I record with interest and, perhaps, a measure of surprise and sorrow a brief dispatch from the frontiers of culture—in this case, the hallowed precincts of the 92nd Street Y on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Suffice it to say that the 92nd Street Y is the sort of place where Charlie Rose might talk to Anna Quindlen before an appreciative audience, or Leon Wieseltier might interview himself. Culturally speaking, this is important business.

And so it was that Steve Martin, the comedian/renaissance man, was invited to come to the Y last week and be interviewed about his new novel by Deborah Solomon, who conducts interviews in The New York Times Magazine. (Readers will instantly recognize her feature, which is always illustrated with an awkward, full-body, Avedon-style snapshot of the victim and a series of petulant questions if the victim is politically right of center.) Martin, who is an avid art collector, has just published a novel—An Object of Beauty—set in the art world, and Solomon was supposed to interview him about his novel, and about art collecting.