Last January, 28-year-old home accessories boutique owner Georgia Tapert and her good friend Stephanie LaCava, 25, a features assistant at Vogue, were having lunch at Ms. Tapert's Broome Street store. Not long before, Ms. Tapert's mother, author Annette Tapert, had been telling the ladies about her tenure as a PEN American Center trustee, and the younger ladies had taken an interest. They decided they wanted to start their own kind of literary society. But theirs would have to be younger, more accessible to people who were in their own social circle.
"We thought that a younger generation needed to be made aware of this organization-the younger generation being our friends and friends of friends," said Ms. Tapert.
After lunch that day, Ms. LaCava rang her friend, graphic designer Roanne Adams, who happened to have done some work for Nathaniel Rich, the Paris Review associate editor and novelist (also brother of humorist Simon and son of New York Times columnist Frank). Over dinner, Mr. Rich agreed to help. "It was a great cause, so I was flattered they thought of me, and happy to contribute in any way I could," said Mr. Rich.
The slender Ms. LaCava, who favors frighteningly tall, sculptural shoes, is a fixture at young society galas and fashion parties. She wears geek-chic black-framed glasses and often has her reddish long hair pulled up into a high ponytail. She is also currently at work on her first novel.
Ms. LaCava then contacted two more friends: Derek Anderson and Victor Kubicek, co-founders of the Halcyon Company, a film production company that is perhaps best known for acquiring the rights to the Terminator franchise in 2007. (Terminator Salvation, starring Christian Bale, is currently slated for a May 2009 release from the Halcyon Company.)
And thus the Edmont Society was formed as a kind of junior organization of the PEN American Center; the name comes from the New York City hotel where Holden Caulfield stayed in J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. (Author and inaugural committee member Rick Moody came up with the name; among the rejected ones was the Leatherstocking Society, as in the series by James Fenimore Cooper, and the Stylus Society, as in the writing instrument.)
The committee for the Edmont Society's inaugural benefit on Oct. 27 at the Friars Club-organized to raise money for the society's main purpose of expanding PEN's Readers and Writers program-included Unaccustomed Earth author Jhumpa Lahiri and the actor Josh Hartnett; author Jonathan Lethem and tennis champion Serena Williams; Middlesex author Jeffrey Eugenides and the socialite Maggie Betts. Maya Angelou read a poem. The rapper Common performed.
The social and literary worlds have long found much in each other to admire-the late George Plimpton, the founder of Mr. Rich's employer, was perhaps the most successful bridger of these two milieus-but the younger set had been lacking an appropriate outlet until the recent ascent of Brooke Geahan's Accompanied Literary Society parties, which are known for their unlikely combinations of guests: say, Mary-Kate Olsen and Gary Shteyngart! Everybody wins.
And so the Edmont Society, with its equal parts Hollywood glitz and prizewinning authors, is seemingly committed to carrying on the tradition. But according to the society's founders, their organization is not at all modeled after Ms. Geahan's. "I don't see us as being in competition with her excellent Accompanied Literary Society," Mr. Rich wrote in an e-mail. "The more organizations that bring together people with a shared love of literature, the better."
PEN development director Linda Morgan, who worked with the founders to create Edmont, said that over 200 people showed up for Edmont's inaugural event, exceeding the Friars Club 150-person capacity. In fact, "a special young, social Edmont authors' evening" is already being planned for February.
"When we were introduced to Derek and Victor, two things I remember are, one, they are producing the latest Terminator movie, and two, it has Christian Bale and Common in it," Ms. Morgan recalled with an innocent laugh. "I guess that's how they were able to get Common to attend the first event."
Ms. Tapert said that the presence of the more high-profile Hollywood names on the committee was thanks to Mr. Kubicek and Mr. Anderson.
"Victor and Derek work in film, so they have some contacts, and we were lucky working with PEN to gain access to a lot of the writers," said Ms. Tapert. "We felt it was important to have people on the committee that were either writers or people in that world; we didn't just want to be some star-studded thing."
Copyright 2008 The New York Observer
