barker still alive?” Mr. Wasik pondered. “Because, I mean, ‘Barker…” he trailed off, before quickly changing his mind: “Mary Kate and Ashley,” he said conclusively. “Okay, next question.”

Afterward, The Observer asked the authors what they hope readers will take away from the book.

“I hope they’ll vaccinate their pets” Ms. Murphy said, explaining, “I mean, I’m sort of joking. We didn’t feel like we had a really strong public health message, like, to educate the world on how to keep this terrible infection at bay, but I do really care about those things.”

“When one or two people who reviewed the book came up with [vaccinating your pets] as the takeaway, I was delighted,” she continued. “It is important. Like a lot of public health stuff, if you’re doing a good job you don’t see the disease, and that’s sort of where we are with rabies now,” she explained, though noting that there’s still a lot of scientific progress left to be made, especially in less developed areas.

“We’re really looking forward to the announcement that all of the Americas are dog-rabies free, since that’s probably coming in the next decade," Ms. Murphy said. “And maybe we’ll live to see a dog-rabies-free world. That would be great.”

A well-dressed crowd, including many senior members of the MoMA staff, turned up to contemplate the state of contemporary curation at Friday’s 56th Street Round Table at Má Pêche, hosted by the New York Public Library and Momofuku.

The panelists—Jeremy Geffen, the director of artistic planning at Carnegie Hall, Julia Hoffmann, the creative director of advertising and graphic design at MoMA, Maria Popova, the founder and editor of Brain Pickings, and moderator Elias Altman, the associate editor of Lapham’s Quarterly conceded almost immediately that none of them considered themselves curators—a point which would be interrogated throughout the discussion.

In his introduction to the subject at hand, Mr. Altman noted that the word "curation" has come to be thrown around “more often than a ping pong ball at a fraternity house,” alluding somewhat disdainfully to a dissemination of “curation” to the masses, a phenomenon which he would later attribute to the Internet.  He questioned: “Is the new definition of curation, like, ‘I assemble things on my Tumblr and then I put them up for the world?’ Is that why we don’t want to be called curators?”

Ms. Popova—who, over the course of an hour managed to quote Tchaikovsky, Jack White, Jonah Lehrer and Cicero, among others—proceeded to invoke the latter, citing his belief that if a word didn’t exist it was because “it had permeated society so much and was so ubiquitous that the word was unnecessary.”

“I think that’s what’s beginning to happen with the word ‘curation,’” Ms. Popova continued. “We apply it so much that it’s become vacant of meaning.”

Ms. Hoffmann seemed to agree with this assessment. “It’s like ten years ago when everyone called themselves a designer just because they had Photoshop on their computer,” she added pejoratively.

Asserting that she believes there is a “problem” with “applying the word ‘curation’ to every Tumblr,” Ms. Popova called it a “real leap of logic” to equate “one person’s individual Tumblr” with, by convenient example, the Lapham’s Quarterly Tumblr, which she described as “astounding,” “really thoughtful” and “layered.”

Mr. Geffen came somewhat closer to explaining a distinction between individual and institutional curation. “We could easily create seasons that would sell out,” he said, speaking of the Carnegie Hall concert programmers. “We’d essentially be presenting familiar works, works you know are going to be enjoyed by the audience.”

“But that’s not the role of Carnegie Hall. That’s not the role of a cultural institution that’s invested in the future of the art form,” Mr. Geffen argued, adding, “You always have to be one step ahead of your audience.”

Ms. Hoffmann suggested that the relationship between curator and audience is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate. Speaking somewhat condescendingly of tourists who are primarily interested in seeing Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” at the MoMA, she expressed concerns regarding the effects of uninformed public opinion in shaping art. She maintained that these days many “people who have nothing to do with the creative process” are interested in talking about iconography like Tropicana packaging and the Gap logo.  “I don’t know if it’s good or bad,” she stated, but expressed distrust at the mention of Facebook “likes” as having any influence in the processes of art and taste-making,

“Innovation would never happen if we were catering to focus groups,” she said firmly.

