Last night was the Library Lions dinner at The New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. This is one of the reigning social events on the autumn calendar in New York now. Brooke Astor, whose name was missing from the room last night, led the way with her interest in the Library, reviving its prestige in the public consciousness and assisting in its building. Cocktails were served in the Astor Hall at the Library’s main entrance. It was a very glittering crowd for New York and in some ways, for the world. There were four Nobel Prize winners present to receive the Library Lions 2006 Awards: Gao Xingjian, Orhan Pamuk, James D. Watson, Elie Wiesel as well as Oprah Winfrey.

It was pouring by the time we reached the library although a white tent had been set up to cover the steps and terraces leading up to the entrance. At eight o’clock we moved up three grand flights of stairs to the Deborah, Jonathan, F.P., Samuel Priest, and Adam Rose Reading Room. A magnificent room, perhaps three stories high with magnificent ceilings and chandeliers, all decorated by Gayfryd Steinberg and David Monn, and the reading tables all taken over for dinner and covered with forest green linen tablecloths. There was an aura about the room lent by the décor, architecture, but most of all by the books. The New Yorkers who were present were visibly impressed and very pleased to be there.

Catie Marron, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Library opened the evening with her remarks of greeting and introduced Paul LeClerc, the president of the Library. The benefit chairmen were Mr. and Mrs. Oscar de la Renta, HRH Princess Firyal and Mr. Lionel Pincus, Mr. and Mrs. Richard S. Fuld, Jr, Mr. and Mrs. Felix Rohayton, Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Schwarzman and the Honorable Merryl H. Tisch and Mr. James S. Tisch. I recall seeing Barbara Walters, Mayor Bloomberg and Diana Taylor, Missie Taylor, Nancy and Henry Kissinger, Aaron and Susan Fales-Hill, Barbara and Bobby Liberman; Robert Couturier. I sat between Beatrice Stern and Jean Strouse who wrote the brilliant biography of JP Morgan several years ago. Billy and Kathy Rayner were my hosts. Robert Wilson, a previous years’ Library Lion was there, as was Sharon Hoge and David and Shelley Mortimer. I saw Mario Buatta, Hannah Pakula, Shirley Lord Rosenthal, Ace and Kathy Greenberg, Catie and Donald Marron, Gayle King, John and Susan Hess, Russell Simmons, Gil Shiva, Jessye Norman, Joan Hardy Clark, Marshall Rose, Thelma Golden, Anna Wintour, Carolyne Roehm, Leonel Piraino with Nina Griscom, Sandy Hill, Mort and Linda Janklow, Ellen Levine, Andre Leon Talley, Amy Gross, Louise Grunwald, Susan and Donald Newhouse, Saul Steinberg, Lally Weymouth, Walter Moseley, Christine Quinn to name only a few I can think of as I write this. And the Nobel Laureates. And Oprah.

There is occasionally an event on this social circuit that reaches a kind of crescendo in its presentation where the environment and the participants represent a moment in our contemporary social history that defines the best part of ourselves. Toni Morrison (another Nobel Laureate) who was the Master of Ceremonies, in her opening remarks talked about the wealth of knowledge and meaning that was surrounding us in that room, in that building, and what it did and gave to us, to our world and potentially everybody. Everybody in that room last night knew there was some pure kernel of high truth in her words, truth for each and every one of us. Then when Paul LeClerc, the head of the Library introduced the Library Lions 2006 and Oprah – all of whom went forward for their medals – and congregated before us, there was that personal association with a moment of greatness in the room. I know it was just a glimpse and more enhanced by the optimistic side of my imagination, but it was very special; what all of this suggested was very special.

After the medals were awarded (someone remarked that Oprah was a Nobel personified, an award to all of us because of her great work in promoting books and reading), we were shown brief videos about the life of each. Courage, creative brilliance, intellectual genius, pluck and gumption; resulting in exemplary humanity of several sorts.

Oprah looked especially glamorous. Every time I see her she looks like she’s been through another transformation. The energy just beams off her. I can’t help wondering what it is like for her to be her; does she have such a clear sense of self and center that this enormous world she’s created is the intended result? It might seem so. But then I wonder how she processes it all as a mere human being.

The dinner was good and hearty, provided by Glorious Foods and Sean Driscoll. Starter was a vegetarian timbale, Bill Blass meatloaf (made with his recipe – he also gave $10 million to the Library), served with brussel sprouts and pureed carrot and potato; the wines red or white, and a very merengue-y and ice cream dessert.

It was a celebration of the best of us. It was over by ten-twenty, always a favorable hour for the New Yorkers who go out to these affairs, and outside we found that the rain had washed the streets for all of us; all cleansed, even if for only a moment, emerging from the temple of knowledge. And meaning.