Everybody learns to write by ripping off their heroes. I learned to write reviews by ripping off John Leonard, who died last night. I still carry his books around and study them on long subway rides, like Orthodox Jews with their miniature copies of the Torah. I got pretty good at aping his funny, involuted sentence structure, his bright, unsettling ...

In 1961, Richard Avedon photographed Sophia Loren for the cover of Harper's Bazaar. He surrounded her with a retinue of dressers, shoe people, makeup artists and a milliner, who crowded the shot and framed Loren, the still, elegant star who appeared oblivious to them all. It's a witty and pleasingly dated image, one of the first things one ...