authenticity | The Smart Set

The Successful Gesture

Matt Hanson — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 11:30:00 +0000

There’s a line in The Great Gatsby that took me by surprise when I first read it in high school, and I’ve been puzzling over it ever since. Early on, the fictional narrator Nick Carraway is thinking about what makes Gatsby special. He wonders “if personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures” which seemed […]

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Arthur Alexander and the Art of Listening

Colin Fleming — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 11:30:00 +0000

Have you ever learned about a set of recordings and thought, “I would like to love those?” There’s an embedded knowledge you pick up on — a kind of reader’s contact high — that the recordings would match well with who you are, who you wish to be, how you’d like to think of yourself. […]

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The Lifestyle Beat

Jason Wilson — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:12:43 +0000

Not too long ago, I was at a party with a number of people who have successful careers in lifestyle journalism. I was chatting with a beautiful, sexy friend who writes for a magazine that covers luxury spa vacations. She got that job, in part, because she wrote a wonderful travel book about bathing culture […]

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The Pizza Police

Julie Reno — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:12:43 +0000

I should start by revealing the location of my own perfect pizza: Denino’s Pizza Tavern, which has made its home on Port Richmond Avenue on Staten Island since 1937. The place is run by the family of the original founders, a fact that some claim contributes to the consistent quality of the pie throughout the […]

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