Vendor
	Fletcher Agency Melissa Chinchillo
Original language
English
Categories
The Arts Biography, Literature & Literary studies Society & Social Sciences

DILETTANTE

Dana Brown

Failing Up & Falling Down at the Last Great Magazine

Former Deputy Editor of Vanity Fair, Dana Brown's memoir featuring his coming of age in the media world of the 1990s and Aughts, filled with firsthand accounts of some of the world’s most exclusive gatherings. An affectionate and nostalgic ode to the golden age of magazine publishing and New York City itself.

(Previously titled DISAPPEARING INK)

Dana was one of the least likely people to end up on the masthead at Condé Nast’s glamorous glossy Vanity Fair. A 21-year-old dropout who spent his nights playing in punk bands when he wasn’t seriously partying downtown, Brown first met Graydon Carter (Editor of Vanity Fair) while working as a waiter. Graydon thought he seemed like a hard worker and liked his manner, so suggested that he apply for an assistant opening working for him (that Dana was a dead ringer for one of Graydon’s sons could not have hurt).

As one of Graydon’s assistants, his main task was helping the trains run on time at salons often hosted at Carter’s home. When, only a few months into the position, a guest no-showed he tapped Brown to fill the unacceptable empty seat. In that hilariously awkward moment, Brown’s life was changed forever and so began a twenty plus year career that thrust him into a world he never in a million years thought he would become a part of.

Written with equal parts affection and nostalgia, DISAPPEARING INK is also more profoundly a book about media and technology, and the shifting cultural landscape of New York City. It’s a sharply observed and hilarious reflection of the industry they helped to build—with great joy and to almost now unimaginable excess—and then watched evolve in the days after 9/11, and finally collapse.

From inside the famed Oscar party and indie film festivals, to emerging world of the tech elite, Brown’s job offered him access to some of the most exclusive gatherings in the world and the chance to learn on the job with some of the best writers who clamored for those coveted contributor agreements with Vanity Fair. It is at once a generational memoir of Brown, the media, and of New York City itself.

Available products
Book Published 2022-03-22 by Ballantine Books

Comments

“Who am I kidding.... I was a fucking dilettante, a role I assumed and perfected,” writes Brown, former deputy editor of Vanity Fair, in this bawdy account of his decades at the magazine. His aimless days hustling as a barback came to an end when in 1994—after working a number of Graydon Carter’s private salons—the Vanity Fair publisher hired Brown as his assistant, handing him the key to New York City’s vibrant and bustling magazine world. “For the next quarter of a century,” Brown writes, “that key would unlock doors that would define my life.” As he recounts his path from coffee fetcher to respected editor, he courses through an entertaining who’s who of celebrities: smoking weed with Seth Rogen, day-drinking with Vanity Fair writer Christopher Hitchens (“maybe one of the most fun people ever”), and doing a photo shoot with Caitlyn Jenner for the magazine’s 2015 cover story (“one final victory for print in an increasingly pixelated world”). It’s a glittering paean to the bygone golden age of glossy magazines, but also—and perhaps more intriguingly—a riveting behind-the-scenes look at how print media pivoted to meet the needs of a burgeoning era in which “the internet wasn’t a new newsstand, it was the newsstand.” This tour through New York publishing’s hallowed halls is a nonstop thrill.

“A few years ago, I got to work with Dana Brown when I was allowed to edit a comedy issue of Vanity Fair. I kept thinking—Oh the things he’s seen! I could never get him to tell me the good stuff, but now it’s all in this amazing, insightful, and funny memoir about life as an editor at Vanity Fair.”

—Judd Apatow

“Dilettante is one of those rare books that lingers after you have read it. It offers the best seat in the house into the workings of one of the great cultural institutions of our time. It is a coming-of-age story, the intersections of timing and luck and skill that propel us to be something we never thought we could be. It is written with grace and humor and poignance. It is searingly honest without the typical suspects of snark and smirk. It is a window into a different place and time when the world of New York and magazine publishing gleamed with dazzle and glamour instead of the hair shirt of guilt that is now requisite attire. The moment is gone, like too many great moments are gone. Dana Brown splendidly reminds us of how much fun and serendipitous it all was.”

—Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights

“In writing his story, Dana Brown has not only written about movie stars, power brokers, cocaine fueled parties, alcohol fueled parties, alcohol fueled cocaine, New York at its zenith, New York in the morning, when it was shaky, New York in the evening, when it was riding high, Vanity Fair, Graydon Carter, the magazine industry when it was worth calling an industry, but also the story of Generation X, the second greatest generation, which is the story of America’s last great good time. It’s a power ballad of a book. It’s ‘November Rain.’ I loved every single page."

—Rich Cohen
Author, Tough Jews, Sweet & Low

“From his youthful days as a barback at 44, Dana Brown had a ringside seat at one of the most glamorous and culturally exciting periods in New York City history. His unlikely rise to deputy editor of Vanity Fair is a fairy tale—unlikely then, and impossible now, given the lamentable demise of print, to which his memoir is a fitting panegyric. Brown is ruthlessly honest and often hilarious when talking about his failings (when he got the job, he admits he couldn’t spell), but if he started out as a dilettante, he became much more than that, shepherding culture-defining stories into the pages of America’s glossiest monthly. Full disclosure: Brown was my editor for fifteen years, and yet I was still surprised and fascinated by his profusion of insider gossip concerning everything from grumpy Fran Lebowitz to Kim Kardashian trying to horn in on her stepfather Caitlyn Jenner’s groundbreaking cover photo shoot. Impossible to put down, Dilettante is an irresistibly juicy memoir for anyone who misses the days when magazines mattered.”
—Nancy Jo Sales
Author, Nothing Personal:
My Secret Life in the
Dating App Inferno,
The Bling Ring