Yet others questioned the suggested hierarchy of the educated curator to a presumably uninformed audience. An audience member at the panel spoke up, questioning the difference between curation and aggregation. “There’s a really thin line between them,” he asserted, suggesting that this line was perhaps blurring and even disappearing.

“I don’t think the line is actually that thin at all,” Ms. Popova responded sharply. Curation, she said, is more about “editing and subtraction” and reflects “a point of view,” whereas she defined aggregation as more of a compilation driven by curiosity.

Mr. Altman became the only panelist to remove himself from the communal vilifying of Tumblr. “The Internet has obviously democratized the ability to be your own curator,” he acknowledged, conceding that though this comes with “a lot of annoying things,” you don’t need a PhD to be a philosopher.

“So, the fact that we’re not all necessarily accredited or swiped our way through graduate school doesn’t necessarily make you not something,” Mr. Altman said.

“But, obviously we have to talk about the considerations that go into making you who you are,” he concluded. Unfortunately, the panelists seemed more interested in defending their own status as “curators”—in the semantically accurate sense of the word—than enlightening the audience as to what some of these considerations might be.

From left, Erica Jong, Melissa Febos, Ian Kerner, and Daniel Bergner.

McNally Jackson was packed full of women—many in their twenties, and a few slightly older—and even a smattering of men for Wednesday night’s 50 Shades of Grey panel, featuring Erica Jong, along with Melissa Febos, a former dominatrix and author of Whip Smart, sex counselor Ian Kerner, and Daniel Bergner, author of The Other Side of Desire. Roxane Gay, who wrote warily about 50 Shades of Grey for The Rumpus, Skyped in.

Ostensibly the panel had gathered to discuss whether E.L. James's blockbuster book was a step forward for American sexual culture. “I just want to say right off the bat that we are not going to be discussing the book’s literary merit,” said McNally Jackson’s Amy Lee, the moderator for the event. Yet despite this disclaimer, many of the panelists seemed unable to resist taking a few cheap shots at its notoriously clumsy prose, referring to the book repeatedly as a “piece of shit.”

Ms. Jong seemed especially preoccupied with the book’s literary offenses. “What possessed the publisher to not even edit the book?” she began. “I don’t believe anyone ever said ‘holy cow’ at the moment of her first orgasm,” she said disdainfully, voicing a familiar criticism that she would repeat more than once before the end of the night.

Literary jabs aside, the debate was muddled by the fact that numerous panelists admitted to not having read the trilogy in question.

Ms. Febos was first to confess, noting that she didn’t finish the book because she’s currently trying to finish a novel and “very susceptible to influence,” and thus couldn’t risk absorbing too many of James’s inelegant sentences.

Mr. Kerner was quick to defend the book, citing numerous statistics about widespread American sexual frustration and praising 50 Shades for prompting an increase in the sale of sex toys, and, presumably, sex itself. “I do think it functions as an erotic stimulant, and on this level I think its great,” he said.

“Okay, so what part of it do you find particularly erotic?” Ms. Jong asked skeptically.

Mr. Kerner admitted that he hadn’t read much of it.

Ms. Gay was the only panelist who had read the entire trilogy, apparently “more than once.”

“It’s a travesty,” she told the audience. “But a fun travesty. I’ve never laughed harder. Every day I would just fall off the treadmill laughing.”

Ms. Jong explained that “because she was being called on as a cultural commentator,” she had read the first book in the series, assuring the audience that she found it a “tough slog.”

“Maybe I’m more aware of the lack of editing than other people would be, but I couldn’t find anything that turned me on, other than the fact that he gives her a rare copy of Tess of the D’Urbervilles,” Ms. Jong said, referring to Ms. James’s protagonists, Christian and Anastasia.

Ms. Febos took advantage of the pause in conversation to ask the audience how many of them had found 50 Shades erotic, a question that was met with little enthusiasm from the crowd. “I actually did,” she said earnestly, clarifying: “I was simultaneously repulsed and turned on.”

“I mean, good writing is not necessarily the bedrock of good erotica,” Ms. Febos said.

