Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Bringing Manners Back

Via WWD: The New York Times' Sunday Styles will launch an etiquette column later this month, and though Philip Galanes, its writer, may not be a household name, it is difficult to imagine someone more primed to write about social mores alongside the sociological trivia, careerist self-revelation and spectator-sport consumption of that section. Galanes is twice graduated from Yale, was an entertainment lawyer at white-shoe firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, has two novels to his name and dabbles as an interior designer. (His work on a town house was featured in a well spread in House & Garden two years ago.) Galanes did not respond by press time, but a synopsis on his Web site describes his upcoming novel, "Emma's Table," as a "Park Avenue morality tale," featuring a one-time "media darling...fresh from a year-long stretch in prison." The Los Angeles Times praised his first novel, "Father's Day," published by Knopf in 2004, and described more Sunday Styles-ready material: "When [the protagonist] makes haste to a downtown sex club, it's no surprise that he spends an inordinate amount of time folding his clothes into neat piles and comparing the claustrophobic buddy booths to the fitting rooms at Bergdorf Goodman." Such range in real life will no doubt come in handy in the pages of the Times.

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