Leaving first thing in the morning to fly up for lunch with Ladette Randolph, a friend from Nebraska, who's now the editor-in-chief of Ploughshares and author of A Sandhills Ballad, and attend the Grub Street benefit, headlined by Tayari Jones, Anita Shreve, and Gregory Maguire. Coming back Wednesday afternoon, and packing light: a book, a pair of heels and one gown. If I had more time, I'd make a meandering call upon two of my favorite representations of femininity and masculinity, respectively: Isabella Stewart Gardner, painted by Sargent with a strand of pearls roped twice around her waist, and said to have walked a lion on a leash, and Max Beckmann, whose 1927 Self-Portrait in Tuxedo I first saw in Paris, and was stunned when, years later, I encountered it again in Cambridge. I'd never have guessed.
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