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Jean Stein's Rolodex: The legendary editor's social genius

Benjamin Anastas remembers Jean Stein, the editor and publisher of Grand Street, and her particular social genius.

I can smell the cat-litter-ish odor of the tiled entryway, feel my nervousness as Scott and I climbed the stairs to an upper floor, remember the impostor syndrome kicking in as I tried to make small talk with the young editors, writers, and publicists from magazines I’d been scouring for clues on how to enter them since I was nineteen. I’m sure I found myself answering the question I often fielded at parties like this: “Who did you study with?” I recited the list of my work­shop leaders and watched for reactions: Frank Conroy (“ Stop-Time holds up…”), Deborah Eisenberg (“Isn’t she great?”), James Alan McPherson (a silent nod), Margot Livesey (“Oh, I adore Margaret Drabble”). I passed elderly women stooped over upright shopping carts and making their rounds with dogged persistence, doormen in uniform spraying the sidewalks clean with hoses, Hungarian bakeries whose trays of cherry cakes and strudel in the window belonged in a museum of the senses.

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