While it’s true that tickets are thoroughly sold out for this Sunday and Monday’s New Yorker Conference, the magazine is making several events available online. Stay tuned! Also, your punctuational, if not always punctual, reporter here will be attending at least some of the conference, so watch this space for commentary. I’ve found that live-blogging is not heart-healthy for at least this living thing, but I’ll play it by ear and by wi-fi signal.

If literary gossip is what you like—and you’re not getting it here, except about dead people—this will be fun: Richard Bradley’s sweetly juicy account of PEN’s black-tie event at the Natural History Museum. To paraphrase Lou Reed, who was there, and what did they wear? What did Calvin Trillin reveal about his grandchildren, what was up with moody Jay McInerney, and what did Bradley say to Henry Finder? As for Gore Vidal’s predictably saucy remark, Gawker has a slightly but notably different version. Ah, yes, these are the things we read instead of books, but only sometimes.