Vanity Fair, 100 years From the jazz age to our age

I feel deeply underqualified to review the two coffee-table behemoths that landed on my desk: "Vanity Fair 100 Years" and "85 Years of the Oscar." It's not that I don't have interest in the subject matter: I covered the Oscar circuit for four years and each time ended up on the red carpet stationed next to Robert Osborne, the author of "85 Years of the Oscar" and a genial host of the event. And those who went inside and got their hands on one of those golden statues - they are so, so precious and hard to win; just ask Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt - would be, as a matter of protocol, invited to the Vanity Fair party afterward. I managed to get in a few times in a late time slot, and the party always delivered, with stars, fresh off the ultimate recognition they so craved, grazing and gabbing in air tinged with the ionized smell that is always present at the white-hot center of things. It would seem I am just the kind of person you'd want to give these books to, or in a pinch, review them. Except the part about my arm. I broke my arm earlier this year, and the rehab did not prepare me for conveying these books to my home for inspection. The Oscars book is a chunk, six pounds' worth, with a large-scale 12-by-9-inch format draped over 472 pages. But it seemed like a chapbook next to the printed colossus codifying of Vanity Fair. With a size of 14 by 11 inches running over 456 pages and a throw weight of over eight pounds, the book is the kind of object that might get its own table or, propped up appropriately, could serve as a table in itself if the need ever arose. But enough of the books' physical dimensions. Celebrity, after all, is the most ineffable of human qualities, a weight-less, priceless commodity that can be bestowed, but not successfully sought (give or take the Kardashians). Each of these books represents a separate sort of pantheon, an almost literal hall of fame that requires readers - gawkers? - to set up shop in a sturdy chair and make sure the teapot is full, because they won't be getting up again anytime soon. The concept of "Vanity Fair 100 Years" involves a bit of a cheat. Magazine nerds will recall that the publication was originally named Dress & Vanity Fair in 1913 and roared through the 1920s before succumbing to the Depression and shuttering in 1936. It was not revived until 1983 by Si Newhouse, so those 100 years of Vanity Fair? More like half that. But oh, what years they were. The book is a stunning artifact that begets staring, less for the words and publishing history than as an exercise in visual storytelling reflected through the prism of society and celebrity. The best photographers, the best designers, the best illustrators all came together over Vanity Fair's contents, and the book unfolds in page after page of stunningly rendered images, some iconic and some that never even ran. Early on, an illustration of a ship at work on the dock drawn by Edward Wadsworth jumps off the page. And through those early years, the viewer watches as Edward Steichen glides from photographic impressionism to a bracing modernism. His Olympian shot of Greta Garbo with her hands running through her hair still thrills. Entire decades seemingly come to rest inside a single photograph, as is the case of a remarkably evocative photo of Josephine Baker shot in 1929 by George Hoyningen-Huene. A rave of James Joyce in the magazine is accompanied by a Berenice Abbott portrait. Although illustration dominated the cover during the magazine's first incarnation, there is photographic incandescence everywhere once inside, with Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Jesse Owens, Marlene Dietrich and Jack Dempsey all staring us down from a past that seems far more remarkable than the present moment. Each page is like a church, a temple to celebrity with its own framing, ornamentation and marginalia. Still photos are the primary métier of celebrity, and no one has done it better than Vanity Fair down through time. You have seen some of these photos before - iconography abounds - but you've never seen so many of them gathered in one place. The book seems to shrink as it moves into the current age, but that has less to do with the magazine or the book that reflects it than with the diminution of what was once a super-race, aspirational by their very being and unattainable all the same. That mystery has evaporated, vaporized by blogs and social media feeds from stalkers - and by the somehow minor-key celebrities themselves. Perhaps the mists of time have added luster to their ancestors, but that is not all that is underway. The contract between audience and celebrities is that they show a little leg, either actual or metaphorical, but in a calculus not fungible enough to encompass, say, twerking. There is nothing that Vanity Fair can tell us about these creatures that we don't already know. Still, the current age is nothing if not sexy, so there are, as we used to say as kids, nekkid people everywhere. A pregnant Demi, Whoopi emerging from a bathtub of milk and an inked-up Angelina looking at us as we look at her. (Teenage Miley gets her nude turn; best not to dwell there.) Things get even more interesting when Vanity Fair begins its Oscar party in 1994, but the same could not be said for the book detailing the history of the Oscars. Visually repetitive and uninspired, with movie stills dropped willy-nilly to break up what becomes a droning year-by-year history of the Academy Awards, "85 Years of the Oscar" is sadly like the telecast itself: mildly interesting in spots, but with long stretches when nothing remarkable is seen or said. Billed as "The Official History of the Academy Awards," it reads as such, with an emphasis on efficacy and detail, and little of the dishy, backstage exposure a reader might hope for. The book does contain a comprehensive database of the most sought-after award in show business, but an argument over whether "Network" won best picture in 1976 - it didn't, even though its two stars, Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway, won best actor and actress - could be settled on an iPhone without cracking the index of a tome like this. A book of Oscar history may meet the needs of awards obsessives, but for those wanting a window into fabulousness, into the times and people who make ordinary life seem both quotidian and bearable, it's best to go to the party that is Vanity Fair. This time, we're all invited. ? VANITY FAIR 100 YEARS From the Jazz Age to Our Age Edited by Graydon Carter Illustrated. 456 pp. Abrams. $65. 85 YEARS OF THE OSCAR The Official History of the Academy Awards By Robert Osborne Illustrated. 472 pp. Abbeville Press. $75. DAVID CARR, a columnist and reporter for the business and culture desks of The Times, is the author of "The Night of the Gun," a memoir.