Writer’s Past Lives Converge at Signing

The Scene: Book party on Monday night at Neiman Marcus for first-time novelist and current bicoastalist (L.A./Washington, D.C.) Marylouise Oates. A former social columnist and reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Oates veers far from the social whirl in “Making Peace” (Warner Books) to write about the ‘60s anti-war movement. (In a former life, Oates was a press aide to Sen. Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential campaign and worked for the Vietnam Moratorium.)

Author tranquillity rating: Low. “Hi there. How are you? I’m a wreck,” said Oates as she greeted friends. (And that was only five minutes into the party.)

Author mobility factor: None. Oates sat behind a desk flanked by vases of pale pink baby roses and signed books steadily for two hours, rising only for an occasional hug.

Who was there: A laundry list of L.A. politicos, pretty people, power brokers and publicists (not to mention newspaper reporters), including, in no special order, three generations of Wasserman women--Edie, Lynne and Carol Leif; Neiman Marcus Beverly Hills’ John Martens and his wife, Bridget; former Chicago 7 defendant John Froines; Roz Wyman, Lucy Casado, Oates’ William Morris agents Norman Brokaw and Irene Webb; Mickey Kantor, City Atty. James Hahn, Andrea Van de Kamp, Jimmy and Annie Murphy, Jean Firstenberg, Wallis Annenberg, Michael Roberts, Joe Scott, Eleanor Smeal, Ron Smith, Peg Yorkin, Patti Skouras, Joe Cerrell, Judith Krantz, Doug Cramer, Rosemary Tomich, Beverly Sassoon, Bettina Chandler, Joan and Bill Luther, Joni and Clark Smith, Judy Henning, Hal and Roz Millstone, Joan Weiss, Gary Collins, Jane Nathanson, Julia Winston and Bill Press. Also there were Oates’ husband, political consultant Robert Shrum, and her son, Michael Palmer.

Quoted: “This is my entire life without Ralph Edwards--in the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s--passing by,” Oates said of the eclectic crowd.

Observed: “Marylou was a little eccentric at Berkeley, but who was I to think she was eccentric?” said Arthur Goldberg, a lawyer and self-described agitator wearing hot pink shorts and a T-shirt reading “Silence = Death.”

Noted: “It was so smart of her to do this now because of the Fortensky wedding. Everybody’s in town,” quipped producer Cramer.

Chow: Waiters passing trays of gravlax on white toast points and--could this possibly be?--lamb chops. The challenge was dispensing with one’s chewed bones.

Dress code: Where Brooks Brothers meets Chanel, on different bodies of course.