The Endurance of Martha Stewart’s 'Entertaining'

A few weeks ago, when I got an e-mail from Martha Stewart’s publicist, informing me that Stewart had agreed to a phone interview—“tomorrow at 11:15 for ten minutes,” he wrote, in response to my request for “as much time as she is willing to give”—my heart began to pound. I’d find it disorienting to talk to any very famous person, to bring the intimate, illusory relationship between celebrity and civilian rudely crashing down to earth. But this felt like something more.