Ms. Jong responded that she didn’t find 50 Shades of Grey as big of a turn on as the Story of O—a point which few present at last night’s discussion would likely contest.

Yet, as Ms. Febos pointed out, “it’s pretty irrefutable that [50 Shades] has tapped into something in the erotic fantasy life of American women.”

“That doesn’t worry me at all,” she continued. “What I find disturbing and more concerning is the American media’s reaction to that phenomenon…I’m not going to name the one specific article in Newsweek,” Ms. Febos said, referring to Katie Roiphe’s April cover story, “But saying that [submissive fantasies] are a threat to feminism is just an insanely reductive, sexist idea.”

But some members of the audience remained unconvinced that the content of the book itself isn’t having a negative effect on the larger culture, calling it “a book of abuse” and asserting that it is “shaping people’s fantasies in harmful ways.”

“I don’t give the book that much power,” Ms. Febos responded, adding that BDSM fantasies are nothing new. She maintained that 50 Shades isn’t necessarily shaping American culture, but asserted rather optimistically “the conversation about sexual fantasy that’s on the surface actually can.”

“I would like to challenge all of you to make up new fantasies,” Ms. Jong concluded tritely, met with generous applause from the audience.

From left: Emma Komlos Hrobsky, Tin House; Halimah Marcus, Recommended Reading; Celia Johnson, Slice; Jamie Schwartz, CLMP; JD Scott, Moonshot; David James Miller, SET; Brigid Hughes, A Public Space.

The conversation at Wednesday night’s indie lit mag panel at Powerhouse Arena did not stray from its predictable territory: the challenges of getting funding, the ever-evolving landscape of digital publishing and self-satisfaction about being Brooklyn-based.

Though quieter than some nights at Powerhouse, the audience that turned up to hear the discussion between six editors (from Moonshot, A Public Space, SET, Slice, Tin House, and Electric Literature’s newly launched Recommended Reading) and moderator Jamie Schwartz, managing director of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, was considerable.

Ms. Schwartz began the conversation by asking about money, a topic panelists returned to over the course of the night. “I think it’s a mystery to most people how the economics of literary publishing works,” she commented. “It’s really like an oxymoron.”

Anyone who hoped this mystery might be illuminated further was sorely disappointed.

Halimah Marcus, the managing editor of Electric Literature explained that since the publication’s launch of Recommended Reading—a weekly piece of fiction posted each Wednesday on Tumblr—nine weeks ago, the publication has had the chance to focus more on its readers and online subscription numbers, but she admitted that converting readers into funds was “complicated.” With the magazine’s elimination of paid subscriptions, Ms. Marcus explained that they have been relying on fundraising with their new status as a non-profit as well as revenues from “other forms of merchandize”—in lieu of a print publication available for purchase at Wednesday's event, Ms. Marcus brought Electric Literature flasks to sell.

Slice’s co-founder, Celia Johnson,was somewhat more candid, explaining that she and Maria Gagliano were almost broke when they started the magazine in 2007. “We kept it running by holding bake sales and many house parties that were surely illegal,” she explained, noting that though they strive to pay their writers, the magazine still doesn’t have a paid staff. Additional funding comes from events, such as Slice’s second annual Literary Writers Conference, which charges writers $300 for two days of workshops and will take place this weekend.

“We’ve become well versed in the art of throwing parties for free,” Ms. Marcus added, laughing with Ms. Schwartz about using homemade canapés rather than catering.

David James Miller, the founding editor of SET, which is available for free as a PDF download, explained rather self-righteously: “My intent was always for it to be about the work of the individuals.”

“I didn’t want to have to think about a bottom line,” he said conclusively.

Moonshot’s editor-in-chief JD Scott alluded vaguely to “using the internet for promotion” and PayPal donation drives.  Adding that he has a 40-hour a job week, he called his work for Moonshot a “labor of love,” a phrase that was repeated throughout the evening.

