Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2012 i Vanity Fair

ONLINE FEATURES COMRADES-IN-ARMS BY MASHA GESSEN. The recent legal clash between oligarchs Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky laid bare the inner workings of Russian corruption. Read the story of the two business partners turned bitter enemies. PHOTOGRAPHS GATHERING MOSS Kate Moss has been stirring up controversy in the fashion world since she began modeling nearly 25 years ago. See rare images of the photogenic rebel rouser from a forthcoming book. DEVIL REY Since her debut album dropped a year ago, Lana Del Rey has been a polarizing figure in the music world. See exclusive backstage images from her torrid tour. Photographs by Chuck Grant. HIGH SOCIETY The first chapter of Truman Capote’s unfinished novel, Answered Prayers, appeared in Esquire in 1975, skewering prominent New York socialites. See a slide show…

1 Truman Capote Truman Capote took New York by storm when, at 23, he published his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms. His literary triumphs continued with Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood. Now “Yachts and Things” (page 208)—a chapter fragment likely meant for his unfinished novel, Answered Prayers—has reappeared. “This recently discovered vignette is a literary gem for us all to cherish,” says the author’s literary executor, Alan Schwartz. 2 Sam Kashner As contributing editor Sam Kashner chronicles in “Capote’s Swan Dive” (page 200), Truman Capote’s uphill battle with Answered Prayers paralleled the author’s slide down New York’s social ladder. “After In Cold Blood, I think he longed for another great literary moment. And what better subject than the gods and goddesses he knew,” says Kashner. “Truman, like…

Even outside the arenas of national politics, the economy, and our rapidly thawing, inhospitable Earth, this fall was a tumultuous one, perhaps for no one more than the employees of Condé Nast, VF.com’s (much-beloved, respected, and celebrated!) parent company. The tumult of which we speak was both electronic and existential in nature. One autumn afternoon, for reasons that to this day remain shrouded in mystery, the suffixes of hundreds of company e-mail addresses—usually @condenast.com—morphed to @golfforwomen.com. VF.com staffers were numbered among the victims. Teen Vogue fashion assistant and self-described “lover of sparkles and glitter” Stephanie Pernas was among the first to notice the new, protean nature of our digital avatars. “LOL at the tech glitch that has made all of our email addresses Golf For Women email addresses instead of…

LENA DUNHAM SPEAKS WITH PAUL RYAN RYAN: Lena, I wanted to reach out and dialogue because, as different as we seem, we are quite alike: young Americans who made something of ourselves without the help of Uncle Sam. You are not only a funny gal but an awesome job creator. That HBO show? You built that, Lena Dunham! DUNHAM: Wow, thanks! Is it weird if I say you totally remind me of this lacrosse player I crushed on at Oberlin? RYAN: No problem! Just tell me the guy was good-looking. DUNHAM: Was, yes. They found him and my linguistics professor hanging from the rafters of Heisman Field House. Gay suicide pact. RYAN: Er, be that as it may, Lena, I think that an entrepreneur like you could teach the folks…

I’ve always wanted to play from an earthy, organic, toesplanted-in-the-soil place,” says guitarist Gary Clark Jr., who is singlehandedly taking the blues into the future. Influenced by rock, soul, and hip-hop as much as by the Mississippi Delta blues, Clark, 28, started performing at age 14 in clubs in his native Austin, Texas. Alicia Keys has compared him to Jimi Hendrix and Marvin Gaye. Eric Clapton invited him to play at his 2010 Crossroads concert. Last February, Clark performed at the White House with B. B. King, Mick Jagger, Jeff Beck, and Buddy Guy for President Obama. And Jay-Z booked him for the recent two-day Made in America festival. Now, with the release of his first full-length album, Blak and Blu, Clark talks to Lisa Robinson about his influences, guitars,…

FUTURE MIDDLE MANAGER at TIME WARNER CABLE FUTURE CHAIRMAN and C.E.O. of APPLE Under no circumstances are you to cut this out and stick it on the fridge door. Or put it in the file marked “Kids’ Stuff.” There’s nothing here for you. Nothing to do, nothing to act on. No consciousness-raising or attitude-flipping. No strategies or slogans. There is no help. And absolutely no solace. Because, really, what the world doesn’t need now is any more advice on raising children. We’re done with the finger wagging and the head patting. We’ve tried everything and we’ve read everything. We’ve asked, tweeted, blogged, prayed, and read it all. We’ve sat up at night and commiserated with other parents when we should have been having sex or at least paying off the…

