That was when I first observed a phenomenon I now call the "New York Slide": you offer your words to try to communicate and connect with someone, but your words just hit a brick wall the person has erected to ward off human contact- the words slide down it and roll away.
Why Dont You?' wasn't totally absurd to me," Diana said later. "Of course, the columns had a certain absurdity that tickled people -- just to think that anyone would thin of writing anything so absurd. But it wasn't even writing. To me writing--Edith Wharton, Henry James...Proust, for God's sake...is a think of beauty and sustainment. 'Why Don't You?' was a think of fashion and fantasy, on the wing...It wasn't writing, it was just ideas. It was me, insistent on people using their imaginations, insisting on a certain idea of luxury.