And while the turnout for the panel would seem to be an encouraging sign, Ms. Schwartz revealed that from a financial standpoint, the event itself was rather self-defeating. Though the four represented print publications were available for sale at Powerhouse, Ms. Schwartz informed the audience that when readers buy literary magazines at bookstores, the publications actually lose money.  The money’s in subscriptions, Ms. Schwartz informed us. Except, of course, for the publications that have eliminated paid subscriptions. The Observer left the panel with far more questions than we arrived with.

Writer Steve Fishman, recounting his Jason Bourne fantasies during his attempts to reach Bernie Madoff in prison.

The mood was largely self-congratulatory Monday night at the celebratory release of New York Magazine’s first ebook, a collection of the magazine’s 26 most popular stories from the past five years, published by Byliner. New York staff and readers gathered at The Half King, singing praises to the publication over sliders and spinach salad and interrogating writers on their celebrity interview techniques.

New York editor-in-chief Adam Moss introduced “three of the longer lasting writers at the magazine,” Steve Fishman, Vanessa Grigoriadis and Jennifer Senior, who each read selections from their iconic cover stories—a profile of Bernie Madoff, Lady Gaga, and a sociological exploration of “why parents hate parenting,” respectively.

In the Q&A that followed, Ms. Grigoriadis was asked about her ability to “seduce the celebrity, to get her to … share intimate details of her life, only to end up reading a piece in which many things are said about her that she doesn’t particularly wish were said about her.”

“I never do that!” Ms. Grigoriadis replied indignantly. “I don’t know what you are talking about,” she added, with only a trace of irony.

An audience member reversed the question, referencing Dan P. Lee’s profile of Fiona Apple, which appeared in New York last month. “I’m wondering about boundaries,” the woman inquired, alluding to the questionably close relationship which seems to develop between subject and writer in Mr. Lee’s profile. (“We’re friends,” Ms. Apple tells Mr. Lee when he inquires whether they might meet again, “for the story.”) “Did we tell the whole story with Fiona Apple?” the woman asked skeptically.

“I don’t know the real story about Fiona Apple,” said Ms. Grigoriadis, “but there is this tradition of male writers writing about female actresses and writing these pieces where you are wondering how close they really got, or whether they made it up in their minds like that, or they want you to think that…” She said, trailing off before assuring the audience: “For me, everything I know goes on the page. I’m not holding any celebrity secrets.”

Mr. Moss was quick to jump in and defend Mr. Lee’s profile, calling it “very deep,” assuring the audience that “there were no secrets kept.”

“I highly recommend it,” Mr. Moss said, unsurprisingly.

The real intrigue of the night was supplied by Mr. Fishman, who read from his profile “The Madoff Tapes,” which Mr. Moss later reminded the audience was the first in-depth conversation with Bernie Madoff published following his crimes. “How’d that happen?” Mr. Moss asked.

“Glad you asked,” Mr. Fishman responded eagerly, launching into a retelling of the pursuit. “The prison authorities shut me off, which I found very motivating,” he explained, and recounted how he managed to get a list of every inmate in Mr. Madoff’s prison. He wrote letters to every one of them, figuring some would get through the prison authorities.

“I put my phone number in [the letter], and because I have Jason Bourne fantasies I bought this disposable cell phone,” he laughed. Yet the real break, he explained, was an inmate serving life without parole who fancied himself a journalist. Mr. Fishman was able to communicate with the inmate through his girlfriend in Spain, and it was this contact who ultimately delivered Fishman’s letter to Mr. Madoff himself.

“He vouched for my character, and Madoff said, okay, I’ll do it,” Mr. Fishman recounted, remembering the night of a Jets playoff game when he got a collect call from Mr. Madoff. “I didn’t have a tape recorder, and I was running around the house in front of my young children yelling ‘Shit, Bernie Madoff’s on the phone!’”

“For the story it was really important that Madoff speak. Yes, it’s important that its true, but its much more important to hear the story from inside the mouth of this person,” Mr. Fishman explained in response to a question from Mr. Moss regarding Mr. Madoff’s reputation as a pathological liar.

