The COASTER Correspondence

MORE OF THE VERY EXPENSIV WORDS

Edwin John Coaster

VANITY FAIR

DOUGLAS STUMPF

DEPUTY EDITOR

September 19, 2007

Graydon:

Expect a note from a cheesed-off Ed Coaster soon. Today I had one of my writers' lunches at Tamarind: me, Sebastian Junger, Bryan Burrough, Michael Wolff, and Ed. The trouble started when Sebastian made a crack about how he hates it when people appropriate his title The Perfect Storm for frivolous gossip stories-e.g., "If ex-Timberlake flames Jessica Bid and Cameron Diaz come face-to-face at the V.M.A.'s, it'll be a perfect storm!" Then Bryan mentioned how hack sportswriters always abuse the phrase "barbarians at the gate." Then Wolffjoked about clueless people who think that the words "burn rate" have something to do with dieting.

And then Ed chimed in that he hates it when anyone uses the word "anyhoo," because he invented it. "Anyhoo" -as in, the not-so-funny variant of "anyhow" or "anyway." The rest of us just broke out laughing, and Michael said, "Oh, Ed, you're so full of shit!" All of a sudden, Ed got beet red, called Wolff a "bald Jew c-t," and told us he invented the word for sure at Elaine's one night. Then he stormed out of the restaurant, saying he was going to get us all fired. You've been warned!

Edwin Coaster

9/20/07

Graydon:

I had the displeasure of breaking bread with your esteemed Herr Schtumpf and his band of merry men—respectively, Mr. Perfect Storm thinks-he's-a-hunk but wouldn't even cut it as a JC Penney Sunday-circular underwear model, that blubberbuss business correspondent, and that unspeakable, slap-headed little Rupert Murdoch bum-kisser. They don't believe that I invented the word “anyhoo.” I sure as hell did. I said it for the first time by accident in 1966 at Elaine's with Lewis Lapham and A. E. Hotchner present, and with Elaine herself within earshot. I was tipsy, and the bourbon convoluted my “-how” into a “-hoo.” It brought down the fuckin' house, my friend. Lapham said, “You've got to use that in a book,” and I did, in my 1967 novel, “Freakout on Sunburst Ave.,” as the defining tic of Silas Friedkin, the self-satisfied dermatologist based on Sandy Rivkin, the optometrist who stole my second wife.

Let's put Schtumpf and his toadies in their place. Get one of your fact-checkers to fact-check the hell out of this and prove me right—and put Schtumpf and co. out of work.

From: Schneidel, Zack <Zachary_Schneidel@condenast.com>

To: Carter, Graydon c<anadascoolest@vf.com>

Cc:

Subject: anyhoo

Sent: Wed 9/26/2007 5:45 AM

Dear Graydon:

Hi, my name's Zack Schneidel and I work in the research dept. Pursuant to the issue of Ed Coaster and the word “anyhoo,” I called Lewis Lapham, who said he definitely remembers the incident, but thinks that *he* might have said “anyhoo” and then encouraged Ed to use it. A. E. Hotchner more or less corroborated Ed's version, though he thinks it came out more like “any-WOO.”

I also called Elaine Kaufman, but when I identified myself as being from V.F., she said, “Tell your boss he don't know how to run a restaurant,” and hung up on me. Calling her back a day later, this time using the voice of an inquisitive Southern belle studying at N.Y.U. (I do a nighttime drag show at the bar Lips), I asked Kaufman about the incident, and she said that, to the best of her memory, *George Plimpton* was the one who first said “anyhoo.”

Anyhoo, :) it's undoubtedly true that Ed uses the word in question copiously throughout “Freakout on Sunburst Ave.” (45 times by my count). I must note, however, that the metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell, in one of his incomplete “Mower” poems from the 17th century, used the couplet “The ox-eye daisies pitch their woo / To bees, but not I, anyhoo . . . ”

Hey, because I did this, can you maybe take me off the freelance rolls and promote me to staff?

Zack

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