The central sacrament of 19th-century American politics was the rousing Independence Day oration. For our time, it’s the direct-to-camera televised plea by a politician in a bind. He has gotten into trouble—it’s always “he”—because of the leaked bank rec ords, or the surveillance video gone viral, or the sexual partner who has decided to talk. As long as he thinks he might beat the rap, he takes the tone of outraged innocence. Once he knows he’s been caught, he throws himself on the mercy of an understanding public. Sometimes the ritual leads to a second act in politics (Bill Clinton, Barney Frank) and sometimes not (John Edwards, Larry Craig). All are following a trail blazed 60 years ago by Richard Nixon— the subject of a new play, Checkers, by Douglas…

Behind Downton Abbey, the British series enthralling viewers on both sides of the Atlantic, is the world as imagined by Julian Fellowes: wistful, sharp-eyed outsider and dyed-in-the-wool aristocratic observer. Visiting the show’s creator—as well as its “belowstairs” set and its upstairs, Highclere Castle—DAVID KAMP learns how Fellowes found his calling, why there’s been a Downton Abbey backlash in the U.K., and where the Crawleys and company are (or aren’t) headed in Season Three To go “belowstairs” at Downton Abbey, one doesn’t actually descend any stairs, but, rather, enters into a drafty, warehouse-like building at Ealing Studios, in West London. This is where many of the interior scenes for Downton Abbey, the TV show, are filmed. On an afternoon last spring, the set in use was the servants’ hall. Gathered at…

Not one of New York’s great cultural institutions looks today the way it did half a century ago. Since the 1970s the Metropolitan Museum has been pushing its galleries into Central Park with new glass façades; the Museum of Modern Art seems in a state of constant construction, with two towers added to West 53rd Street and another on tap; the Morgan Library gave itself a new front door into a glass atrium; and Lincoln Center has just finished a thorough makeover and expansion. Every one of these transformations has come in the name of accommodating crowds that seem to grow ever bigger, and while most of these new buildings and additions are visually spectacular, each of these institutions has been accused at one time or another, sometimes justifiably, of…

It’s been a year and a half since the singer Lana Del Rey hatched fully formed from the pop incubator, like a “gangsta Nancy Sinatra,” as she once put it. Her music evokes the ghostlier, echo-drenched aspects of longing and heartbreak; stylistically, her pres entation of retro-noir imagery defies absolute interpretation. Even before the January 2012 launch of her major-label debut album, Born to Die—being re-released this month with eight new songs as “The Paradise Edition” and including the Rick Rubin–produced single “Ride”—critics set about their analysis of her persona. “Part true, part false,” came the judgment, but no mere pre-packaged pop confection. “I’ve been doing what I do for a long time,” Del Rey, née Lizzy Grant, says. “I’ve had a life. I don’t need to create a person…

What is your idea of perfect happiness? Being with my best friend, who’s a girl. Which historical figure do you most identify with? Nathan Bedford Forrest. Which living person do you most admire? Peyton Manning. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? None. What is the trait you most deplore in others? Guys who use the word “snot.” What is your favorite journey? Gathering scenes in my head for a book. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? They all can come in handy. What do you dislike most about your appearance? I used to be kinda fat. Which words or phrases do you most overuse? “Nuts.” What is your greatest regret? Selling a book to a film producer who doesn’t get it. What or who is…

When Season Three of Downton Abbey begins airing on PBS, next month, it will do so at the absolute peak of its fevered popularity. In its brief life, the series has become a veritable institution for its American fans. And assuming that there will not be a Romney victory in November, and that federal funding for public television (and for Big Bird!) will remain in place, one can assume that Downton Abbey’s fan base will only increase. It’s safe to say that the Crawleys and their downstairs staff are far better known than the man who created them all—the screenwriter and novelist Julian Fellowes. As captured by David Kamp in “The Most Happy Fellowes,” on page 170, he emerges as the sort of Pickwickian figure you might encounter poking around…

