A portrait of the artist in 1986 finds him at Woods Gramercy, an upscale restaurant in what the New York Times is calling “the year of the column in restaurant decoration,” and it’s just about the only restaurant right now that’s trying to make a name for itself with vegetables, of all things; in fact the “Steamed Vegetables” is among the most talked-about dishes on its menu and the most affordable (always a good sign), and what we find here, in contrast to the peach-colored walls, striped with steel-blue columns, are what Susan Squires of the Los Angeles Times describes as “the tables of Manhattan’s publishing power lunchers,” all of whom are “spaced discreetly apart” but if we arrange the dolly shot so that it wends a path, and dips down here and there over shoulders, you’ll hear them talking about things like “the veracity of Thomas Pynchon’s vision of Los Angeles,” or whether it’s smarter to advertise a new hardcover by optimizing radio spots versus “store windows,” and finally we settle on a profile shot, paces back, of the writer himself — somehow both man-sized and boylike — sitting aside from the publishing people in a ladder-back chair, chain-smoking, gulping three mimosas in a row. Freshly 21. “Absolute Beginners” just dropped and it’s wafting in from different directions and 40 years later it’ll still be his favorite Bowie single.
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