“As a footnote, he told me that he liked it,” Mr. Fishman said of Mr. Madoff’s opinion of the profile.

Rebecca Mead and Janet Groth.

“Twenty-one year flat-line” was the way that Janet Groth, receptionist at the New Yorker from 1957-1978 described her aforementioned career last night at the reading of her memoir The Receptionist: An Education at the New Yorker at Greenlight Bookstore.

Ms. Groth recounted a time of William Shawn, E.B. White and Joseph Mitchell with a slightly nostalgic but none too romanticized air. She recalled telling the man who first interviewed her for the position that she wanted to write. “Can you type?” was his response. Not professionally, she told him. He reviewed her resume and inquired about a short story prize she had won while in college. “Did you type that?”

During her 21 years at the magazine, Ms. Groth submitted three short stories for consideration—none of which made it into print, and one of which she believes got lost on Mr. Shawn’s desk. “Apparently that happened all the time but I took it very, very personally,” explained Ms. Groth, who is now a professor emeritus of English at Plattsburg State University and the author of multiple books on the writer and critic Edmund Wilson, whose time at the New Yorker overlapped hers.

The reading was followed by a conversation with Rebecca Mead, a current staff writer at the New Yorker who has been there since 1997. “Why write this book now?” Ms. Mead inquired.

“I think the idea was that people had died, who would have been hurt by it,” Ms. Groth responded, garnering a number of laughs from the audience.

Ms. Mead pointed out that others have written about being receptionists at the New Yorker, including Alison Rose, Ms. Groth’s successor.

“That was a very spicy book,” Ms. Groth exclaimed excitedly. “She seems to have gotten around to all those married men I was eschewing.”

Ms. Mead laughed, and went on to call Ms. Groth’s book “beautifully written…it’s really delicious but it’s so sad. I found it ineffably melancholic.”

“It also made me extremely glad that I joined the New Yorker in the 1990s and not in the 1950s,” Ms. Mead remarked, referring to the blatant sexism recounted in Ms. Groth’s memoir.

Yet, there was at least one benefit to working at the New Yorker in the 60s and 70s. “Am I really to understand that the New Yorker paid for your psychoanalysis?” Ms. Mead asked incredulously.

“Yes! You see, they had to have that, or, they thought they did. There were so many of their staff going to shrinks that they had a policy where 80 percent of it was covered,” Ms. Groth explained. “Everybody did! Well, this is perhaps an exaggeration…but it seemed to me fairly widespread.

The back cover of The Receptionist reads: “If Mad Men were set at the offices of the New Yorker Magazine, and told from the point of view of the receptionist, it would mirror Janet Groth’s seductive and entertaining look back at her twenty-one years at that legendary institution.” Yet, Ms. Mead, jumping on the bandwagon of reviewers likening largely unrelated books to Lena Dunham’s HBO series, remarked, “The TV show I kept thinking about while I was reading this was Girls.”

“I’ve only seen the one brief portion that you can watch without signing up for Hulu,” admitted Ms. Groth. “But it looked good.”

“If you had to give your young self advice now, what would it be?” Ms. Mead inquired.

After joking that she should've taught herself how to type, Ms. Groth said that “any assertiveness training” would have benefited her immensely. “Young women are so much better equipped today,” she remarked.

“There might be less lunchtime drinking leading to afternoon weeping now,” remarked Ms. Mead with a wry laugh.

“Oh, I meant to ask: is there anything on offer in the Condé Nast Cafeteria?” Ms. Groth inquired of Ms. Mead, referring to an invitation earlier in the conversation to join her for lunch at the new New Yorker offices.

“You can’t even get garlic, let alone alcohol,” Ms. Mead explained with mock indignation.

“Well, I’ll have to bring a little flask.” Ms. Groth said with a wink.

Ms. Mead noted that there are no longer any receptionists at the New Yorker, as Condé Nast eliminated the positions during a round of budget cuts in 2009. “Does the demise of the receptionist position make you sad, or do you think, well, good, nobody else has to go through it?”

“It does make me sad,” Ms. Groth remarked. “There was a certain humanity about it that lobby security doesn’t quite match.”