AIR FORCE CHUM President Barack Obama meets with Michael Lewis during a flight from Cartagena, Colombia, to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. Michael Lewis is one of my favorite authors. First, he writes a lead-in that grabs your heartstrings and holds on, clear to the end. I know that Lewis did not invent the missing-inaction navigator Tyler Stark [“Obama’s Way,” October], but what a gem he found in that tale. Stark’s dilemma is skillfully juxtaposed against Obama’s ingrained need to make decisions that feel right to him. Every president must address the issues that have come up the pike and landed on his desk. Obama is a conciliator who understands the significance of nuance because he’s lived an ambivalent existence his entire life. He thinks about how his decisions will impact…

1 THE SOCIAL NET WORTH For one brief shining moment, on May 18, when Facebook finally went public after months of hype, it was 1999 all over again. A round of Red Bull and Cap’n Crunch for everyone! Alas, the “I.P.O. of the century” turned out to be more Pets.com than Google, or even LinkedIn. Mark Zuckerberg now has to scrunch into his hoodie and glare sullenly at his sneakers whenever he visits Herb Allen’s. 2 I AM CURIOUS (RED) In August, the perennially underfunded, shuttle-less NASA managed to land a brave little rover named Curiosity (pronounced, in Martian, “Hilarious Old Garbage”) on the Red Planet, where the easily anthropomorphized, Wall-Eesque vehicle is hunting for evidence of microbial life. (No one is expecting an answer as to why Disney spent…

Sir Ian McKellen, whose aeonian wizard, Gandalf, in the Tolkien movies has made him globally famous—The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will be released this month—met me for lunch at Lucques, the award-winning restaurant in West Hollywood, Los Angeles. It so happens that his contemporary Sir Michael Gambon (the only other actor in theater who can stand with McKellen on equal terms with Sir Laurence Olivier) also plays a famous wizard, in Harry Potter. “I often get mistaken for Dumbledore,” McKellen mentioned amusingly. “One wizard is very much like another.” When the two met backstage recently, McKellen asked Gambon if he was ever mistaken for Gandalf. “All the time!” he replied. “That’s good,” said McKellen. “And what do you do?” “Oh,” Gambon told him, “I just sign your name!” Sir Ian…

A book of new stories from Alice Munro is always cause for excitement (especially since her rumored retirement in 2006), yet Dear Life (Knopf ) is truly thrilling, as Munro, despite having already published most of these, has revised many—not only proving the adage that, for the writer, “stories are never done, only abandoned,” but giving readers a window into the creative process of an author revered as “our Chekhov.” The legend of two young superfans’ seven-year odyssey remaking Raiders of the Lost Ark lives in Alan Eisenstock’s colossally cool Raiders! (Thomas Dunne). A recently widowed, adulterous wife copes with her grief and guilt through taxidermy in Lydia Millet’s Magnificence (Norton). T Cooper bravely and often hilariously shares his life as a transgender family man in Real Man Adventures (McSweeney’s).…

Not since French president Nicolas Sarkozy and supermodel and former Mick Jagger girlfriend Carla Bruni announced their relationship at Euro Disney had the French witnessed something so alarming involving the occupants of the Palais de l’Élysée, home and office of the president of France. On June 12, just one month after François Hollande had been installed as the new president of France (succeeding Sarkozy), his stunning magazine-writer girlfriend, Valérie Trierweiler, took to her Twitter account in a towering rage against Ségolène Royal, Hollande’s former partner and the mother of his four children. The words of the tweet sounded innocuous— a message of support for Royal’s opponent in a legislative race—but the meaning was clear. Something was seriously dysfunctional in what Hollande had promised would be Boring Land. Hollande, after all,…

One morning in August, I flew from London to St. Tropez to spend a few days interviewing the most beautiful woman in the world. A tough assignment, given that she doesn’t give interviews. At least she hardly ever has, and certainly not about her personal life. It’s nearly 25 years since Kate Moss got her first modeling job, at 14, but this year she agreed, in principle, to talk to Vanity Fair. I imagined she would be guarded. Her silence came partly from the need not to lay bait for the tabloids, for which she provided a new blood sport in the U.K. But also, she warned me, she’s not interested in being a personnage: “I just live my life, and then I work. There’s a difference between me and…

Any words I might scribble about the funniest men to grace theaters and concert halls today could only fizzle like a damp squib. Violinist Aleksey Igudesman met pianist Hyung-ki Joo at the prestigious Yehudi Menuhin School, in England, when they were just 12 years old. It was hatred at first sight, and Leningrad-born Igudesman would, for no good reason, bully, hit, and spit at Joo, if only possibly because Aleksey felt superior to the British-born Korean. That initial mutual dislike very soon morphed into mutual admiration and respect, and so was born a comedy duo that takes the classics—Bach, Brahms, Mozart, and company—scatters their notes like confetti, and makes sense of them. Igudesman and Joo are, in their own right, extremely talented concert artistes who, when they get together, produce…

