The Lunch Report: A Writer's Lunch

I am not a writer, just a lawyer. But today I had the honor to lunch with a writer imported to NYC for a few days from NOLA. NOLA is short for New Orleans, Louisiana for those who've never hung out "in the Quarter." I can barely describe how different this lunch was from my daily lunch at the office, which is typically spent in the company of crisp, clean and symmetrically stacked documents and people.

Today’s lunch consisted of:

*Some Old Fashioneds (the tricky thing about daytime cocktails—at least for me—is that after half a glass, they defy quantification)

*Several bites of the writer’s no-egg-yolk omelet. What a joy to find a lunch companion who isn't conscious of the conventional boundaries that imprison our daily lives—such as the borders of one's own plate.

*Cost: I don't recall who paid so, in my financially disturbed mind, that means the lunch was free, or at least well in compliance with my $3 lunch limit.

The food was not remarkable but the "focus" or lack thereof left an extraordinary aftertaste. A real writer (or, as I idolize them) lives (and eats) to create dialogue and consume a novel thought for lunch. A real writer is daring enough to eat up a new experience without fear that it may take months to properly digest it and may ultimately defy articulate description.

To be clear, I am aware that writers are in no way a uniform "type" or "breed" who practice a single lunch style or technique. It would be just as easy to lunch with a writer whose anxiety level rivals that of a bond trader than it would be to lunch with a writer who exudes Rastafarian-levels of relaxation. But I got lucky. The writer with whom I lunched conformed to all of the stereotypes of writers we hold dear: charismatic; dissolute; eccentric; intellectual; irreverent; passionate; sensitive; and original. The contrast with my lawyerly lunches was delicious..

Trained and compensated to anticipate and analyze clients’ risks 24/7, the lawyer is at times overpowered by his or her own analytical and risk averse tendencies. They seep into almost every facet of life, inside and outside the office, sometimes leading to a dizzying inward spiral of overanalysis and anxiety.* This must be why lawyers and other professionals have historically been fairly strong supporters of writers and artists—not only does their work inspire us in ways that are refreshingly different from our own discipline, but we really want to BE them.

I look at “them”—those hopelessly creative types who can’t help but spew out original phrases on a daily basis—with great envy. Writers seem liberated from schedule and concern—they eat, drink, write and sleep whenever. They spend as much time as they choose (it’s not like they’re billing by the hour) fondling words, toying with life changing ideas and exploring new people like spelunkers. Very few meetings and no dress code (in fact, clothing optional). Nirvana. I would so like to trade some of my “estoppels,” habeas corpus (corpii?)” and “theretos” for some “bandersnatch,” “contumely,” “peroration” and other words I never get to use at the office.

But instead, I content myself, for now, by being a financial provider of sorts (of increasingly modest sorts) for those brave enough to trade the illusion of financial security for creative latitude. Yes, financial providers and creative types seem to complement each other terribly well.

In fact, so well do we complement each other that the financial provider-artist pairing is considered indispensable to the success of any NYC liberal’s dinner party (assuming, of course, a lesbian is already present). Only the pairing of a Goldman Sachs partner, the uber-financial-provider-figure, and his kindergarten school teacher wife (before she stopped working, obviously), the gold standard for the maternal-nurturing-figure, ranks higher than the lawyer-artist pairing.

In these uncertain times, though, the classic symbiotic relationship between artists and their providers is strained. Traditional providers, much like some banks, are failing to provide. They may still look to the arts for inspiration, but the outflow from their wallets has not been particularly inspired, at least where the arts are concerned.**

In a great twist of financial irony, some of society’s traditional providers—lawyers and bankers (and their hedge fund managing cousins)—are now struggling with the financial uncertainties that many writers have wrestled with, yet taken for granted as an occupational hazard, for ages.

What a great character-building exercise awaits us as financial uncertainty sharpens our resolve to design better laws, build better banks and stabilize our economy so we can continue to provide. And, gosh, if none of that works and I still lose my job and can’t pay my rent, maybe the writer from NOLA will let me squat at his place and drink Old Fashioneds with him at lunch? Here’s hoping . . .

Penelope Frost

Notes
*To be fair to lawyers, there is tremendous social and intellectual creativity involved in the lawyering process as we attempt to make parties with widely disparate interests reach agreement. Unfortunately, not a single merger agreement—not even from legendary mergers such as Time Warner-AOL or RJR-Nabisco—has made it on to the NYTimes best sellers’ list. We humbly leave the glory to the writers and artists.

**Charitable donations generally fell by almost 6% in 2008 alone, the sharpest drop in 53 years, with the arts suffering a decline of between 9 and 10%. The Chronicle of Philanthropy, June 9, 2009.