Vanity Fair

It is grand to have illusions, until you find out they're illusions. That disheartening lesson comes in the November Vanity Fair, in Robert Sam Anson's report on Seymour Hersh's coming book on the Kennedys.Hersh burst into prominence in the late '60s when he revealed the massacre at My Lai, and it was only the first in an explosion of exposes: the secret bombing of North Vietnam, then of Cambodia; domestic spying by the CIA; the wiretapping of Kissinger's aides.Sy Hersh seemed to be someone to emulate.

I wish I were wise enough to be sure that there are lessons to be learned from the recorded lives of the distinguished. Given the vastness of the biographical library and the indomitable genius of humankind for perpetuating stupidities, it's a hard case to make.Still, ever hopeful about our species' capacity to learn, I commend ""Laughter's Gentle Soul: The Life of Robert Benchley," by Billy Altman (Norton. 382 pages. $30.) Surprisngly, there is an immediacy about it.Robert Charles Benchley was prolific and complex.

The massive Howard Stern media blitz is over, leaving in its wake remnant thoughts about what New Yorker writer David Remnick cleverly calls "over-the-counter counterculture," or the mainstreaming of edginess. Does a pop phenomenon -- Howard Stern, alternative rock, Courtney Love, the nodding-out-on-heroin look, "independent" movie-making -- remain edgy once it has been mass-packaged and presold? And if a healthy, lip-jobbed Courtney Love is making Oscar presentations, and Howard Stern has topped the box-office list, who will become the new rebels?

Technically, John Wayne was a terrible actor, with all the emotional range of a telephone pole. Yet he continues to have a strong hold on the American imagination. In the New York Review of Books, Garry Wills explains why.Wills draws a connection between our love for Wayne and our hatred of cities. In America, unlike ancient civilizations, there is no "sacred city" that is central to the nation's identity. In fact, in our art, our cinema and our literature, cities are unholy places, snares for the innocent and unwary.

For its January issue, Vanity Fair bows to coolness and the "PF" crowd by putting smoking "Pulp Fiction" star Uma Thurman and her "disturbing beauty" on the cover. So what if the 25-year-old actress has remarkably little to say? Her comeback gig with John Travolta and last year's Oscar nomination poem by Dave Letterman ("Uma, Oprah, Oprah, Uma") have supplied her with enough cover cred for at least another year.Uma's the Queen of Quentinville, and Quentin Tarantino does still rule. Just ask Mr. Travolta, who pronounces in an interview in the year-end issue of Rolling Stone, "If there's a new feeling in Hollywood, it's because Quentin was the first person in a while to feel like we could treat an audience with intelligence.

What fun to find Vanity Fair refraining from its usual star worship. The gusher runs dry for Ralph Fiennes, the pale British actor who played such a convincing Nazi sadist in "Schindler's List." During his two-hour interview in the November issue, Mr. Fiennes is a model of chilly reserve: "Not that one expected a teddy bear," writes Leslie Bennetts. "Maybe an infinitesimal bit of charm, perhaps -- would that be too much to ask?" Indeed, Mr. Fiennes declines eye contact with the reporter, who is left to theorize about the murky depths lurking beneath the 32-year-old actor's "aristocratic exterior," depths that have electrified his performances -- in "Hamlet" onstage, in Robert Redford's "Quiz Show," in the futuristic "Strange Days."

I use a computer mostly, some long-hand, but then I transfer it immediately and I carry a notebook with me at all times, even when shaving. I find that if I have a thought it won't be the same if I don't get it down right away.I have four computers. Two desktops, one in New York, one in my Connecticut house and 2 laps in California. Word Perfect version 5 is on all of them, then I just have to choose between a stiff and a floppy.And the modem ... I don't even know. I can't figure out how to use it. Vanity Fair, they know how dumb I am, they send someone over to do that stuff.

LOS ANGELES -- It is dinner time in West Hollywood, and Dominick Dunne has just been seated at a table, the best table, naturally, in Mortons, a fashionable restaurant where the rich and famous gather to see and be seen.people, it seems, want to chat with Dominick Dunne, the ex-Hollywood producer turned novelist and magazine writer. Or to be more precise, they want to get their daily fix of the addiction that's got all of Los Angeles in its grip: the O. J. Simpson trial.To get a handle on just how deep this obsession with the O. J. trial runs, one could start right here, at Mortons, in the company of Dominick Dunne, one of a handful of writers with a permanent seat in the courtroomThroughout the evening, in a steady stream, deeply tanned men and glamorous women carrying $2,000 Hermes pocketbooks stop by his table to ask: What's happened to Marcia Clark?

Vanity Fair has joined the star-of-the-month club. Like Rolling Stone and other publications surrendering to the time-lapse 1990s, VF is now willing to lend its cover to ephemeral celebrities like Courtney Love, Keanu Reeves, Brad Pitt and Nicole Kidman. It no longer caters solely to the superstar set. For the September issue, Sandra Bullock is flashing her crocodile smile in the front window -- an appropriate reaction to being dubbed "Golden Girl" and "America's Sweetheart" after only three ordinary movies, "Speed," "While You Were Sleeping" and "The Net."

SO MUCH for Rupert Murdoch's loyalty to Newt Gingrich.When Gail Sheehy's profile of the Speaker surfaced in Vanity Fair last week, no one in American journalism did more to promote it than Murdoch -- devoting the front page of the New York Post, where he holds the title editor-in-chief, to the headline "Who's a Newty Boy?" along with the teaser "Aide: He made whoopee on an office desk." And Murdoch did this even as Gingrich was touring the country hawking "To Renew America" for his own (as well as Newty Boy's)