Dilettante

Praise

“Dilettante is a salute to an industry and its practitioners, those who were making a meaningful cultural contribution even while they were trying their damnedest to drain Condé Nast’s fathomless expense account.”—Shelf Awareness

“I got to work with Dana Brown when I was asked to edit Vanity Fair’s comedy issue. As I got to know him a bit, I kept thinking—Oh the things he’s seen! While Dana was too discreet to tell me the good stuff back then, I’m so glad he’s chosen to share it all now in this amazing, insightful, and funny memoir.”—Judd Apatow

“Dana Brown’s unlikely rise to deputy editor of Vanity Fair is a fairy tale. But if he started out as a dilettante, he became much more than that, shepherding culture-defining stories into the pages of America’s glossiest monthly. Impossible to put down, Dilettante is an irresistibly juicy memoir.”—Nancy Jo Sales, New York Times bestselling author of American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers

“In writing his story, Dana Brown has not only written about movie stars, power brokers, cocaine-fueled parties, alcohol-fueled parties, alcohol-fueled cocaine, New York at its zenith, New York in the morning (when it was shaky), New York in the evening (when it was riding high), Vanity Fair, Graydon Carter, the magazine industry when it was worth calling an industry, but also the story of Generation X, the second-greatest generation, which is the story of America’s last great good time. It’s a power ballad of a book. It’s ‘November Rain.’ I loved every single page.”—Rich Cohen, bestselling author of Tough Jews and Sweet and Low

“A scintillating memoir, elegantly written, witty, self-deprecating, observant, chronicling how a great magazine is put together, giving the intimate detail that provides a unique social history of two decades of New York and Hollywood.”—James Fox, bestselling author of White Mischief and co-writer of Life by Keith Richards

“An immensely engaging memoir and inside view of the magazine world . . . [Brown] offers grounded and insightful observations—not only about the internal workings at Vanity Fair, but also major shifts in a media world rapidly transitioning to digital platforms and up-to-the-moment information content alongside rapidly evolving American cultural tastes.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Dilettante is a coming-of-age story written with grace and humor and poignance. It is searingly honest without the typical suspects of snark and smirk. It is a window into a different place and time when the world of New York and magazine publishing gleamed with dazzle and glamour. Dana Brown splendidly reminds us of how much fun and serendipitous it all was.”—Buzz Bissinger, New York Times bestselling author of Friday Night Lights