When asked whether she still subscribes to the magazine, Ms. Groth told The Observer that she does. “I’m so sorry I lost my gratis subscription, but at some point they economized and all the recent retirees stopped getting their comps. I do get an educational subscription, though. I do love it, and you gotta have it. It’s just vital to the culture.”

Tavi Gevinson, reads on stage and demonstrates a variety of bitchfaces. (Instagram photo from Rookie Mag)

By the time Tavi Gevinson arrived at Littlefield in Brooklyn yesterday afternoon a full hour late (her plane had been delayed), the venue was packed with waify, whimsically dressed teenage girls in carefully considered outfits. There were some shrieks from the audience as the revelation that Ms. Gevinson had arrived spread around the room, and a few trembling “oh my god’s” were emitted as the 16-year-old editor-in-chief took the stage. Pink crepe paper streamers were strung along the walls and metallic stars were had been stuck around the stage. There were boxes of cupcakes on the tables and a few moms chatted in the background.

Ms. Gevinson read from her Rookie DIY article “How to Bitchface,” demonstrating each of the facial expressions discussed and drawing loud laughs from a generous audience. Her voice had an air of self-assured confidence and grace, which was a welcome change from the syrupy tone of the young Rookie writers who read before her, even when she slipped up on a few notes in the text. “Sorry, I should have looked over this more,” Ms. Gevinson apologized to the audience.

After the reading, which included novelist and Rookie contributor Emma Straub, and a performance by girl band Supercute, Rookie editor Amy Rose Spiegel invited the audience to “stay and dance with us, and mingle,” and put on what may have been the Grease soundtrack. Rather than dance, most of the audience formed a haphazard line to talk to Ms. Gevinson, who posed for photos with fans and signed autographs—even signing one girl’s copy of The Virgin Suicides, which Ms. Gevinson told the Times last year was one of “the two things in pop-culture that influenced me aesthetically the most,” the other being Twin Peaks.

Ms. Gevinson couldn’t remember exactly who had the idea for the Rookie Road Trip this summer, which is visiting thirteen states over the next two months, but told The Observer that it was something she and Rookie photographer Petra Collins had “fantasized about.”

“We had a survey on the site for people to say where they live, and except for a couple that are way out of the way, we’re going to the cities that have the most readers,” Ms. Gevinson told us.

“I’ve been wanting to start a blog for a really long time and Tavi is kind of an inspiration to me,” Isabella Adler, a 16-year-old from Los Angeles told The Observer before the event. “She’s cute. I’m completely jealous that she gets to go to all those amazing fashion shows. I want to have her life,” Ms. Adler told us candidly.

Chris Chudnovsky, the mother of a 12-year-old Rookie fan told us, “as soon as they said there was going to be a road trip, she printed it out and put it on her bedroom wall. She said we could go on vacation as long as we were around this day.”

Though for the most part the audience resembled a girls-only sweet sixteen party, some older readers turned out as well. “I’ve been reading [Tavi’s] blog since she was 11-years-old,” Paige Bradley, a 23-year-old art assistant told us. Ms. Bradley said that even though Rookie is targeted at teenage girls, “it doesn’t feel below my level.”

“I love writing for teenage girls. It’s my favorite thing to do,” Ms. Straub told The Observer after the reading. “I write for a lot of places but nothing is as satisfying as the stuff I write for Rookie.”

“For next month I wrote a thing about George Michael’s ‘Freedom,’ the music video from 1990 that I love so much… Nobody else will let me write about that, but Rookie will!” Ms. Straub explained. Her first novel, Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures, is forthcoming this September.

Ms. Gevinson told The Observer that she’s been hard at work on Rookie’s first print edition, which should come out this fall. When asked what she’s currently reading, Ms. Gevinson explained, “I just went to the library with my dad and picked out The White Album by Joan Didion.” And though we weren’t blown away by her choice of outfit—a pleated leopard skirt and white blouse that could have been from Urban Outfitters, a corporate sponsor of the road trip—we can’t say that Ms. Gevinson doesn’t have good taste.

