Why Do You Hate Steve Martin?

I’m totally baffled by this brouhaha over the Steve Martin-Deborah Solomon discussion at the 92Y? According to the Times and others, it was a horrible nightmare and the audience is all actually getting refunds. But none of these accounts really make any sense or give any idea of what exactly was so horrible? Like this Mediaite account says: “Martin’s new novel is set inside the New York City art world, a world that he became familiar with through the years dating back to his time exploring galleries, museums, and libraries while on tour in different American cities. To Martin’s credit, he seems to know a good deal about the subject — he can even talk at length about the differences between the ‘uptown’ scene and the ‘downtown’ scene in New York.” Not to be a snob or anything, but this seems like it was written by Borat. Steve Martin has been a major, major collector for ages, and kind of a weird one, collecting in weird areas across modern and pre-modern art; and I mean, he dated Cindy Sherman!; and also, you live in New York City, are you yourself unable to talk about current differences between uptown and downtown art? Anyway, maybe don’t go to an event held by an art-world person in support of his book about the art world if hearing about it is apparently so bloody excruciating! (Update: This is a more helpful account, which puts the blame heavily on Solomon for largely rendering a book report.)