The first piece I did for the editor Winston Cowles was a story about living without the internet. I was twenty-four. I had gotten the call to meet Cowles, who was still Managing at The Sun when it was still on 23rd street – because he had read and liked a piece I had done for the Princeton Bulletin – a piece about living in New York in bohemian poverty, as Fitzgerald had done: I had skipped the bill on a steak at Delmonico’s, snuck into the Metropolitan at intermission, slept on a ruched velvet couch in the lobby of The Biarritz. It was a snide piece, full of youthful insecurity and defensive snark, but he had said, over the phone, that it had “its charms” and invited me to a Wednesday lunch at a shadowy Italian place with white tablecloths and a dusty bar.
