Bonfire of the Real Estate Developers

Do not miss...I SAID, DO NOT MISS Tom Wolfe's electric kool-aid acid bath for real estate developers, on Page 10 of today's NY Times "Week in Review" section. Aby Rosen, who rallied artworld support from such luminaries as artist Jeff Koons and dealers Lawrence Salander and Larry Gagosian for the 30-story Norman Foster glass tower he wants to build over five-story 980 Madison Avenue, gets the Sherman McCoy treatment from Wolfe as the author's new version of the misguided Master of the Universe.

This cannot be mistaken for a fair-minded treatment of the battle between preservationists and developers: Foster, a celebrated architect whose recently completed Hearst Tower in New York received almost universal acclaim, is nowhere mentioned as the architect for Rosen's "Mondo Condo glass box." But, boy, Wolfe sure writes the hell out of this hot-button issue and it's a potent polemic!!!!!

(By the way, the best vantage point for gazing upon an unobstructed Hearst Tower is the upper deck of the ferries traveling from Weehawken, NJ to midtown Manhattan. Its facets glisten in the sun.)

We breathlessly await Norman Mailer's, Gore Vidal's and John Updike's responses to their authorial rival in letters to the editor. Power to the writers!

Or, as we said in the '60s, "Write On!"