When we first met Olivia Munn, at Comic-Con in San Diego, in whose convention halls the fanboys bow down to her as queen, she was still smarting about a scolding article on the feminist Web site Jezebel that accused Comedy Central’s Daily Show of hiring her as a female correspondent largely because of her rocking bod and racy mouth. Such glossy attributes detracted and distracted from the high journalistic standards of fake news set by Jon Stewart and his jest squad. Although the Jezebel critique was more about the male culture of The Daily Show than about Munn’s starlet résumé (G4’s Attack of the Show!; the best-selling Suck It, Wonder Woman!; and the cover of Playboy), it made her sound like a beneficiary of affirmative-action babe-dom. No one puts up…

“Have you seen Esquire?! Call me as soon as you’re finished,” New York society doyenne Babe Paley asked her friend Slim Keith over the telephone when the November 1975 issue hit the stands. Keith, then living at the Pierre hotel, sent the maid downstairs for a copy. “I read it, and I was absolutely horrified,” she later confided to the writer George Plimpton. “The story about the sheets, the story about Ann Woodward… There was no question in anybody’s mind who it was.” The story they were reading in Esquire was “La Côte Basque 1965,” but it wasn’t so much a story as an atomic bomb that Truman Capote built all by himself in his U.N. Plaza apartment and at his beach house in Sagaponack, Long Island. It was the…

Let it not be said that we Americans aren’t Out There, Living Life, Testing Boundaries, and, in short, carpe-diem-ing like nobody’s business. Not for us the safe and familiar. Most of us—51 percent!—have no interest in working a mere 100 yards from where we live; even within the quotidian context of the daily commute, we demand a wider range of experience. We recognize, in the royal family, kindred free spirits: when they get photographed without their clothes on, we don’t blame them but rather (a) the magazines that run the photos or (b) the public, which seems to want to look at them. Intellectually, we have shed the narrow thinking of earlier eras: not only do we know what Kwanzaa is but we would choose Denzel Washington to portray Jesus…

The Mailbag has returned to an overflowing pile of reaction to Michael Lewis’s “Obama’s Way.” Well, mostly about one of the photos. A selection: “I didn’t realize he had so many legs!” . . . “I’m counting eight feet” . . . “How many feet in how many hightops can one man have regardless of his power and glory?” . . . “quite obviously at least five feet” . . . “no fewer than seven feet and a couple of extra legs” . . . “a mystery leg wearing a black high-top with white laces” . . . “What about the extra blue-clad foot?” . . . “immense green shoes with no player attached.” One deeply suspicious reader, speaking for deeply suspicious readers everywhere, asks, “Was it Photoshopped to death?”…

JESSICA BROWN FINDLAY AGE: 23. PROVENANCE: Cookham, Berkshire, England. COUNTRY GIRL: Brown Findlay spent her childhood in the small English village. “I grew up there, as did my mum. My nan and granddad are around the corner. It’s a very familiar place and incredibly dear to my heart. It’s sort of quiet, but wonderfully so.“ EN POINTE: “Growing up, I was completely in love and infatuated with ballet. Ballet was my life completely.” After three ankle operations, she was forced to leave it behind and ended up at university in London, where she discovered the stage. “Acting was the element from ballet that I actually loved and missed the most." LADY LUCK: Almost immediately after shooting her first major role, in Albatross, Brown Findlay landed the role of the youngest…

UP IN SMOKE Leonardo DiCaprio on the set of Django Unchained, the story of a slave turned bounty hunter, played by Jamie Foxx, who, with the help of his mentor (Christoph Waltz), sets out to rescue his wife (Kerry Washington) from a violent Mississippi plantation owner (DiCaprio). The Quentin Tarantino–directed film, shot in New Orleans, opens December 25. HA President, a Picnic, and a Peccadillo yde Park on Hudson recounts the fraught weekend in June 1939 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Bill Murray) and First Lady Eleanor (Olivia Williams) entertained George VI—“Bertie”—and Queen Elizabeth (snootily played by Samuel West and Olivia Colman) at their Hyde Park retreat. The Windsors are calling to elicit White House support in the looming war, and much depends on whether Bertie will show appreciation for…

