{"id":86608,"date":"2015-06-11T16:21:55","date_gmt":"2015-06-11T20:21:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=86608"},"modified":"2015-06-11T16:21:55","modified_gmt":"2015-06-11T20:21:55","slug":"party-of-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/11\/party-of-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Party of One"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1978746-2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Not long ago, I picked up a fifty-cent copy of Sally Quinn\u2019s The Party: A Guide to Adventurous Entertaining<\/em><\/a> from a street vendor. I was interested enough by the beltway gossip and tales of DC hostesses and the faint whiff of notoriety that still emanates from its pages almost twenty years later. I learned the term Philadelphia Rat Fuck<\/em>, thereafter referred to by the author as \u201ca P.R.F.\u201d And I do love an entertaining guide: say the words pink lightbulbs<\/em> and I\u2019m there. (I\u2019ve been slavishly conjuring their flattering glow since I first read the tip in a 1980s\u00a0copy of Sunset<\/em>.) But ultimately, what intrigued me most about the book were the previous owner\u2019s underlines.<\/p>\n

Any scholar will tell you marginalia are the true window of the soul\u2014or brain, at any rate. (Even if it\u2019s just a window into your own immaturity via passionate collegiate commentary on bell hooks.) Jottings, doodles, highlights: there\u2019s a reason between the lines<\/em> is a clich\u00e9. It\u2019s revealing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But whoever owned this copy of The Party<\/em> is an enigma wrapped in a question mark. She\u2014and I do think it\u2019s a she\u2014is an erratic underliner. Granted, some of her passages are straightforward enough:<\/p>\n

\u201cSpeaking of the cocktail hour, it should be forty-five minutes long.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor normal events, I don\u2019t think a note is ever necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are a confident host or hostess, people will relax and have a good time.\u201d<\/p>\n

And she starts off slow: for the first fifty pages or so, the pencil lines are infrequent, and when they do appear, they\u2019re always to draw attention to a practical tip.<\/p>\n

But then things take an odd turn. Here\u2019s what the reader underlined: \u201cThe question of whether or not to invite people who have been disgraced is always an issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

After this, the underlines become ubiquitous. At times they feel random.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year everyone got a fax and a phone call<\/u>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, at the last minute the White House announced that the President would be addressing the nation that evening<\/u>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, when the other guests arrived they were on fire because the O.J. Simpson jury was due to come back with the verdict on the civil trial.<\/u>\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though the celebration had been a great success, I felt like one of those pilots who go through a dogfight with the enemy, calmly shooting everyone out of the sky, and later have a major panic attack.<\/u>\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce the christening was over<\/u>, lunch was served to the guests.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey often entertain in the solarium<\/u>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first I thought his suit jacket was covered with dandruff and I was horrified<\/u>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPavarotti took one look at the table and exclaimed that he was on a special diet<\/u> and could not eat one single thing there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I see somebody who really has had too much to drink, I\u2019ll tell that person not to drive<\/u> and offer to call a cab.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve already discussed lighting in general<\/u>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cForget after-dinner liqueurs<\/u>.\u201d<\/p>\n

What was she up to? Was there a method to her madness? I tried in vain to find patterns, puzzling like an obsessive, convinced there was a coded message. Was she trying to analyze Quinn? Highlight gossip? Analyze style? There wasn\u2019t enough consistency to allow me to formulate a working theory, and some of the underlines seemed so emphatic, and so bizarre\u2014\u201cthe kimono sleeve of her jacket caught the flame<\/u>\u201d\u2014that they blew my previous theories all to hell. She keeps it up the entire book. It was frustrating and exhilarating, much like the Rosetta Stone.<\/p>\n

There are only two written annotations in this book. The first: \u201cP.R.F.\u2014see p. 42.\u201d Here\u2019s the other.<\/p>\n

\u201cUntil she died, a year ago, every time I saw Evangeline Bruce she would tell me that that party was the best she had ever been to<\/u>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Underneath is written, in pencil, \u201cThe gracious lie.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not long ago, I picked up a fifty-cent copy of Sally Quinn\u2019s The Party: A Guide to Adventurous Entertaining from a street vendor. I was interested enough by the beltway gossip and tales of DC hostesses and the faint whiff of notoriety that still emanates from its pages almost twenty years later. I learned the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[18427,18423,18422,18426,18425,18424,8207],"class_list":["post-86608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-philadelphia-rat-fuck","tag-sally-quinn","tag-secondhand-books","tag-the-party","tag-underlines","tag-underlining","tag-used-books"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow Not to Underline a Book<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The underlined passages in a used book send Sadie Stein into an unsolvable mystery.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/11\/party-of-one\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Party of One by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"June 11, 2015 \u2013 Not long ago, I picked up a fifty-cent copy of Sally Quinn\u2019s The Party: A Guide to Adventurous Entertaining from a street vendor. 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