Will Patton, left, and Denis Johnson.

“I’m here to sell books. That’s why I came,” Denis Johnson informed the audience after reading from his recently released book of plays, Soul of a Whore and Purvis: Two Plays in Verse, at BAM Thursday night. Despite this early disclaimer, Mr. Johnson appeared to thoroughly enjoy performing.

The crowd was about what we would have expected for an event series entitled “Eat, Drink & Be Literary” with a $50 ticket price—a mix of sweet-looking bespectacled couples with haphazardly tucked button downs and more seasoned residents of Park Slope who dressed in summer whites and chewed slowly. Not, in other words, stereotypical Denis Johnson fans.

“Is Denis Johnson crazy?” one woman asked her companions prior to the reading. “His characters are crazy,” a grey-haired woman replied wisely.

Another aging woman informed The Observer, “This is the best way to meet people. It’s much better than being a piece of meat at a bar.”  

After a buffet dinner, Mr. Johnson, sporting navy blue socks with rugged sandals, was joined on stage by actor Will Patton—who appeared in the 1999 movie Jesus’ Son, based on Mr. Johnson’s story collection with the same name—to read a scene from Purvis. “It’s a job interview,” Mr. Johnson explained. “So we’re both wearing business clothes—like he is,” pointing to Mr. Patton, who was wearing a grey suit with suede boots, his long hair pulled back into a low bun.

“He’s much better than the readers we usually get,” New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman said of Mr. Patton when she took the stage for to moderate the conversation with Mr. Johnson that followed the reading.

Mr. Johnson explained that his plays are written in “blankish” verse. “Do you find that the audiences know that the plays are written in verse?” Ms. Treisman inquired.

“No,” Mr. Johnson responded, sighing. “I once heard someone say of another play in verse of mine, ‘It’s very good, but why does he have to make every line sound like the last line he’s ever going to write?’” he recounted, laughing.

Ms. Treisman went on to ask about Mr. Johnson’s favorite genres. “You write everything,” she remarked. “Poems, stories, novels, plays, essays, journalism—is there anything you won’t write?

Mr. Johnson hardly had to think about it. “Well, I won’t write you a check.”

“I like plays the best,” he continued. “I don’t have to do all those paragraphs. People just figure out all the stuff that goes on in the paragraphs.”

“Novels are just hard. No one can really write a good novel. How many people have written two or three good novels? Not a lot of people. It’s just a sloppy form.”

The audience seemed slightly put off by this remark, considering that Mr. Johnson has written what many consider to be some very good novels—his 2007 novel Tree of Smoke won the National Book Award and was a finalist for a Pulitzer. Yet, on Thursday night Johnson said of the book, “It shouldn’t have been published. I mean, really, definitely shouldn’t have been published. It was a personal thing. But I can’t just do personal things like that and not get paid,” drawing laughs from the audience.

Ms. Treisman asked Johnson about Jesus’ Son, noting that she’s encountered several writers who have wanted to read stories from that book for her New Yorker fiction podcast. “Why do you think it hit such a nerve with people?” she asked.

“It was the voice. It’s just really cool,” Mr. Johnson mused, before quickly confessing: “It’s just a rip off. Jeez, I can’t even remember his name…Isaac Babel. Read Red Calvary, and you’ll see where I ripped that off from. All I do is imitate people.”

Repeating a familiar refrain, Mr. Johnson explained that when he first wrote the stories now published as Jesus’ Son, he never thought they’d see the light of day.

“I was talking about banging needles in my arms,” he explained. “But then I was broke at one point, and I just thought, who cares what I did.” Desperate for money, Mr. Johnson submitted the stories to the New Yorker.

At the end of the night, Mr. Johnson took questions from the audience. “Why the executions?” one woman inquired.

“The executions,” Mr. Johnson responded, seeming somewhat taken aback. The woman repeated her question.

“Goddamn these questions,” Mr. Johnson exclaimed, putting on a mock inquisitive voice: “Why the drugs?”