{"id":1597266,"date":"2025-11-04T14:55:55","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T19:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/observer.com\/?p=1597266"},"modified":"2025-11-04T15:23:55","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T20:23:55","slug":"books-interview-author-jennifer-wright-glitz-glam-and-a-damn-good-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/observer.com\/2025\/11\/books-interview-author-jennifer-wright-glitz-glam-and-a-damn-good-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Jennifer Wright on Mamie Fish, TikTok Tradwives and the Return of Gilded Excess"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
Wright\u2019s latest bestseller, Glitz, Glam and a Damn Good Time chronicles how Mamie Fish used social gatherings to court power and prestige. Photo: Olesia Stoliar<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Laughing out loud while reading a history book may seem unlikely, but that\u2019s exactly what author Jennifer Wright delivers in her latest bestseller, Glitz, Glam and a Damn Good Time.<\/i> Why shouldn\u2019t history be accessible and entertaining? After all, Wright points out, \u201cIn the 19th century, they were human beings, bumbling through countless moments of idiocy just the way we do today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Enter Mamie Fish, Glitz, Glam and a Damn Good Time\u2019s<\/i> irreverent and witty heroine. Or, as Wright bluntly puts it, \u201cMamie pretty much said only inappropriate things.\u201d Born Marion Graves and later nicknamed \u201cThe Fun-Maker,\u201d Mamie rebelled against the stiff, strictly blue-blood parties of her era, replacing them with raucous, theatrical affairs\u2014each one outdoing the last. Themes included a surprise monkey dressed as a prince, a donkey crashing a dance, and a dining table turned into a pond with live ducks paddling about, just to name a few. Mamie made quite the splash in Gilded Age New York and Newport high society.<\/p>\n

More than a century later, at a time when the U.S. Secretary of Defense reposts his pastor\u2019s video opposing women\u2019s right to vote and TikTok trad wives perform subservience while making millions, Fish\u2019s legacy feels like both a wink and a warning. It reminds us that domesticity can be a stage and a cage, and that social influence was one of the few tools women had to access power. As Wright writes, \u201cIn a world where entertainment was currency, [Mamie] was richer than a king.\u201d It seems that when women are given even an iota of power, they can make kingdoms out of breadcrumbs\u2014and that\u2019s pretty kick-ass.<\/p>\n

Speaking of kick-ass, Jennifer Wright is a fiercely funny, witty, and scrupulous author of seven books. Her subjects range from historical plagues (Get Well Soon<\/i>) to an infamous 19th-century abortionist (Madame Restell<\/i>) to the thirteen worst heartbreaks in history (It Ended Badly<\/i>). She was also the political editor-at-large for Harper\u2019s Bazaar, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Post, The Washington Post and last\u2014but certainly not least\u2014Observer.<\/p>\n

Jennifer is also a friend. We met at Observer over a decade ago, back when I was writing \u201cThe J-Spot<\/a>\u201d column and she was covering style<\/a>\u2014which is fitting, because Jennifer sparkles in a ballgown like no one else. She wears them effortlessly, often in support of the arts and causes she deeply believes in. She\u2019s a feminist in full regalia. When we caught up last week, she quipped that our long friendship was like a child\u2014now old enough to be entrusted with responsibilities. What follows is a transcript of our conversation, edited for length.<\/p>\n

First of all, congratulations on being a USA Today instant bestseller.<\/b><\/p>\n

Thank you! I think a lot of that owes to the finale of The Gilded Age<\/i> coming out at the same time. I think there were a lot of people who wanted their HBO Gilded Age <\/i>fix who were happy to pick up a book about the era. Mamie Fish is a character on the show, and the actress who plays her narrates the audiobook, which was fantastic. I hope Mamie Fish gets her own spin-off.<\/p>\n

It feels full circle that you\u2019re being profiled in Observer<\/b>.<\/i><\/b> Tell me about your role there?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

I edited the style supplement for a while, which was very fun. We got to interview people like Dita Von Teese and Kelsey Grammer. There were a lot of really fun interviews. It was great writing about New York parties at the time. It was a wonderful, glamorous little chapter of my life.<\/p>\n

How did your first book, <\/b>It Ended Badly,<\/i><\/b> come about?<\/b><\/p>\n

My first book sold about the same time I was at Observer. <\/i>I was in my twenties, and I\u2019d gone through a lot of breakups. My friends had gone through a lot of breakups. And a lot of people in the past had gone through breakups, and theirs were so much worse than anything we were experiencing. For instance, Edith Wharton, at 40 and after a long marriage, finally had an orgasm with her new lover, but then he ghosted her. She wrote him hundreds upon hundreds of letters, and he never replied. So if you ever felt guilty about sending 12 texts in a row to your ex, don\u2019t. Like Edith Wharton has you beat. And she went on to write some of the best books of all time.<\/p>\n

What were you doing before working at Observer?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

I had been writing a column called \u201cShelved Dolls\u201d for a website called The Gloss, which sadly no longer exists. It was about historical women and forgotten fashion icons of various periods.<\/p>\n

Is this when you became interested in history?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, I\u2019d always been interested in history, but it was the first time I realized that there was a real audience for women in history\u2014and for a woman\u2019s perspective on history, written in a chatty, conversational way. I think it made me realize that there were women alive in history. Funny things happened in history. And it was okay to say that those things were funny, and to take a somewhat more lighthearted, irreverent view of the past.<\/p>\n

If I had learned history with your humor and if it hadn\u2019t been centered on men, I would have been far more interested.<\/b><\/p>\n

I think if you’re lucky, you have wonderful teachers growing up who do take that point of view. I think most professors have realized if you want to get students engaged in history, you\u2019d better find a way to tie it to their lives today.\u00a0 And I think those people are generally very understanding and very happy about what I do. The people who are unhappy about what I do are, frankly, older men who want to feel smart because they\u2019ve read a history book, while imagining themselves swilling brandy in a library lined with leather-bound volumes. I don’t think those are the only people history should be for. I think history should engage with women’s lives as they were and as they are today.<\/p>\n

I read that you want history to be for people who care about <\/b>Keeping Up with the Kardashians.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

I do. I think if you enjoy gossipy modern-day things\u2014if you want to talk about who your favorite couple is on Love Island<\/i>\u2014you might also enjoy talking about who your favorite couple is in the 19th Century because they were also having fabulously dramatic escapades and love affairs and very high profile divorces where they accused one another of giving them syphilis.<\/p>\n

What do you think the impetus was for Mamie to throw these outrageous parties and how did that impact the greater culture?<\/b><\/p>\n

This is a period where women couldn\u2019t really make money and couldn\u2019t enter politics. So if you are an ambitious woman, what is your outlet? It was crawling to the top of the social heap, which Mamie was able to do, rather surprisingly, because she was not the most beautiful woman of this period, and she was not the wealthiest either. She did it by the sheer force of her personality, her creativity and her wit. This was at a time when Mrs. Astor’s parties were never described as being much fun.\u00a0 A socialite wrote that the only way she kept herself amused at one of Mrs. Astor\u2019s three-hour dinners was by rating everyone on a scale of one to ten on how boring they were, with one being just the absolute worst and ten being a genuinely fascinating person. Not a single guest merited more than a three.<\/p>\n

Mamie kept her dinners to 60 minutes which could be a struggle. Some guests said they were clutching their plates as they were being whisked away. But Mamie always promised there would be something more than dinner\u2014like circus performers, or a play where everyone would be roasted, or a party where guests would wear their clothing backwards, or one where they had to talk like giant dolls and be seated with actual dolls.<\/p>\n

\"An