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Out of Zeit, Out of Mind

By Rick Horowitz

So that's what it's all about. (I was wondering what it was all about.) Gorgeous women in slinky clothes. Fancy skin creams in Hollywood bathrooms.

This is useful information when you're keeping track of the Zeitgeist. I wasn't expecting to be keeping track of the Zeitgeist; apparently it's unavoidable. Tina Brown is tapping the Zeitgeist. So is Jay McInerney. So is Bret Easton Ellis.

Say no more.

More: I have all this on the authority of The New York Times. Not some cheesy, sensation-seeking tabloid, mind you, but the newspaper of record. On a single recent day in that very newspaper, not one, not two, but three celebs -- one peripatetic magazine editor and two high-gloss writers -- slashed their "Z"s into the public fabric. I'm thinking milestone.

"Tina Brown Edits Her Career to Match the Zeitgeist," shouts the top-of-the-page, front-of-the-section headline on the first story, assessing The New Yorker editor's latest jump to a still-but-a-glimmer mag she'll be creating for Miramax, part of the Disney domain. And it's there in the story, too, in case we were thinking Tina Brown is a trendy-come-lately: "At Tatler, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, she constantly put new geist in the Zeitgeist." (Is that legal?)

Just pages away, meanwhile, another article is bringing us up to date on Messrs. McInerney and Ellis. Their early novels about the young and disaffected -- "Bright Lights, Big City," "Less Than Zero," "American Psycho" -- once marked them, or so we're told, as "chroniclers in touch with the tenor of the times." (And, presumably, The Times.)

And now? "A decade later, fashion, modeling and personal appearance have assumed a focal place in popular culture, and Mr. McInerney and Mr. Ellis, with uncanny timing, have popped up again as authors attuned to the Zeitgeist."

Uncanny indeed! McInerney's latest, scheduled for September release, is "Model Behavior"; Ellis will be checking in in January with "Glamorama." Anyone can be "in touch with the tenor of the times," but to be "attuned to the Zeitgeist"? Or to go even beyond "attuned to the Zeitgeist," and restock the geist yourself the way Tina Brown does? I am in awe.

I would be in somewhat more awe, of course, if I'd been a regular (or even an irregular) reader of The New Yorker, or if I'd read a single word, Zeitgeisty or other, McInerney or Ellis had ever written.

And I'd be in even more awe if I could remember precisely what "Zeitgeist" means. Where's that dictionary? "The spirit of the time; general trend of thought or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time."

I knew that.

Brown's new magazine, the article says, is supposed to generate stories that can then be turned into books, movies, television shows. Some chin-stroking types are already worrying that the magazine's multiple missions -- is it pushing journalism, or a new line of action figures? -- could lead to cotton-candy coverage.

Not to worry, says Ron Galotti, who's stepping down as publisher of Vogue to become Brown's partner in this new enterprise. "The editorial aspect of the magazine," he assures, "will have no commercial overtone at all." On the other hand...

Having a film company as corporate sibling, Galotti admits, does make for some interesting possibilities. There was the big cosmetics company, he recalls, looking for a higher profile. What could be simpler than helping an advertiser with a little product placement in a Miramax film?

Galotti's vision: "I would immediately see a bathtub surrounded by the Elizabeth Arden product or Clinique." Do wake me for the premiere.

"What's interesting about models," Jay McInerney is telling the reporter from The Times, "is precisely nothing except what we choose to invest in them. They are empty vessels, and by definition, they're pure surface." McInerney, the article informs us, was married to one model and later lived with another.

Bret Easton Ellis is unavailable to offer thoughts about the emptiness of models. He is, the article says, "traveling in London this week to promote a BBC documentary about himself and did not respond to messages."

A pity.

Posted 7/14/98. Fresh stuff right here twice weekly!

Rick Horowitz is a syndicated columnist, TV commentator and public speaker.