Even as the buzz dies down around "The Devil Wears Prada," Anna Wintour may again be swatting at her ears.
Vogue's sachem of schmattes -- all but certainly the model for Meryl Streep's character in the fashion flick based on the book by one-time Wintour assistant Lauren Weisberger -- looms large in Karen Yampolsky's upcoming novel about her own stint at Condé Nast.Yampolsky was the longtime assistant to Jane magazine founder Jane Pratt, but the book, "Wunderkind," won't be a "Devil Wears Birkenstocks." The pages she's penned portray Pratt -- the edgy editor with such an open attitude toward fashion that she'd ask readers how she should cut and color her hair -- positively.
But the characters in this roman à clef, with a veil as thin as a burka in August, include rival editor in chief Myra Chernoff, who wears fur and terrorizes an underling for eating a bagel at her desk. She also steals cover subjects from competing magazines and throws a tantrum when she is seated next to a fellow editor she dislikes. In one anecdote, Jill, the Pratt-like protagonist and a vegetarian, so fears Chernoff's wrath, she chokes down venison at one of Chernoff's swank dinner parties.
