Annette de la Renta (left) with someone she isn't mad at

One book getting a lot of buzz behind the scenes in New York literary circles lately is Michael Gross‘ exposé about the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogues’ Gallery. It’s generating a lot of behind the scenes discussion because, well, it’s not getting a lot of in-front-of-the-scenes discussion, and the suspicion is that Gross has a powerful enemy.

For example, there’s this story by Jesse Kornbluth on the Huffington Post detailing how one of the Met’s most powerful patrons, trustee Annette de la Renta, wife of fashion icon Oscar de la Renta, had her attorneys send “one of those letters that you can tell is chilling merely by looking at the thickness of the stationery” to Gross’ publisher, Random House. The letter “demanded the book be removed from circulation and corrected,” and If Random House failed to do so, the letter said, “You will act at your peril.”

Hmm. Then there’s this commentary at the New York Social Diary by David Patrick Columbia, which begins as an article about a book party for Melville House author Michael M. Thomas, until Columbia runs into Michael Gross at the party, and goes on to detail his theory of how local newspapers from the New York Times to the New York Post of “placing an embargo on the work.” What’s behind the embargo? He says “the name that comes up first and foremost in the Michael Gross/Met biography business” is … Annette de la Renta.

Now, there’s this story from the New York Observer by Reid Pillifant detailing how literary agent Richard Curtis and his wife had heard about the fuss with Annette de la Renta and were interested in reading Gross’ book so they “searched the online catalog of the New York Public Library. But the book wasn’t listed. Then they called the library and got ‘kind of a vague answer.’” Then they remembered something: Annette de la Renta is a trustee of the library, too.

Coincidence? No one seems to think so.