The Coaster Correspondence

VANITIES

More of the very expensive words of Edwin John Coaster, contributing editor

EDWIN COASTER 11/19/00 Dear Graydon; Enclosed are the galleys to b~t Reader~i956-?~Q0~, my long-awaited anthology oolleotion. Even thou~h it'. all previously published material, I a sure you'll want to excerpt something from it. 1ight I suggest `4Die, Gerry, Diet," the controversial `76 NWe~ piece that I wrote as an interior monologue of Sq~eaky Fromme? Or "Seuss Is for Faggots," the Yorkeview screed that started my famous literary feud with Ted Qeisel? Whichever you choose, please count the excerpt as two features against my contract. Best regards, P.S. You mentioned some months ago that you'd be happy to write the intro to my collection. I~ve taken the liberty of writing it for you. (See enclosure.) Just make whatever tweaks you want and sign off on it. P.P.S. Could you pass my galleys on to Dominick and ask him to blurb?

INTRODUCTION: TEE GENIUS OF EDWIN JOHN COASTER BY RAYDON CARTER In the frosty Canadian burg where I was raised, pleasure came hard. I might have killed myself, in fact, were it not for the balm that reading provided my chapped soul. And there was no writer who delivered me further from my uninspired existence than Edwin John Coaster, the fearless young maverick whose debut novel of the Korean War, Country, set literary conventions alight like so much tired newsprint to a howitzer flame; whose rule-breaking dispatches from Vietnam electrified the journalistic firmament like a giant toaster set alloat in John Hay Whitney's marble bathtub. like many a youth of my day, I dreamed of being Ed Coaster, of smelling the gunpowder and feeling the bourbon and cutting the figure and pulling the broads. Imagine the thrill, then, of years later becoming the editor of Vanity Pair and not only meeting Ed Coaster but becoming his friend, colleague, and near equal! These collected writings are but a sampling of the genius over which I've salivated - a Coaster tasting menu, if you will. Ron appe'tit, and if you're still hungry afterward (as I always am!), go out and buy all his other books. [your signature here, Gray] 12~

11/30/00 Dear Graydon, I must say I was taken aback by the sour, unsporting tone of your most reoent letter, particularly your assertions that (A) you never agreed to write the introduction to my book; (B) my proposed introduction fails to approximate your voice adequately; (C) a book excerpt doesn't count as an article against my contract, particularly when it's "shit that was published somewhere else a million years ago"; (D) Vanity Tair has no intention of excerpting anything from The E4~is John Coaster Reader; and (E) "we may be facing a default situation prettd soon as regards your $400,000 contract." "Default situation," eh? Hasn't Hollywood made you grand! Anyway, in the absence of any enthusiasm on your part for any of my story suggestions (and I still don't see what you have against my Bangkok-brotheltrawl idea), I've got a killer concept of a different sort. You know how they have those Rev' Yorker cruises, where Mr. and Mrs. Omaha get to hobnob with Roger Angell and David Denby aboard the U.S.S. Middlebrow? Well, why don't we have a series of !~p~ty Pair cruises? A little yarn spinning and buffet grazing with our people! You could give `em a Hollywood slide show, I could tell `em some `Ram stories, Annie Leibovitz could take everyone's picture, and then we could spook `em all real good by pitching the ship starboard, killing all the lights, and wheeling Sebastian

Junger out for scary shipwreck stories! It's a fuckin' ]~y~p, my friend! And it would count as two features against my contract. Best regards (despite everything), P.S. Dominick won't blurb my book. Evidently he still hasn't forgiven me for the drunken scene I made at his Patroon party for The Way We Lived (What can I say? I thought it was funny to greet Charlie Rose as "Burden's white man"!) Anyway, could you pass on those galleys to Gail Sheehy and see if she'll blurb? And if she won't bite, can you try Bryan Burrough? Also Marie Brenner? Margolick? Biskind? Hell, at this point I'll settle for Hitchens!