The writer Penelope Green once used the term “our set’’ to describe all of us who came up together in the early eighties, and I knew exactly what she meant. Whether we were at Spy or The New York Observer or 7 Days or Wig Wag or one of the established magazines, we were all members of the Class of the Mid Eighties, and we watched what each other did like hawks..
It’s kind of amazing that during the whole of our coeval life and work spans, I met Peter Kaplan, one of the star performers of our set, only a small handful of times. I have to believe that was by mutual choice; Peter, who died on November 29th, was an exuberant type, but he ran Manhattan Inc. and the Observer, he never gave me any assignments nor accepted any of my pitches, and I have to assume that was simply because he didn’t like my act. Fair enough. Enough other people did. And apparently he liked plenty of other people’s stuff. Their remembrances of his special grace made that seem as though that his enthusiasm was one of the great beneficences a writer could know.
One of the earliest times I met him was in 1983 or 1984, when he was helping Jane Amsterdam run Manhattan Inc., and I went to see him. I don’t remember a great deal about that meeting, except that he wasn’t buying what I was selling, and worse, that maybe the whole meeting was just a courtesy to our mutual pal Sam Campbell, and that Peter didn’t expect ever to have an interest in me. But at some point in our talk, he began to enthuse over an article he had read, a piece that probably ran in his magazine, about a real estate developer. The developer was an unpolished Jewish businessman, probably around seventy, who along with his properties ran an import business. Peter read from the piece to me, stressing a quote from the developer in which he offered the visiting reporter some of his imported goods. “Have a Havana,’’ the gruff, garrolous businessman said, “and a banana.’’
Peter repeated that line three or four times, chortling louder each time. “Have a Havana, and a banana.’’ He loved it, but it was a dog’s whistle to me. I just didn’t hear it.
And then, some years later, I did.
Our industry is shattered, our craft is disappearing, and now our set has begun to die.