Page Six Magazine, the New York Post's celebrity and gossip supplement, published on Monday a feature in which the editors named the fifty "hottest bachelors" in New York City. Among the rock stars, real estate moguls, and fashionistas on the list are two authors, Salman Rushdie and Keith Gessen. Also on the list is Steve Ross, who, a day after the feature was published, was laid off as president and publisher of Collins, the now-defunct HarperCollins imprint.
The sixty-one-year-old Rushdie, who was recently divorced from Padma Lakshmi, is presented as the perfect match for "the lady who likes to combine a little danger with her high-minded pursuits." In 1989, Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini condemned Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses (Viking, 1988) as blasphemy and issued a fatwa calling for the author's death. Rushdie went into hiding for a decade. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in June 2007.
Gessen, the thirty-three-year-old author of All the Sad Young Literary Men (Viking, 2008) and a founding editor of the literary journal n+1, is describd as "a man who totes a Moleskine journal and fountain pen in his back pocket." Media news and gossip blog Gawker quickly pointed out that Gessen now lives in Russia. ("Sorry ladies.")
The fifty-year-old Ross, who is labeled as a "go-to smartypants guy," isn't the only "hot bachelor" who unfortunately made headlines after the magazine's list was published. On Tuesday, New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, also on the list, admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs while he was with the Texas Rangers.
