much ado; It's been a season of high drama-both culturally serious and merely social.

Byline: William Norwich

Social people are the sort of people who thrive on excitement and drama. Will the fog keep the private plane from taking off tomorrow? Will junior get into Buckley? Will Irina Medavoy have the last word in her Botox battle? If there is a flu-vaccine shortage, is air-kissing safe? We're wearing the same dress!

High drama, yes; real drama, no. High drama pumps life into frivolity's pipelines; real drama threatens to burst the champagne bubble and clog the tributaries. At the time of this writing, real life has taken the social imagination hostage. It is the final countdown to the presidential election, and social life-uptown, downtown, midtown, and out of town-is preoccupied by feelings of elation, depression, gloom, and bloom, usually all in the space of a few minutes. Depends on the latest reports, and your party politics.

Of course the social beat goes on. On Fifth Avenue, a penthouse apartment in the Pierre Hotel just went on the market for $70 million. In the East Village, I hesitate to tell you, the latest trend among hipsters is having your tongue split, really quite extraordinary-looking and the latest rage in body modification. Then there is Sir Richard Branson's recent announcement of a new venture, Virgin Galactic, the world's first space-tourism operator, scheduled to be operational in 2007. A two-hour ride in a spaceship taking off from the Mojave Desert will cost about $200,000. What will I wear? The company will start taking deposits early next year.

As if life were not orbiting fast enough. Thanksgiving, and your bathing suit still seems wet from the Fourth of July. Unless you are a Bush or a Kerry, it is hard to get the public's attention for very long. Well, the blood-eating media did notice when Martha Stewart started serving her five-month sentence. The coverage was nauseating, but useful if you ever wish to know just how carnivorously we crave raw meat as a nation. Or mistake the enemy.

Some appetites for drama were unsatisfied by the publication earlier this fall of a book of short stories and a collection of letters by Truman Capote, the late author unfortunately famous to a younger generation not for his masterly works, like Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood, but for a) having once given a grand black-and-white theme party for Katharine Graham, and b) years later revealing social secrets about his best friends in an unfinished work of fiction, Answered Prayers. How could these new books shock? Capote lived B.R.T. (Before Reality Television). Any story he might tell now-a besotted maid, criminal socialites, engine-red descriptions of soiled sheets, vengeful tycoons-seems positively quaint. Practically cute compared to books like The Nanny Diaries or even Gloria Vanderbilt's recently published memoir, It Seemed Important at the Time. Don't get me wrong; Gloria's book is quite interesting and worthy of holiday giving. But with Vanderbilt's revelations about Bill Paley chasing her umpteen years ago and her singing the sexual praises of an unknown Chicago swain, poor B.R.T. Truman would have to go back to real fiction to compete.

As an antidote to all the aforementioned social stress comes Jamie Tisch into the Manhattan mix, a ...