The winner of six Grammy Awards—in addition to numerous other accolades—22-year-old songbird Taylor Swift won the heart of America with her soulful ballads and youthful lyrics. Her fourth studio album, Red, is out now. Herewith, her favorite things … BEAUTY PRODUCTS Lipstick CoverGirl LipPerfection in Hot. Mascara CoverGirl LashBlast Volume Mascara in Very Black. Shampoo Kérastase Soleil. Moisturizer Kate Somervi l le Nourish Daily. Hair products L’Oréal Elnet t hair spray, lots of bobby pins. Perfume Wonderstruck Enchanted. Toothpaste Crest Complete with Scope. Nail-polish color Blue—but i t changes wi th the season. Who cuts your hair My hairstylist, Jemma Muradian. CLOTHES Jeans J Brand, Goldsign, H&M cigaret te pants. Underwear Victoria’s Secret. Sneakers My red Keds. Watch An antique watch my brother, Aust in, bought me at a thrif…

I. The Farm The word “foreign” in the name French Foreign Legion does not refer to faraway battlegrounds. It refers to the Legion itself, which is a branch of the French Army commanded by French officers but built of volunteers from around the world. Last summer I came upon 20 of them on a grassy knoll on a farm in France near the Pyrenees. They were new recruits sitting back-to-back on two rows of steel chairs. They wore camouflage fatigues and face paint, and held French assault rifles. The chairs were meant to represent the benches in a helicopter flying into action—say, somewhere in Africa in the next few years to come. Two recruits who had been injured while running sat facing forward holding crutches. They were the pilots. Their…

BECAUSE his masterly portrait of Picasso—in three volumes, with one still to come—brings to life the colossus at the center of 20th-century art. BECAUSE, at 88 years of age, he continues work on the biography while curating shows of Picasso’s art for the Gagosian Gallery that are erudite, playful, and without the usual deathly museum pall. BECAUSE he always has time for friends, including much younger friends—among them a gang of young Guinnesses—and BECAUSE he was close to Picasso, Francis Bacon, and Lucian Freud. BECAUSE he has written for this magazine for 25 years and BECAUSE, as a writer, he loves to prick the bubbles of pomp, pretense, and convention that constantly arise in the art world. BECAUSE he knows where all the bodies are buried (and might, with a…

Last February, I paddled out onto the still waters of Inya Lake, in Rangoon, Burma’s sleepy former capital. Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s political heroine and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, lives along the shore, as do several of her former tormentors. She spent 15 years here under house arrest, and I was seeking some sense of proximity. I could hardly have imagined that, a few months later, I would meet Suu Kyi in person, when she spoke at a forum in Washington, D.C., co-sponsored by the United States Institute of Peace and the Asia Society (where I am a trustee). Hillary Clinton and other notables packed the room. The ovation that greeted Suu Kyi lasted for more than five minutes. Aung San Suu Kyi’s heroism stems not from…

On the Tuesday of this year’s spring-fashion week in New York, magazine editors rushed across the stone expanse of the Lincoln Center plaza for the nine A.M. Tory Burch show. “It’s so early—she’s sadistic,” said one, clipclopping past the central fountain, shooting arabesques of water into the sky. In the eight years since Tory, 46, opened her first shop, in a tiny storefront in Manhattan’s Nolita neighborhood (with a “very, very advantageous lease,” according to a friend of Tory’s ex-husband Chris), she has become one of the biggest forces in American fashion today—no woman of her generation has created a more powerful brand. For this collection she sent models with a “prairie girl” look of embellished white crochet dresses, embroidered patchwork jackets, and beaded bags with rope handles and fringes³“Americanprep…

Nancy Schoenberger, a professor of English and director of creative writing at the College of William & Mary, and my co-author on Furious Love, first noticed a manuscript entitled “Yachts and Things,” with five typed pages and a last page written in Truman’s tiny, elegant hand. She and I had been trolling through his papers in the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library. Could Truman have been hiding parts of his infamous novel, Answered Prayers, right under our noses? “It’s vintage Truman,” Gerald Clarke, the author of the definitive Capote: A Biography, told V.F. “ ‘A new moon, skinny as a slice of lemon rind’³you can’t beat that. The title, ‘Yachts and Things,’ is indeed the title of one of the chapters he planned for Answered…