Just how do you put the finger on depression? Is it the long climb out of a two week cold, the bloody madness of work, watching too much news and dreaming about how nice it would be if both sides in the Middle East just wiped each other out and we'd be done with them all?

Books provide the escape; of that I'm sure. I'm finishing up the biography of Alva and Consuelo Vanderbilt and just picked up "Parties", by Carl Van Vechten again. I read it six years ago and was mesmerized by his portrait of New York society of the twenties engaged as it was with booze, sex, and jazz. Van Vechten was an important photographer of the times he lived in and he was especially interested in the American Blacks, their contribution in music and style, how America marginalized them while imitating them, and the general social decadence of the period. He was rich and well-placed to have The Eye on everything.

It's funny that most biographies of Van Vechten only mention his 1926 book, (unfortunately titled) "Nigger Heaven" (a reference to the top most seats in a theater's balconey). My dear friend, Kevin Woods (an antique dealer of the highest order in Boston), sent me "Parties" with a note, "YOU will enjoy this." It was a somewhat striking mirror of my own life, and I couldn't stop reading it. It is a study of a superficial, party life based on self-doubt, lies, corruption, murder, and booze. I was The Grafin, he said, the German countess who attended every orgy and sat in the background with a martini in hand, laughing uncontrollably at everything.

Van Vecten's collection of portraits of American blacks is invaluable and he definitely found what he liked in Harlem. I'm re-reading "Parties" now and it's picking me up again. There's nothing like a book about a shallow and tawdry existence to bring a smile to my face again.