It is probably safe to say that until the early evening of June 14, readers of serious newspapers and intellectual journals such as this one were unlikely to come across references to Vasily Grossman and 3D dog posters, George Balanchine and plastic women’s handbags, Yasujiro Ozu, macramé owls, Lauren Bacall, and Miss Piggy’s Guide to Life in a single article. But late that afternoon the eminent Knopf and New Yorker editor Robert Gottlieb died, at the age of ninety-two, and within an hour obituaries and tributes began appearing online—none of which, as far as I could tell, was able to resist an at least en passant nod to the dizzying oscillation between high refinement and utter kitsch that was the hallmark of his taste.
